I don't have a splitter or a large saw, so I attacked the Norway maple trunk with the 025 cross cutting down as far as I could go. I started wedging across the top. I worked in steps. The trunk was about 5 feet in length and 30" across. I am not stubborn, just persistent. It took about 3 hours off an on with an 8 lb sledge. I made the wedge mushroom a bit. I noodled as needed. If I had a second wedge I would have went right across. Each chunk will yield 2 or 3 splits. After two rows across me and the neighbor rolled it over and wedged it a little and kept going. I used the neighbors twist wedge when needed to free my wedge. I hit some rot right where the main leaders separated. The rot line helped it break apart. There was very little internal rot. No carpenter ants. Pretty much a done deal. I will begin splitting this evening as a few hours of recovery.
I like that - let not a single BTU go to waste. Found a way to fit that big mama trunk into the stove, a carved chunk at a time. I had to do a monster linden trunk like that once.
Whittle it down to size. A small saw can do a big job with some good ole American ingenuity thrown in Great pictures
That Norway is good stuff.Only one I seen around here (though I'm sure there's lots more if I took the time to look) is a medium sized tree 2 houses over in neighbor's back yard.Pruned several big limbs off it in June 2011,ended up with about 2/3rd's of a p/u load.Some of the bigger rounds I cut a few turning blocks from,nice curl/ripple to some,very similar to Sugar Maple in workability,density & heat value.Some of the scraps went for grilling a couple wild caught Pacific salmon filets over,coupled with a western red cedar plank...that was especially tasty.
I saved some chunks from the base where it was leaning and the grain is rippled. There must be incredible pressure at that point. Our predominant yard trees in this area are silver, norway and sugar maple. There are monster silvers here in town. Good to know the heat value is up near sugar. I will check the BTU charts.
