Man, this horizontal/vertical holy war is pretty funny! Interestingly enough, we actually did the Ash in the horizontal orientation, and the Shagbark vertically...my back liked vertical much better, especially since that Shagbark is heavy af! Question: how do most people arrange themselves when splitting vertically? Kneeling? Sitting on a round? I fared pretty well kneeling on a folded moving blanket, although I did end up with some battle wounds on my shins and knees as mentioned in the shin guards thread.
Sitting on a round directly in front of the anvil. Rounds are on my right. Throw the splits off to the left. Sometimes I'll have a truck sitting there and throw it right on. But mostly it just get thrown on the ground till I get around to moving it to the shed. Just for the record; horizontal splitting is for the birds.
One thing ol Backwoods Savage and Ashwatcher haven't discussed yet....is how the stacks are always piled horizontally...right? (Just thought I'd add a little fuel....)
More than half the pics I've viewed, 15 pages in, showed the ladies doing it the correct way-they had to appease the host, esp using his splitter so that dog, my friend, does not hunt----They did a great job and I'm certain Sir Savage is most grateful...Remember, neither way is wrong, one is just more right...
I really like yooperdave , dude NEVER fans a flame...and Rangerbait, unless you have a degenerative or traumatic condition, once stretched out the upper body workout is more than worth it....I contend reaching from a sitting position wrestling rounds is more apt to result in back strain...just my opine....Heck, I have a completely torn rotator cuff tendon and can still pick up rounds from ground to waist height with no pain...stacking is more of an issue for me currently-corrective surgery in Dec......Its just good fun-Sir Savage knows I love him....gonna call in the big guns...
Ode to my splitter...I'm working on re-writing the lyrics, in Backwoods Savage honor-If I make it to a GTG and that guy brings the guitar, I'll sing it.... http://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A2KL...nKSw92Q4/RK=0/RS=Nbfm1vfHxICwFNd.qRuFBlTwLIk-
Indeed! At least when you have a splitter (or access to one), you can set aside a few easy straight-grained rounds just for hand splitting and crunch the toughies with a machine. I still like to split some with the maul, but only the easy ones now.... heheh
I've tried various heights but found sitting on a milk crate (also with hot seat on top) to be the best for me. The main reason is that my legs and knees are positioned at just the right height for lifting the log when turning it (elbows on thighs give good purchase for lifting rather than using all muscle, which, I don't have much left). After I had hip surgery I could not get down that far and I found it to not work very good at all. Very unhandy if I can't get low. Also getting low I'm closer to the wedge to see what is happening (which is really nice when making kindling which also is a lot of fun). It also makes it easy for rolling the next log onto the splitter. Another thing we do is to just stack up the rounds during the winter months when we cut then come spring, get the splitter out and do all the splitting at once which saves a lot of time of getting the splitter out every time you cut.
Well, they actually did most of the splitting the right way but either way, it was greatly appreciated and they did do a good job.
I still choose to hand split, vertical. Such a PITA splitting horizontal. ~smile~ Sent from my XT1030 using Tapatalk
I used to split by hand, borrowed a hydraulic splitter & thought it was a great invention Bought a 22 ton Speeco, Now I can't remember why I ever split by Hand But splitting by hand or with hydraulics, Vertical is the only way
