If you have never split wood with an axe, you have come to the right place. The following article will guide you in how to split wood
Following these few simple tips will make splitting wood a snap.
Tips On Splitting Kindling
1/ To start you will need a small hatchet, gloves, safety glasses and a solid piece of wood to chop on.
2/ Place your chopping block of wood on solid ground. The solidness beneath the wood you are splitting sends shock waves back into the wood that you are splitting and helps split the wood. Soft ground absorbs the blow of the axe.
3/ The axe should not be too sharp, only sharp enough to act as a wedge. You are not cutting the wood, only prying it apart. The axe blade only need be sharp enough to wedge into the wood a short distance, with light force. One would call this a dull axe.
4/ Choose your wood to be split, dry and with no knots. A good straight grain wood will split easier. Pine and cedar splits very nicely. A short piece of dimension lumber (about 6 inches long) makes good kindling.
5/ With gloves and safety glasses on, hold the dimension wood to be split with your left hand about 2 inches down from the top on the edge of the left side of the wood to be split. Grip the hatchet on the handle with your right hand, so it feels balanced and comfortable in your hand.
6/ Place the wood on the solid chopping block; balance it with your left hand. Lift the hatchet just high enough to produce enough force on the downward stroke to simple enter the wood, just enough so the wood sticks to the axe blade.
7/ Next raise the axe with the embedded wood together as a unit. Use your left hand to guide and stabilize the wood and bang the wood on the chopping block, repeating the action, until the wood splits.
8/ The weight of the axe is used to do the job not a hard swings of the axe. A hatchet of about a 1-2 pounds is about right. Too light, and you have to swing harder; too heavy is over kill.
9/ Repeat the procedure until the wood is reduced to kindling.
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