How to split a long log in half. Preparing the cleaver for work

Wood has a remarkable property - to split along the fibers under the action of a wedge. It is this property that we use when we chop wood, split a torch. From ancient times to the invention of saws, boards for construction and other household needs were obtained exclusively by splitting logs along the fibers. But even later, when saws appeared, village architects preferred to make boards for roofing in the old fashioned way. And here's why. The saw, cutting through the wood fibers, opened up access to moisture inside the board, and from this it quickly rotted. At a chipped board, the integrity of the fibers was not violated, which means that the roof from such boards could last longer.

For a long time, tin and slate have replaced roofing boards and wood chips, and electric lamps have replaced the light with a birch torch, but people still continue to use the wonderful ability of wood to split along the fibers. They are attracted by the high decorativeness of split wood: its brilliance, beautiful texture pattern and rich amber shades.

Wall panels, lamps, pencil holders, magazine racks and screens - this is not a complete list of what can be made from a torch. But before you try to make at least the most simple thing, you need to learn how to chop wood correctly. To work, it is enough to have only two tools: an ordinary table knife with a wide blade and an ax in the hand. Any log can be split in two ways - in the tangential direction (Fig. 2a) and in the radial direction (Fig. 26). If the log is split in such a way that the split plane passes through the core, then we will get backcloths, in which the chipping surfaces will be radial. And if you split in any other direction, then the cleavage surfaces will always be tangential. On any piece of wood, radial and tangemtal chips can be identified by the pattern of annual rings. On the first, annual layers appear as parallel

stripes, and on the second - in the form of characteristic arcuate wavy lines.

In order to get splinters with the desired chip, the annual layers in the blank bar must also have a certain direction. So, for example, splinters with tangential split planes can be obtained from a bar, in which the annual layers are parallel to its narrow face (Fig. 3a). If the annual layers in the bar are parallel to its largest face, then the splinter will be obtained with a radial chip.

Keep in mind that not all trees split equally in all directions. For example, oak wood splits well only in the radial direction. The core beams, diverging in all directions from the core, coincide with the plane of the radial split and thereby facilitate splitting. With a tangential split, they, on the contrary, tighten the wood fibers as if with harsh threads. These features of oak are taken into account by coopers when they prepare chipped staves for cooper's utensils.

Aspen and poplar wood, due to poorly developed core rays, is well pricked in all directions. Therefore, it is the main material in the production of matches.

It pricks well in all directions * and pine with spruce, although it is better in the radial direction than in the tangential direction.

The width of the growth rings also matters. Cleaner and even chip happens in small-layer wood.

If you place a torch in front of a burning lamp, then the torch will, as it were, glow with a soft warm light. Take several splinters of wood at once different breeds and compare their color and pattern. Each of them will glow differently. Aspen wood fibers turn from white to golden-straw against the light. Pridlerno the splinters of poplar and linden acquire the same color. And the splinters of denser birch wood are less translucent - they are painted in a thick yellow-ocher color. The wood of coniferous trees is especially beautiful in the light: pine, spruce, larch and cedar. Splinters of these trees against the light seem to be filled with amber of various shades - from light orange to crimson red. Pine splinters have many shades. An almost raspberry color is acquired by those parts of them that are located close to the knots and contain a lot of resin. In the light, the texture is well distinguished, which makes the wood even more expressive.

All these features must be taken into account first of all when working on various lamps. With decorative fields, the lampshade can be assembled from splinters with various colors, alternating pine splinter with aspen, linden with spruce. Alternating two dark-colored splinter with one light-colored

and vice versa, you can build a composition on a clear rhythm of color spots. Splinters made of colored wood of alder, oak, apple, pear and cherry almost do not shine through at all, so they are rarely used for lamps.

In all wood chips, individual splinters must be tied together with twine made of hemp, flax, bast, or pine, spruce and cedar roots. It is undesirable to use twine made of synthetic materials that do not blend well with wood. For flexible connections, for example, at a newspaper rack, linen, bast and hemp twine are needed, and for rigid ones, for example for lampshades, spruce, pine and cedar roots are needed.

