You can noodle a big round all the way through. But I also see people noodle part of the way down and then insert a wedge and split it. Saves wear and tear on the saw! Couple of questions... - Has anyone determined how far down into the round you need to noodle to get it to split? Halfway? Farther? - What type of wedge is best, a felling wedge or splitting wedge, plastic, steel, what? Thanks!
Splitting wedge and sledge, each round/species is different. I personally hate noodling, ill just sledge and wedge
I have done this method and how far to cut depends on the each piece. Lets take a 40" round for example. If there are no knots or funky twists, noodling 6" down can be enough. Sometimes though it needs to be more than halfway through. You really have to be able to read the grain of the wood and still sometimes it's a partial guessing game. I only use my dad's very old metal wedges which get pretty thick quickly.
I much prefer noodling, but you do need a good saw. IMHO using a sledge and wedge is a pain and too time consuming. Usually if you go 75% of the way through one good swing will bust them apart. The real large rounds sometimes break apart from their own weight before you get all the way through.
I noodle down into a round, on the cut face, or into the bark with grain, just deep enough to get a splitting wedge started.
If i cant split the round after a few whacks i will lay it on its side and noodle maybe 3/4 of the way. The sugar maple i cut last week was rather knotty so i went almost all the way through. As jrider stated its a matter of reading the grain. Ive never used sledge and wedge when noodling, only from the end grain. At times ive started with S&W with no luck and resort to noodling. Always used a metal splitting wedge.
Thats exactly what I do. Usually not very deep. If the wedge stands by itself I'll tap in a little more, than go to town
I usually noodle past half way and use my spitting axe to finish the split. I have 3 or 4 store bought steel wedges and they always want to bounce out. I need to re forge them or cut them in half so they are narrower. Some wood I just need to rip down the bark on opposite sides and then I can split it by hand. Other pieces of wood I noodle to the last inch before it splits easy.
Last Sunday I had to noodle about 25” into some 28”+ dead elm trunks to get em to split. Was using stackable plastic wedges and an axe to drive them. I need a thicker steel wedge
I noodle and wedge all the time. It depends on the round how far I noodle down... sometimes all the way, and some times 3/4 of the way.
Me too. I noodle down about half the bar width, then set my biggest steel wedge, which is 12". If it's a crotch, though, I'll noodle down about halfway through the crotch and then wedge it.
I have tried both ways, but I prefer to cut the depth of my bar then just sledge/wedge. I can then manage to get the sections up on my splitter most of the time. I hit some metal when I noodled all the way as well and it’s take me a while with my MS250.
I discovered that I have a fairly soft sledgehammer. If I need to halve something, I will bury the isocore into the round, then a few smacks on the back if it with the sledge and I'm done.
This is what I was thinking, guys that don't like noodling have saws that are much too small for the job. I wouldn't want to do much of any noodling with a 250 either. Before I had good saws I'd wedge them too, now I personally would never go back to that, way too much work and slow. So let's try and keep things in perspective, use the tools we have to the best of their abilities. If you have a good saw noodling is definitely the way to go when breaking down large rounds. If all you have is a 250 than than noodling a large log all the way through, would not only be frustrating, but is also asking the saw to do too much and will wear it out fast.
The only real drawback to noodling, is the loss of btus that pile up as noodles. If you collect them noodles for firestarters, then that's a plus. I only noodle to start a wedge, as well as to get through a crotchy piece of wood.
