The one I'm standing in in my profile picture was about 3 feet dbh. That's high end of average for my AO I'm about 35' up in the pic. Im 6'2" and 200lbs for prospective on the limb I'm on
I passed it by many times. I don’t wanna be a Debby downer all the time, lol. I’m over elm and gum. I’m also spoiled with some of the best hardwoods there are so I can snob them both off. From what I read sycamore isn’t great and I know willow is worthless so I have a list of species I just don’t waste my time on. [Any] elm just happens to be at the top of the list.
I'll dig up a pic or 3 of Siberian. It split much easier than any elm I've dealt with. I will add that it did seem to make more ash than other elm, but nothing like black walnut does. Ok. Here's from the couple of cords of Siberian elm a tree service dropped off for free. It was too large to fit in their processor. So they wanted it gone. No problem for me. I might have a couple splits left from that load. As you can see, some was pre split already. I think all i had some at that point was cut most of it to 16-18". There was a bunch of 3' long halves in that delivery. As you can see, nowhere near as stringy as American elm pics we see.
I used to kinda hate Siberian Elm but now after burning a lot of 3 year seasoned stuff lately I kinda like it. I wont miss it when it's gone but, I have so much on my lot that I sorta have to learn to like it. And mine isn't very easy to split, some has been but most isnt. Every tree you see in these pics is Siberian elm including what's standing behind the rounds.
Even ash with it's "straight grain and easy splitting" can get nasty. While push through /push plate splitters are best for stringy and stubborn pieces, some have added a piece to the foot of H/V splitters like yours so that the wedge goes as far as possible into the rounds before it runs out of stroke. That seems to help.
