Thought I would start a fun thread by throwing out the question..What is the Hardest(most difficult) wood to split.....Everyone..try to name 3.............I'll go first.....Elm, Ironwood & Cottonwood.
The worst I've dealt with is Sweet Gum. I'd give it away before I split it again. What a miserable experience. The wood itself isn't even that great in the stove. Leaves tons of ash and supposedly it stinks when burning. I have a cat stove which means you don't get to smell that good Ole wood smoke smell. I love the smell of a wood burning stove but ironically enough enough I don't get to smell it from my own stove. There is a guy a few hundred yards away with a stove that puts out the smell for me though.
I've split most of what people say is bad but THE worst I ever ran across was a rouge maple. I have no clue what was up with this tree but it was possessed. Broke Dad's splitter on the stuff 3 times and finally gave up. It cut crossgrain easier than going with the grain. Even straight pieces with straight grain. Dad cut 22 inch long in half to 11 inches and still wouldn't go. I never would have believed it unless I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Came out of a friends yard. Never had any maple that was even close to it. I wish I would have saved some of it so I could play a prank on someone with a Fiskars.
of course elm.. but to throw a new one out Australian red gum is an experience so hard termites won't touch it!
I don't have a great variety of wood here, but fresh cut willow as yooperdave mentions is pretty nasty. Same with white poplar. I had a chunk of siberian elm from a yard tree, and I gave her a few wacks and quit.
Definitely elm, I took down an old rock maple and that was real tough, tried the maul for fun and I took 3 wacks and fired up the splitter
Ok. Have the guys who are saying elm ever dealt with sweet gum? I've never dealt with elm so I'm not sure.
Put it this way, i hit a round of elm (no knots) that i could just about pick up with one hand with the maul and it bounced right off 3 times. Iv never split sweet gum though.
All I can say is Elm, we don't have Sweet Gum up here. I have run into some real tough Rock Maple over the years. And believe it or not, some insane knotty White Spruce. Oh, and some nasty twisty grain Red Cedar.
I hand split all my firewood so I think I've got a good feel for difficulty. Amongst other species that are actually fun to split, I've had the pleasure of splitting elm, sweet gum, and sycamore. They all suck, but I think elm is the worst. Sweet gum seems to get easier if you let it dry out in round form for a while before splitting it. Perhaps it decays just a little and that is what makes it easier. By easier I mean difficult. I have a maple right now that is terribly cross-grained as well, but at least they aren't all like that from my limited experience. I don't know if I can give a precise measure of how much worse elm is, but the substantial majority of my sweet gum is split from 16 inch rounds. The elm I eventually gave up on at 16 inch lengths and cut to about 8-10 inches before splitting. Seems about as bad at that length as a 16 inch piece of sweet gum. It has been a long time since I have dealt with sycamore but I'd put it about the same as sweet gum more or less; maybe a bit easier but it has been about 5 years. The upside to elm is that it makes excellent kindling because of all the fibers that develop when splitting it. It is essentially self-kindling if the pieces aren't too big. At the other end of the scale, tulip poplar is about as easy as I've encountered.
It would be interesting to see how some of these hard to split wood species would handle splitting in extreme cold. I'm sure I was bored last year and posted about one hit wonders splitting unseasoned poplar.
Elm. Had a small one last year. I split with a maul and simply could not get it through even 6 to 8 inch rounds, 17 inches long. Tried to bash it with a wedge, and would just bounce away. Finally borrowed a friend's splitter and made a big stringy mess... but it's in my stacks tho!
I vote for elm & sycamore. I split by hand and both are a pain. The elm has the fibers that will not give, the sycamore just bounces the maul off the first couple of hits. Once I finish a load of them I'll do some oak just to relax and cool down. In comparison, the oak just pops apart... KaptJaq
