Anyone ever used one of theses? http://www.wiltontools.com/us/en/p/8-lb-head-36-b-a-s-h-splitting-maul/50836 One of my tool salesmen stopped in Friday with one of there sledgehammers, he is going to try and get one for me to try out.
Haven't got my hands on one yet, sales rep was just in on Friday with the sledge... He says I'm the only contractor that asks about firewood stuff. The B.A.S.H. sledgehammers have a $1000.00 and free replacement guarantee on it, if you break it in any way (under normal use) they will replace it, and give you $1000.00 cash. I for one don't want to be swing a sledge that much to test how rugged it is! I can't decide on head weight, I know I want 36", I hate the short handle on my X25. I'll try out what ever he brings me, and will give a full report.
IME you need both mass & velocity to store energy for delivery. Optimum weight for splitting, for me, is 5-6.5 lb. 8 lb and above just won't do it, nor will the featherweights, except for kindling. YMWV.
For an all-day swinging axe, I'd go with a lighter one - it wont wear you out as fast. Already having a Fiskars, I'd want to try the heavier one for comparison though. Physics suggests that lighter is better, as long as the weight savings translates to speed gains. The kinetic energy of a non-rotating object of mass m traveling at a speed v is 1/2mv2 (squared), so any increase in speed has an exponential effect on the power.
Velocity and head shape matter much more than mass when splitting most species of wood. Thats why a tool like a Fiskars works so well despite being lightweight.
Not really so. IME. Else we could just put a sharpened butter knife on a popsicle stick, no? I've tried some Fiskars and some quality 5-6.5 lb mauls side-by-side. As a result, I'll pass on the Fiskars, thanks. No inclination to be a fanboy of any fads. IMO, they'd be well-suited to doing kindling, but I already have a good Council Tools axe, which works well as a real axe and kindling-splitter. Notice I said "quality" mauls- properly made of quality steel (not the brittle Finnish stuff), sharp, with efficient head shape. With hickory handles. The good steels are much better at staying sharp, too. (Think: Mueller, Wetterlings, Council Tools)
If those work better for you then stick with them I guess. But just curious: How many cords of wood have you split with a Fiskars? Did you give it a couple of swings and dismiss it, or did you split an appreciable amount of wood? I've heard that when people are used to swinging a heavy maul and switch to a lighter tool they don't always swing any faster which of course hinders performance. It takes a little time to become accustomed to swinging a lighter, faster tool. I have split bur oak, hard maple, and several other higher end firewood species with a Fiskars and side by side with friends running mauls of 6-8 lbs. We traded off through the day and the person swinging the Fiskars expended much less energy for the same or sometimes better results. The only exception was elm and the slim 6 pounder worked best when we wailed it through with a sledge (the 8# was too fat to properly cut through the fibers and the Fiskars is not supposed to be pounded on). After doing a google search, I am not sure that Council Tool should be mentioned in the same breath as those European tools. But again if it works for you that's really all that matters.
Guess you don't follow your own rules about proper evidence-gathering, eh? Maybe after working through a few truckloads with one, you might publish an opinion. The metallurgy of the Council maul is, IMHO, excellent. Quite the opposite of fiskars, again IMHO. It's become one of my favorites for splitting 10"/+ rounds, NOT kindling. Took an attention-span of a couple minutes to get the edge where I wanted it, based on experience with Wetterlings and Mueller. It holds that edge way better than fiskars too, which tells me a lot. Do try one- great price. What do you call "heavy"? Turns out that I prefer 5-6.5 lb maul heads, purely based on performance, for splitting northern hardwoods from red oak (easiest) to apple & shagbark (tougher). Lots of the rounds I haul home are 2-footers or thereabouts. I'd offer that calling a tool a "maul" doesn't convey much information. From long experience, I can say that some are purely instruments of torture, and not at all because of weight alone. Turns out, I took a disc grinder and modified some 5 lb bludgeons to mimic the head shape of a 3 kg Mueller maul, and they were transformed. To useful wood-splitting tools, but one still had lousy metallurgy- quite soft. In fact I tried a fiskars for an hour or so, while its owner tried my Mueller. The fiskars did not impress at all- seemed wimpy. The other fellow started by "daisying" a red oak round with the 3 kg Mueller. Then I suggested that it was a big-boy tool, and how to make a proper first split down the middle. That worked. I'm not in love with any manufacturer, nor their product.
Surely you must know that all you have to do is move on if you don't like anyone's message. If you're trying to stifle discussion in preservation of any sacred-cows, that won't work well. Why should it?
You seem quite angry and defensive about this whole situation. I'm not here to tell you your tools don't work. But I can tell you I've yet to see any maul stand tall above the Fiskars in well over 20 different species of wood that I've split with it. I split a lot by hand as I have a boiler at my home and a stove at my cottage. I'm also rather compulsive about burning in my firepit whenever I'm at home on evenings or weekends. So needless to say I'm splitting whatever wood I can get whenever I can. As I mentioned before, perhaps you weren't/aren't swinging the Fiskars fast enough...in the absence of mass, velocity is a must (I'll assume your butter knife example was a joke...ha ha). I have only looked at the product and read the online reviews for the Council maul. I did notice where many were not satisfied with the shape of the head and mentioned it had the tendency to stick within partially split wood. Also it seems the hardwood handles on the earlier sledge eye mauls often had the tendency to break at the head (without over-strike). With reviews like that I'd honestly rather spend my money elsewhere.
I think it is nice to have a selection of tools. I noticed that for the wood the X25 works on, it is less tiring than a heavier maul. I also noticed I was getting a fair amount of shoulder pain with it. I think the high swing speed/length/vibration frequency in combination with the number of times I can swing it vs a heavier tool just happened to put stress on a weak link in my shoulder. Now I do some with the short Fiskars, some with the long, some with the farm store maul, some with the Gransfors, some with the sledge and wedge. Each one has slightly different mechanics and I can get more done than with any single tool. I tend to use the lightest tool that works on the piece at hand. I've taught myself to swing left handed and right handed; that helps too.
