My favorite wood splitting tool

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: splitting fire wood can be mighty satisfying. Especially when you use the super easy combo of sledge hammer and a diamond-shaped wedge known as a Wood Grenade, pictured here at various stages of usage. The left-most wedge is relatively new, having only been used this season. The next one is brand, spanking new, and the two to the right are the remnants of the two wedges that Keith managed to de-commission this year. It amazes me that these heavy carbon steel tools can have their tips broken off so easily - we lose an average of one Wood Grenade per splitting season. (By the way, here is a larger image of a totally new Wood Grenade.)

I find the Wood Grenade incredibly easy to use and master, but not everyone feels the same way about it. Noel Perrin, the rural essayist, wrote a piece eschewing the Wood Grenade in favor of the old-fashioned standard two-sided steel wedge. A standard wedge, for the uninitiated, has a business end that looks something like a pry-bar, but with a smooth edge. Anyway, Perrin claimed that, in a series of test trials that he devised and performed, the Wood Grenade required a higher number of swings of the sledgehammer to split the log. He said that an experienced woodsman knew where to place a conventional splitting wedge - just so - and could split a log with one or two swings. Maybe Perrin was onto something about experience, because I find conventional blade-shaped wedges to be so difficult to place as to be nearly intolerable. But then again, perhaps he was the one lacking in experience, experience using a 4-sided wedge. I can split a well-seasoned log in five whacks, on average. Keith requires fewer whacks - and often he splits smaller diameter logs with just one whack of his splitting maul.

In any case, we've finished up our wood splitting for the season. We have so much split fire wood, we're running out of places to stack it - and we still have plenty of downed trees in the back waiting to be cut up. Maybe we should form a timber company like Bush. If we sold enough timber, we'd not only get the small business tax breaks, we'd also get the agricultural property tax rate that we can only qualify for by selling $1,200 worth of agricultural products every year. Hey, the county might call us a "farmette", but we've got to do some real farming if that's ever going to be more than an informal designation. As if. In the meantime, we remain a farmette in name only, just for kicks.

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Edit: Well, it might just be handy if I explained why I find the Wood Grenade so much easier to use than a standard splitting wedge. In a word: stability. I can tap the tip into the end of a log with a tap or two of a sledgehammer, and the wedge will stand upright, waiting to be driven home with some proper whacks. If the log has previously frozen and is checked (i.e., has little cracks on its ends), the tip of the diamond-shaped wedge will go in that much more securely, and the log will crack open in next to no time. The two-sided splitting wedge, on the other hand, is difficult to keep in place because of its long, flat, narrow tip. If the log is checked, I can tap the tip into a crack so that it will hold without my having to hold the wedge (after all, who wants to hold a wedge like a big nail while trying to swing a sledgehammer at it?). If the log is not checked, the standard wedge becomes that much more difficult to place.

Apparently, Noel Perrin didn't sweat over placing the wedge as I do. His complaint about the Wood Grenade stems from its greater surface area. He said that a slim, small wedge was easier to drive into a log because there was less surface area to provide resistance. To each his - or her - own. We do all our splitting by hand, and Perrin, when he wasn't conducting and writing about his woodcraft experiments, relied mostly on the use of a hydraulic wood splitter so that he could keep up with maintaining his 100+ acre Vermont farm with its large woodlot.

Comments

[Michelle]

Not a bad idea! Grow some basil or something on top of it, and you'd have yourself a regular business, tax breaks and all! Or how about some bamboo--it might take over the entire property, but you could sell it in little pots for $20 apiece...

[Janis]

Bamboo! Oooh, that gave me cold shivers of dread, Michelle. We had some here when we first moved in, growing out behind the old outhouse. I'm not sure how it got there, but Keith dug it out thoroughly our first year here. We are grateful not to have seen a resurgence.

You're on to something with that idea about the basil. Great idea! We'd only have to do an average of $100 a month in business to qualify for the tax break. As I recall, we only have to sell $1,200 a year in "agricultural product" - not make that much in profit. Our running joke is to get some chickens and then sell their eggs to family and friends for $100 a dozen with a $99 rebate for every dozen sold.

By the way, the rules are strict enough about what is a farm product. We have to produce something in order to qualify, and were told our first scheme to raise money by boarding horses wouldn't qualify.

[sean]

I grew up in a house that was heated with wood and we did all the splitting manually. I just purchased a outdoor wood boiler and am back into the "woodwork".

In shopping for a source to replace my Wood Grenade I was shocked to see your photo of two failed wedges that look exactly like the one I have. I love the wedge compared to conventional designs. The design is ingenious but the tips are obviously a point of premature failure. The one I had was 3 days old when it broke.

Mine broke in a very gnarly chunk of dry oak and I was giving it the full swing of the mall. Lesson- if you have to hit the Grenade hard because the wood is messy be careful because the tip will "go off".

[Janis]

Sean, you'll save yourself some trouble if you use two or more wedges for the very gnarly spots. Also, if you save your receipt, we find that we can always get a replacement wedge when ours breaks. And it is precisely because the tips can and do break that we keep several Wood Grenades on hand at a time in case something happens to one - no need to slow the pace or worry whether the store is open.

Although Keith breaks at least one Wood Grenade per season, I've yet to break one. This may be one of the few benefits of being a comparative weakling - I split enough wood that I'd like to avoid saying that I hit like a "girl" and yet... it takes me more whacks to split a length of wood, and there'll be no broken wedges!

[Don]

Where can I buy the log splitting grenade?

[Janis]

Don, some over-priced catalogs carry 'em, but your best bet is your local general purpose hardware store or (yep) Wal-Mart.

Follow up on gnarly wood and broken grenade tips: For the cleanest and least back-breaking split, use a conventional wedge when you encounter a huge knot. Placed well, and it takes practice to do this, the conventional wedge really splits the wood grain wide open.

[ken]

Hello Janis, It's good to see you posting!

[Neil Cafferky]

I think that they break because they are made from cast iron. A forging would be better.

[Brett]

One disadvantage of the conventional wedge is mushrooming of the head after repeated striking with the sledge. This lip catches against the top surface of the round and won't allow the wedge to sink through the split. The solution is to machine off the mushrooming or to buy new wedges.

While the wood grenade does have a tendency to break at the tip (I did that just this morning, after seven good years), it has never mushroomed on me.

[Huan]

The wood grenade works really well for me, I got one the other day at a market here in Ireland cost €10.
Just one warning, I was splitting a really tough bit of wood and after a BIG swing with the back of the 6lb maul the grenade popped out and struck me point first in the ankle, luckily I was wearing stout steel toed boots and the point hit a padded area, resulting in no damage.
I am sure that I I hadn't been wearing boots I would be in serious pain now.

[Rob Foster]

We split all sorts of wood by
hand - whatever our friendly tree surgeon drops off. Anything from
8 - 14 inch dia and up to 2 feet or so long. It is usually wet
often soaked.

The wood grenade is really very good. We start off by tapping the
point in with a heavy lump hammer and then finishing off with the sledgehammer. Dont start off in the middle but split off decent chunks working inwards.

Then finish off with the axe or hand axe. We pay £5.00 ish for ours