On a side note, had my chimney cleaned today and the guy told me to keep doing what I was doing. Everything that came out was flaky with no buildup anywhere. This is my first year with a house and burning so that made me pretty darn happy..
Good call.. I pulled them off as I was cutting today and that's exactly what they were.. Very easy to pull free..
As will the telltale refusal to split. I have a few logs of it in my pile and it will literally stretch around a buried axe or wedge without splitting.
The fiskars eats up the small stuff, but the bigger stuff is hard to split. I've been working from the outside in which has been working very well.