Mine was all barkless........and I think I did get a little lucky in that it had pretty straight grain.......but it was still very, very wet and stringy in the middle. And it stinks. If I was thirsty I could have just licked the top of the round here after tapping the wedge in a few times.
I tried splitting elm with a wedge ONCE! The easton wedge just sunk in like I was driving it in sand; no split, no crack, nothing, had to cut it out with a saw.
Not all elms suck as bad as others, but here is my other elm story. A friend had taken an elm that looked like it had been down for awhile as the bark was gone. His hydro could not split it, so a guy brought his Super Split SE over to split it. NOPE, wouldn't even start to split it. He hammered 20-30, 40 times with the big SS, and it just started to ball up. Imagine trying to split steel cable and it just balls up. I wish I had taken a picture. The round wasn't very big either, 8-10 inch diameter, 16" long. Had to noodle the whole freaking tree. No, I won't take any elm anymore, heck no...
Lol. It really does burn nicely though. Chunky monkey elm pieces have my house at 72° with nice yellow flames.
I hope your are 3+ years ahead on your wood supply. If your elm is like ours ( American), it's not bad to split. Then there's the Siberian elm and that was really easy to split, but not a native tree.
All you elm lovers/haters have me wondering now I have exactly (2) splits of 3 year seasoned Elm at home I got with a half cord of oak from a buddy who welcomed me to his firewood when he sold his house. This weekend it's going to be in the low to mid 20s overnight where I'm at, so I've got to see what all the fuss about burning this devil's wood is. What's its claim to fame? Coaling and general burn quality?
Here's a pic of the elm that I wasn't able to bring home with me last trip to to wood lot. There's a couple ash splits in there, but that is mostly American elm. It was dead standing for a couple years and only bucked at the end of September and split a couple weeks later. Those couple of double long rounds that need to be cut before splitting are from the same tree. See, not that bad to split. No shredded wheat action. Lol there was a little resistance as you'll see on a couple splits, but not much. That was only with a 12 ton or so hydro push through splitter.
I think it was "ez" to split because it was dead a few years. Split a tree that was alive and then you'll see some wetness!
Yeah, I have never dealt with live elm. There's enough dead standing to wait until all the bark falls off and starts cracking lengthwise before cutting it down. I've been doing it this way for years. Trees like this are under 20% MC the day it's cut so you can take nearly all of it and burn it the same day if you want. Well except the lowest 8-10' or so if it's still on the sump as they wick up moisture. Those rounds need to sit until being burnt but they still split easy enough.
American Elm tends to be tougher to split in my experience. These are some pics of Red (Slippery) Elm and it can actually be pretty easy to split after it's been dead for some time.The last two pictures are of American Elm. The limb wood is ready to burn if the bark is gone. Sent from my SM-G930VL using Tapatalk
My regular J model Super Split did take care of the Elm I got from Northampton, but it wasn’t easy going. Took probably 7-8 hits per round. If your friends SE couldn’t do it, you guys must have had some gnarly stuff. Mine was bad enough. Any worse and I would have noodled it like you did. Normally I can fill a 330 gallon IBC tote in 20-25 minutes. The Elm took about an hour.
Update on the devil's wood in my stove yesterday ~ I like the way Elm burns! I threw the couple splits I had on a hot bed of coals and less than a minute later both had erupted into bright flames. I left the house for a couple hours, came back and they were still chugging along nicely. I'll definitely keep an eye out for more down the road. It probably won't turn into Elm Mania for me, but I won't pass on an easy score of it either.
I guess the real question is “Whatcha gonna do brother”!!! “Whatcha gonna do when Elmamania runs wild on you”!!!
I use three wedges to split my Elm if need be.You don't want to split Elm when it's wet.It'll suck up your wedges.Keep it dry before splitting.The best time to split Elm is after it's been sitting in cold temps for a while.This tree eliminates the need for a physical trainer.You'll get a good work out splitting this wood by hand.The heat from this wood is hotter than any Maple or Oak that I've burned so that is the prize.I won't waste this wood .It only gets burned if the temps are single digits or below zero.This wood is made for those temps.It's important to keep the wood dry.This wood suck up water like no other that I know of.
