Not only does pine not throw the best heat, but it is so stringy. I split a load that a friend brought me in the fall. What a stringy mess. I spend double the amount of time on this wood than I do with more premium wood. A good wood splits cleanly with a splitter only 1/4 the way in.
Try letting it sit for a year or two before splitting? No idea if that would help out there, maybe wood rots out there? I had to used wet machine split pine in 2014. No fun.
Stringy wood is stringy wood, Pine ,Elm, Hickory , cottonwood etc. Stringy stuff sucks ,I have some pine that's bad ,I just started noodlin that stuff into nice stackable blocks
I split rounds and it hangs together as a round still. Thinking I'll further cut it against the grain and pull it apart the rest of the way. Branches also change the internal grain pattern and screw it up so that the splitter is working harder. No more pine. Some say it burns too fast. I'll be happy if it burns fast and hot to be rid of it.
What kind of pine are you guys talking about?? Here I have Eastern White and it splits just fine. We have a mix of Oaks and E W Pine on our land and cut only Oaks but do take any Pines that come down. I kind of like to have a few cords of Pine to use as kindling and for shoulder season.
I just split about cord of red pine by hand. There's a "trick" to it - it likes to be split radially to the heart center, and you want to stay between the knots. They also split a lot nicer if the knots are closer to the ends than the middle. But by the end I was noodling the bigger rounds in half to save some time and effort.
I use almost nothing but pine. Split it all by hand and don't find it difficult at all. But it is all forest edge or forest pine straight as an arrow. First branches maybe 50 feet up. Sure the big stuff might need a wedge to half it and the branch points might need some persuasion but overall easy wood. Have to use a tire to keep the splits from flying. If it grew in the open and has lots of branches it won't be nearly so easy.
I wish I knew what this was. Blue Spruce? I have no idea. It was not an easy to split wood by any means. I took rounds that I split yesterday and used the maul to break the remaining strings holding the rounds together. Should dry better now.
I have split a lot of pine recently. It was Scots Pine, to be specific, but the straight pieces without knots split as easily as any wood I have ever split. The pieces with a knot can be a pain, and pieces with several knots have to be almost beaten to a pulp before they split. I have also split a bunch of spruce and it was similar, except that there are a lot more branches on a typical spruce, so almost all of the pieces were very difficult, and the grain was twisted on that particular spruce tree. I think it depends on the tree. I imagine pines from a dense forest, where most of the lower branches are gone, would be pretty darn nice to process. I think they key is to split by hand. The tougher the piece is to split, the more exercise you get.