Since the lampshade must have a rigid structure, it is advisable to connect the torches to each other with a spruce or pine root. If it was not possible to prepare the roots, then use strings from bast or hemp instead. Only in this case with inside lampshade for rigidity, strengthen the hoops from a torch or from a wicker rod.

In the forest where they grow coniferous trees, you can harvest the roots at any time of the year, except for winter. Roots need to be collected near eversion - trees uprooted by a storm. Most often, spruce trees suffer from windblows, since their root system is located close to the surface. Don't look for thin roots on a twisted rhizome - they aren't there. When the tree fell, they broke away from the rhizome and remained in the ground. So, look for them along the edges of the hole left from the twisted root. Look closely, and you will see the ends of the roots sticking out of the ground. Lightly pull on such an end, and it will be in your hands. The length of individual spruce roots reaches several meters, although the thickness rarely exceeds the thickness of an ordinary pencil. Rinse the collected roots in water and peel off the bark. Peeled, they will become about twice as thin. Roll them into small balls and you can store them for many years. Dried roots lose their elasticity. Therefore, before use, steam them for 5-10 minutes in hot water. The roots will become flexible. Split roots that are too thick into two or four parts.

Having prepared necessary materials, get to work. Before splitting the workpiece into thin torches, moisten it: put it in some kind of dish and pour hot water. Take a test after half an hour. If the workpiece does not split well, then still hold it in water. If, on the contrary, it is too swollen, then dry it a little. The knife with which you will split the blanks should not be very sharp. Otherwise, it will cut rather than split the wood, violating the integrity of the fibers. Splitting pro-

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Chopping firewood or sauna stove It will not be a tedious task if it is sensible to prepare for the case and master the correct technique.

Where and how to chop wood

Competently organized place for splitting firewood - this is a platform, the size of which is enough to scatter logs and swing a cleaver. There should be trodden ground or thick concrete under your feet, and free space above your head, sufficient to lift the tool with outstretched arms. Blocks for splitting are placed on a stable deck - a wide, not cracked, knee-high stump, preferably with knots and ornate wood.

A professional view of the preparation of firewood separates the actions of "chopping" and "chopping", carried out by various tools. Splitting axes with a sharp tip cut wood, so they are used when removing knots, felling small trees, preparing chips and cutting thin freshly sawn stumps. Other types of tools are suitable for chopping firewood:

A massive sledgehammer with a blunt blade and splitting logs like a wedge. Perfectly splits even impressive stumps, but with a swing it requires considerable effort.
- Lightweight modifications of a classic weapon - cleavers with rhombic blades, "eared" or with other protrusions of the body that split the wood. The impact is weaker, but they are easier to swing.

In your household, it’s more accurate to acquire both types of tools. Prick the bulk of the firewood with an “eared” cleaver, and use a heavy tool for large and branched specimens. Yes, and the "spare wheel" is always useful to finish the job when one tool breaks.

The weight of the tip, the material of the handle, its shape and length - these parameters are important when choosing a cleaver, but it is probably possible to determine them only in practice, having worked with different tools. When choosing a tool, hold it on the weight and try to swing it. The main thing is that the cleaver should confidently “lie” in the hand and be comfortable.

It has been noticed that with a long handle it is easier to break thick logs, and for dry small stumps, a handle 50–70 cm long is enough. Stumps large diameter lend themselves more easily to straight-sharpened tips, the semicircular cutting part contributes to the splitting of resinous and raw wood. For splitting dense knotty stumps, steel wedges driven into cracks with a sledgehammer will come in handy.

Preparing the cleaver for work

The real owner, before chopping firewood, will always inspect the tool, check the integrity of the ax handle and the fit of the metal part. Reliable fixation wooden handle with a tip occurs by means of a wedge made of a steel plate and driven into the end of the wood.

