This is gonna be long winded, sorry in advance. I used to split really big, figured I can process more wood that way and get ahead. As I started to experiment with getting longest burn times. I learned that filling a stove with only big splits leaves alot of unused space in the fire box. I have recently moved to resplitting all my big splits down so I can fit more wood in the stove. This did result in some longer burn times. As I was splitting tonight I started by splitting smaller. Storage space is somewhat of an issue at my house we have .5 acre in town. I got to thinking. Wood can never take up less space than it does in unsplit form. I then proved it to myself that indeed bigger splits will allow me to store more wood. I have 3 pictures. 1. 2 big unsplit pine rounds 2. Those same 2 rounds split big the way I usually do. 3. Those same 2 rounds resplit smaller. As you can see the bigger splits fill the wheel barrow less. In conclusion. I'm going back to splitting big, but I will resplit some small pieces to pack around the stokers in the stove. This should give me the most wood storage and the longest burn times. Only downside is a little extra work each time I bring in wood
Being a scrounger taking what I can get, my stuff is nowhere near uniform dimensionally so I end up with fat splits and thinner ones. I never really thought about it but that does give me the flexibility to pack the stove tighter, filling gaps with whatever will work the best.
I tend to have larger splits at first. I stack and dry it that way and then split it down when I bring it in to the woodbox. Sometimes get 3 splits out of 1. On the rare occasion 4. Im not too worried about drying as I'm about 5 years ahead.
IME a mix of sizes is best...the smaller ones make more heat faster, the larger less heat, but for longer
I purposely make 'all nighter' splits that are 75-100% larger than 'standard'. They don't always end up where I need them in the stacks though.
