I've never cut black locust before, but a yard tree is on offer locally. I only split by hand, and I'm fixated on those knots. How's locust go with a maul?
Funny you mention maple, Eric Wanderweg . I also find maple is often tougher than expected to split. Even red maple. It's almost like it doesn't have enough grain to split well.
Yeah maple is a workout more often than not, especially with the crotches and knots. Black locust wood is pretty brittle so even on the crotch sections, hitting it in the right place usually works.
GO GET IT! GO GET IT, GO GET IT! Call them immediately WESF Those big chunks will kinda fall apart as you section them up. Some of the gnarlier chunks will give you a bit of trouble but when I hand split I never had any problems with BL. Common to see decay and ant damage too. IME/IMO let the bark on sections sit for several months until the bark loosens. The bark is 2" thick on big stuff like that. WARNING!!! It's very slimy and smells like decaying flesh. Most putrid wood smell IME. Even if rounds sit they still should split easily. Here's the biggest BL I ever scored from last Summer. Biggest BL I've Ever Cut.
Have you tried this trick? If you don't split it fresh cut the ends of the rounds will check and its a LOT harder to crack them. Store them with one end touching the ground so it stays damp. Split from the damp end and it pops easily. Learned this by accident years back.
Heck of a sales job there. You too can make your neighbors wonder if there's a rotting corpse in your woodyard! Act fast and call now - operators are standing by!
You probably aren't going to split that one piece by hand unless you had some wedges. I'd just cut the knotty section out and get rid of it. The rest looks fine to me.
As Brad said, most of that will fall apart. That knotty section chop up with a chainsaw. It’s good stuff. Worth the effort. For our Ct folk there’s a nice size log in Unionville right now Ahem ahem Eric
The only BL I've ever had any struggle with is the gnarly stumps.....the knots may give you a "little" fuss but generally speaking BL is easy to split and well-worth any slight struggles it gives you in thr end.....
Eric's hibernating from hoarding in the heat. If I was closer maybe. Dunno of he would take BL as he's been on an dead oak kick as of the last year.
