Free Wood
The installation of our wood stove brought about a new need, firewood. The first round of wood we struggled to get to our house in the back of our jeep. It took about three trips to get the wood seen in the picture here to our house. That clearly was not very efficient, though the price (free) was right. Now that we had the wood we had to split it. After a few tries with our ax we realized that another tool was needed.
We did some research online and found a lot of people recommended a 4 way wedge and maul. We went to our local home improvement store and picked these items up and gave them a try. They worked great!
4 Way Wedge
One thing we learned after using our stove for a few weeks was that it goes through much more wood than we anticipated. Luckily other circumstances lead us to obtain a new vehicle which enabled us to obtain much more free wood. In one weekend we used our truck to pick up about two cords of wood. Some of the wood we picked up was quite large though, it had been cut up by power companies after the hurricane came through.
Unloading Wood From Truck
Some of the pieces were too large to split though… We decided to go ahead and purchase a chain saw to get through the larger pieces of wood. The chainsaw we decided on was a Poulan Pro 50cc 20″. It has worked really well. It has allowed us to process a lot more wood very quickly and we have more opportunities for free wood since we can handle larger pieces. An added benefit was all the great shavings that we got from cutting the wood with the chain saw. We used them in our raised garden beds as mulch and as fire starting material in the stove.
Wood Splitting Operation
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