This is the stringiest ash I have ever split, it's bone dry. Had to use a the full stroke on every one
It sucks when the rounds split stringy, it's actually very time consuming to go through full cycles....but that ash will be feeling good on your bones very soon
You are right HD. I occasionally run into stringy ash, as well. It's still not as bad as elm, but it's close!
Not necessarily. My woods is flatter than yesterday's beer. And the only trees I've got in my yard are Spruce. Yet for some unknown reason, I still come across a stringy ash every now and again--right out in the middle of the flat woods. I usually respond by running through the woods at full speed yelling; "Stringy Ash! Stringy Ash! Why you gotta be so freakin' stringy?"
Yup, I helped the neighbor split up his big ole Ash tree up a couple years back...just like your pics, STRINGY! If I didn't know better I would have been thinking it was actually Elm
HDRock I truly feel your pain! Last year I had Ash and Elm, both of which were yard birds. Both of those were like to beat me half to death. The Ash was actually harder to split than the Elm. After a couple of weeks of working on them I managed to only have to noodle a few pieces. Not bad considering I split everything by hand. My little X7 came in handy a lot. The sad thing is, if I had to do it all over again, I WOULD!
Well I got quite a bit of splitter trash, I put in the kindling box. It isn't really more work with hydraulics but, it sure does take longer
The old codgers of hoarder legend use to speak in crazy tongue of great trees that were better than Oak, Elm and Ash combined!
Those pictures of ugly ash splits reminds me of the ones I have been doing by hand. My rounds have been cut for over 5 years but are about 2 feet long so first I cut them in half then I start trying to split them before I give up and use the sledge and wedge approach. The apple, black cherry and mulberry all pop easily but the ash fight back.