Manly Work, Manly Men
I mentioned here that D- has begun work on his service project for Eagle Scout. The project itself is somewhat involved but step 1 is to raise money by splitting firewood. A couple of weeks ago, we tried splitting wood by hand. That was a non-starter.
So Saturday we took a more modern, much more manly approach. We got ourselves a big, honkin' machine. We used a hydraulic log-splitter. Twenty-eight tons of log splitting force. Nothing could stop us. Log after log we cut into fireplace-sized pieces. Nearly two cords worth. D- had five of his scout buddies to help him.
Splitting wood that has been sitting around in big, rotting, piles for a few years has one unique characteristic.
Insects.
We found troves of insects. As the hydraulic wedge prized open each section of tree, streams of things crawled out, flew into our faces, or fell to the ground. We never knew what to expect. Termites, termite larvae, huge grub-like things, monstrous beetles, bees, small, busy spiders, ants of all sorts. Splitting old wood is an entomologists dream.
It was just like opening a box of Cracker Jack.
K-
That'll put hair on your chest.
When I was 15, I split about half a cord of wood by hand (sledgehammer, wedge) as penance for breaking a neigbor's window; man, did my neighbors get the better end of that deal -- I worked every afternoon for a week and most of a weekend to get it done. The good part was that I learned to handle a sledgehammer and wedge, so that I could split (at a more leisurely pace) the two cords' worth at our house; we had firewood for years from that little project. After that, I was elected 16th president of the United States.
Dan, I'm impressed. What kind of wood were you splitting? When we tried to split by hand, we had a sledge, wedge, and log-splitter. But that red oak was tough. We just had to give up and use a machine.
K-