having one tough time splitting oak!

[gzecc]

This is the problem with free wood sometimes. Its impossible to split, has poison Ivy on it, full of ants, rotten...
Sometimes cut your losses and move on to other easier wood if you don't have the ability to split it.
If you have dynamite....

 

[bholler]

You could always just rent a splitter for a day

 

[brenndatomu]

I'm in the "that's not Oak" camp...growth rings way too wide, and the biggie is no medullary rays...might be busting your hump for some very mediocre wood...people advertise wood as the wrong species all the time.

 

[CincyBurner]

Pic entitled chopblock in post #6 - looks like honeylocust (Gleditsia triacanthos).

 

[yonny33]

I had a similar issue with the last ton of hardwood I bought. 1/3 just impossible to split.
Ended up buying an electric chainsaw!! (even that was hard work and makes a lot of mess and waste)

 

[TradEddie]

Use that toy hammer to set the wedge in place, then use a real sledgehammer to hit it. I find that some wood splits better with a maul, some better with a wedge, it's nice to have a choice of tools, but some wood just won't split by hand without massive effort, and this isn't the weather for that.
If you have any chainsaw at all, it'll be less work than splitting stringy wood by hand. Buy a new chain, or just buy a file and sharpen the old one, learn what is meant by "noodling".

TE

 

[Caw]

Definitely not like any oak we have around here. Oak is by far the easiest to hardwood to split...just look at it menacingly and it splits in fear lol.

Elm, hickory, even maple way harder. Lots of good advice on ways to tackle it but for my money if it was free/cheap wood and it's not splitting in a bunch of good whacks it's fire pit fodder.