All the American Elm I've split has been tough. Wedge and sledge or full stroked hydros. Dryer or frozen seems to help, a little. We've had a ~74F temp swing in the last 5 days. Would have been a good time to experiment. Luckily, I don't have any elm needing processed.
I split a lot of elm. Mostly red. Before I got a splitter I always waited till the wood was froze. Split much better. With a splitter I haven't had much problem any time of year. White elm is a different animal. I usually leave white elm in rounds for a year so it dries some and starts to check and then split. If it is froze, so much the better.
I don't know what type of elm I've got, but I've managed nail it to the backing block with the splitting wedge when even after driving the wedge all the way through it is still held together by fibers that the wedge did not directly sever.
Now that everyone has had a chance to bad mouth the elm, I'll repeat what I've said for years. Do not cut live elm! We wait until the bark is off or nearly all off the dead elm trees and 99% of the time they split easy. Cut it green though or just as the bark starts to fall and it can be a different story. We tend to cut in winter and split in spring so the wood is not frozen or at least not much of it. Also, we rarely split by hand now because like bogydave, we found that hydraulics are our friend no matter what wood we are splitting. I can not say that we've ever intentionally let wood freeze before splitting so can not comment on that. Again, the key to elm is to let it die and then wait a couple more years to when the bark falls off the tree; then cut and split it. The top 2/3 of the tree will also be ready to burn then if you need it.
Around here, there's enough dead standing elm that I'll be busy for years cutting it by waiting until after all the bark has fallen off. Luckily it's a strong solid wood that rots as well as it splits.. It's great stuff really. I'll have it in my stacks for a long time to come.
Yep. I am a big fan of standing dead elm. The stuff is great fire wood. That's the only way I cut it intentionally.
Well, I agree with most. But I have found over the years that any species can be hard or easy to split no matter what the conditiobmns. Especially in central Illinois. So when I couldn't swing a maul effectively anymore, I got a hydraulic splitter. Now I just pull the handle and big pieces become little pieces. Doesn't matter what kind or how hard. It will split it or cut it. Chief
American Elm The only reason I bought a splitter Frozen, dry, wet no difference its all a pita to split with out the Hydro