The part of the handle under the tip, which is subject to crushing during misses, must be protected by an overlay. If necessary, this detail is done independently:

1) Taking a galvanized strip 20 cm wide, first beat off the tin on the corner.

2) Then bend the metal in half using a mallet.

3) Trim the side opposite to the bend with scissors.

4) Having applied the strip on the ax handle, they crush the edge and grab the tin with a nail.

5) Having rounded the strip around the handle, cut off the excess metal.

6) Compress the protection with a clamp and bend down where necessary with a hammer.

7) Drill holes in the tin and finally fix with nails.

A cleaver with a wooden handle is lowered into water for 1–2 hours before work - the wood swells and holds better.

However, such measures are permissible to apply when there is a slight staggering of the handle. very dry wooden detail replace by purchasing a finished handle or making an ax handle with your own hands.

Proper wood splitting

Planning work greatly facilitates the process of harvesting firewood. Dry or frozen logs split faster than freshly cut trees. It is more reasonable to dry the "green" stumps than to tear yourself with raw logs.

Remember about safety - free the area from unnecessary items and ask others to move away. Put on sturdy boots and wear sturdy and non-slip mittens or gloves on your hands. Plastic goggles will not interfere either.

Set the stump on the deck with the knots down and turn the crack towards you. If there are no crevices, choose a split between knots. Make sure the log is in a stable position.

Stand in the correct position: feet wider than shoulders, a deck in the middle, the distance to the stump is such that you can touch its center with a blade. If you move away, the cleaver will miss and hit the ground, if you get closer, you can hit with the handle and beat off your hands.

Grasp the curve of the handle with your left hand, and take the cleaver with your right hand almost at the tip. Bending your legs, lift the tool up on straightened arms. Move your right hand along the handle and with acceleration strike into the crevice.

It did not work out to split the first time - remove the cleaver, swaying up and down. Repeat the blow, darting into the same crack. Raise the tool high enough and lower it sharply, using the mass of the cleaver itself. Repeat the steps until the block is completely split.

Stub strong stumps with the technique of three blows in one line: the first in the center, the second in the far place, the third and final in the near part. Start splitting logs of large diameter from the edges, splitting off small logs and slowly moving towards the center. Use the cleaver stuck in the stump as a wedge, hitting the butt with a sledgehammer.

Try to change the strength and speed of the swing, chop wood deliberately and do not rush. Gradually, an intuitive feeling will come of how hard it is necessary to hit the block of wood.

After splitting a decent amount of firewood, clear the area by putting the logs in the woodshed.

Over time, chopping firewood will no longer seem like a difficult task and will become a common activity, maybe even exciting and reckless.

For wood, known in Rus' as "trembling poplar", a lot of ambiguous opinions have been fixed. You can’t build a house out of aspen, the tree is unfriendly, cold, crooked. You can cut down a small bathhouse. Is it only necessary in modern realities? The view of the aspen is painfully unsightly. It is undesirable to be guided by beliefs in antimicrobial and disinfecting properties (this is with a persistent smell of rot).

Tree Aspen - comes from the genus of poplars (willow family). Its value in the bud, as commercial wood, is questionable. The quality is very different even on the same type of soil. Every second tree is rotten from the inside. Therefore, aspen is bought at the price of firewood. The cost of the cube is 700-1000 rubles. A significant number of trees suitable for construction (age 30-40 years) have a rotten trunk from the inside or damage in the process. For example, for a small chapel near Lake Peipus in 2004, carpenters took a month to select aspen timber. A slight plus of aspen is the moderate taper of the tree trunk due to its strong curvature, which is not very pleasing. This breed, unlike conifers, is never straight.

We must pay tribute to the aspen - a fallen tree does not become weaker over time. Provided that it was initially healthy. Aspen can be buried in the ground. Not very afraid of water, just covered with a slimy coating with bad smell. The walls in the aspen log cabin will need to be scraped off from time to time. In fairness: under the outwardly unsightly " protective coating", which appeared when exposed to moisture, hides white, poorly flammable wood. Aspen log fire protection is not required. Street walls acquire a characteristic gray-silver hue over time. An aspen frame cracks in the same way as a pine / spruce frame. Needs a caulk. After polishing, the log looks much more attractive.

It is believed that it is better to harvest aspen for a log house in the spring, when the buds swell, which means the beginning of sap flow in the trunk. Moreover, first to stain the logs for a month in the shade or in stagnant water. Aspen, unlike oak (which is also washed, though without access to oxygen), this only makes it stronger. The carpenter's ax bounces, so the tree stiffens. The chainsaw dulls quickly on fresh aspen, dust rather than sawdust flies from under the tire.

In practice, log cabins from this breed look much more profitable (more tidy, snow-white, smell of grass) in winter time. In winter, by analogy with conifers, aspen is easier to plan than debark. The debraker takes it badly.

There is a misconception - supposedly pests do not spoil the wood. The Great Aspen Longhorn Beetle Xylotrechus rusticus (pictured) and the Great Aspen Skipper Saperda carcharias specialize in aspen and poplars. With their larvae.

There is no resin in the aspen trunk. Which is good only for the operation of a freshly cut bath. In coniferous pine / spruce, for some time after the first heating, the contents of the resin pockets are melted. As a result, it smells strongly of turpentine. There is no such smell in the aspen steam room. Therefore, the atmosphere of the steam room is regarded as soft, the steam is not burning, enveloping, as if covered with a warm duvet.

This breed does not conduct heat well on the walls. The bath does not warm up for a long time, independently distributing heat from the heating zone along the wood fibers throughout the log house. But the canopy of aspen does not burn the skin. The tree does not breathe, in order to avoid dampness of the premises, it is necessary to ventilate well after visiting. What are the advantages of a log house made of spruce for a bath, unlike aspen - the ability of wood to independently remove excess moisture to the street + natural convection of air through the walls.

In everyday life, common aspen - a cursed tree (perhaps due to the characteristic whisper of leaves) during its use has acquired a trail of plausible and not very myths and superstitions. From the ability to take away mental anguish and draw illness out of the human body, to the fight against evil spirit(aspen stake). In the old days in aspen baths they ruled, guessed, steamed to protect against damage and the evil eye. Get rid of sadness and depression. As actually happens in any Russian bath. It is considered useful to lean against an aspen tree. Pain and anxiety go away. If only every tree was healthy itself ...

Sometimes already sawn firewood is too thick in diameter and does not fit into the firebox or wood-burning stove for which, in fact, the firewood is intended. If they are split, then even large logs will be used for firewood, and the firewood will also dry out faster. An unathletic person using the right technique will split wood faster than a huge athlete who will clumsily do the same. Learn to chop wood properly hard rock trees with a sledgehammer and wedges.

Steps

Preparation

To split hardwood, use a sledgehammer or splitting wedges. A sledgehammer is essentially a thicker wedge-shaped ax for chopping wood with a blunt end on the other side of the blade. A heavy sledgehammer, which is usually a couple of kg heavier than an ax, makes it much easier to chop wood.

• Splitting wedges are basically metal wedges that you drive into the log with the side of the tool. The advantage of wedges is that they can be inserted along the log and driven in until the wedge splits the log.
• An ax is used to cut wood, not to split logs. If you want to split hard wood, it is better to take a sledgehammer and splitting wedges.

1. Saw logs along the entire length. For conventional wood burning stove and small fireplace firewood from 16 to 20 inches (40-50 cm) long is suitable. The shorter the log, the easier it is to split. You need to cut the wood in such a way that it is most convenient to chop it. Logs should be of such size that it is convenient to chop, store and, in fact, use them later for their intended purpose.

   • Try to cut so that the edges of the log remain even. You will need to put them on the cut in order to split and if the cut is "crooked", it will be more difficult to do this.

2. Prepare a deck for chopping wood. Usually they take a wide cut of a tree trunk and put logs for splitting on it. Thus, it is easier to chop wood with an ax, and the load on the back is reduced. For splitting, a deck about 15 cm high is suitable.

   • In order to avoid dangerous ricochets, during side impacts, the deck should not be low and not high.
   • Always chop wood on a deck or something similar. And never on the ground or concrete. On the ground, you can pinch a log, but you have to lift the sledgehammer higher and you get tired faster. Save energy and chop wood on the deck, especially if you need to chop a lot of wood.

3. Prepare a safe place. Find a place where you can comfortably stand and make sure that there is no construction debris nearby and nothing sticking out anywhere.

   • If the firewood has already been lying for a long time, then it is best to chop the firewood in frosty weather. In frost at correct technique splitters, hardwood firewood will break into pieces with a bang, greatly facilitating your work.

4. Put on the necessary protective equipment. Prepare well for the day when you will chop wood. You need to wear gloves good quality, which will protect your hands from chips, goggles and sturdy work boots, preferably with a steel toe. Never chop wood yourself. There should always be someone nearby who can help in case of emergency.

   Chopping wood with a sledgehammer

   1. Place the first log on the deck. Check that it is stable, if possible in the center of the deck.

      Before chopping a log, carefully look at it. Find microcracks in the log. You need to strike so that the sharp part of the sledgehammer enters under the same direction as the crack.

      • Different types of trees prick in different ways. So tune in. For some reason, oak, even the widest logs, is easiest to chop through the center. But maple is easier to chop along the log.
      • Look where there are big knots in the log, i.e. places where when the tree was sawn, the saw cut turned out to be uneven. In such places it is better not to prick. In these places, the log is usually crooked or knotty and, if possible, it is better not to chop the log in this place. You can spend a whole day trying to cut a piece of wood with limbs.

   2. Aim. Select the part of the log through which you want to split the log, put a sledgehammer on it and lean forward a little. If the crack is hard to see, you can make a small mark so you can see where to hit with the sledgehammer.

      Swing with a sledgehammer and hit the log. Actually, you do not need to "swing" with a sledgehammer, you do not need to wind a sledgehammer behind your head in order to split a log. With your left hand, firmly hold the end of the sledgehammer handle, and right hand keep the sledgehammer close to the tip. Slightly bend your knees, then, straightening your arms, raise the sledgehammer directly over your head.

      • Lower your right hand down the handle so that the right and left are held close to each other and lower the sledgehammer onto the log. Next, gravity will do most work for you.
      • When chopping wood, you need to use less strength and more technology. Violently swinging a sledgehammer is both dangerous and exhausting enough.

   3. If the log does not split from the first blow, pull the ax blade out of it. If the blade is deeply stuck in the log, you will have to loosen it to get it out. To draw the ax, tilt it slightly down and then up.

      • Or, you can use the stuck ax as a wedge and hit the blunt metal side of the axe. This is a very famous and common way of chopping firewood. If the ax is right on target or firmly stuck, there is no need to waste strength trying to pull it out.

   4. Hit the log again and again until you split it. Try to hit the same place as before or into a crack that may form after the impact.

   5. Chop and stack firewood. Each log that you split, chop into smaller pieces until you get firewood the right sizes. Usually the log is split in half, and then in half again, until you get wood with a section of maximum 6-8 inches (15-20 cm).

      • Stack the wood that you have chopped so that there is air between them so that they can dry properly before you toss them into the fireplace or wood-burning stove. Cover the firewood so that it does not get wet and covered with undergrowth. But you need to cover it so that there is good air circulation.

   Chopping wood with wedges

   1. You should have several wedges. With the help of wedges, it is good to split firewood with knots, firewood from especially hard woods and very thick logs. This is because the wedge can be driven deep into the tree without splitting it, it is important that there are spare wedges on hand, with which you can continue the work if one wedge is not enough.

      • Usually, when working with wedges, it is good to have one sharp and narrow wedge with which you can easily wedge into the log, and one blunt and thick wedge with which you can split the log by driving it into the groove already made by the first wedge.