To rive or not to rive...

I always had these dreams that one day, I'll ended up with a pile of freshly riven oak pins and other assorted roughly sized chair parts. You know, how hard can it be??

Well, apparently wood is smarter than me :-)
But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

I am on built up ground surrounded by somewhat untouched forest.  We had a lot of strong winds since last fall and throughout the winter.  Nothing like experienced by the Suete winds in the Highlands of Cap Breton.  But still, and as a result I have lots of broken limbs and branches to clean up and tend to some damaged trees, mostly pruning.  Lots of it ended up in my fire pit, but I always like to keep some memento from a tree that I had to cut down. Being saving a portion of the trunk to either resaw or rive into boards and some log sections to be treated similarly.  Then there is carving and turning and, and...

So far I have had three silver maple logs, that were cut in Jul 2018 (since resawed into boards)  and two red oak logs still drying outside since being cut in Nov 2018. A few poplar and white birch smaller logs and bigger butt pieces of white pine. All of the same vintage as above.


My maple logs, were driven to New Brunswick, Canada, from my place, here in Nova Scotia and back.  Just because I can!

Yeah, I know, ridiculously far away, but for one good reason.  That was to visit my fellow RCAF vet Ray who retired there.

It was the first time we played with his new toy

These boards have been stacked inside my garage since our return, late Nov.

With the start of Spring (!!???) we have started  a lot of seedling and cleaned up the outside beds and spread that seafood fertilizer that was behind the only place I had floor room for stacking my wood.

Since that stuff is gone I reassembled my lumber pile pushed as far as it would go against the wall.
And setting up the portable green houses, we now have 2, after buying the last one on sale at the end of last season. Good deal :-)

All that to say, with all the rain we have been getting, I haven't had much of a chance to tend to my fire pit, lots of accumulating piles around it. Must get to it soon.

And talking of wood, my "green wood" is no longer much green..er, its been a while.

Yeah, two days without rain.

Who say you cannot start a fire under rain? Hogwash ! :-)

So cut to the chase Bubba, and today finally got to experiment with a few pieces of logs.

Looking over at the objects to be used, it appear at first glance quite rudimentary technology.
NO Bluetooth included, can you even imagined ? :-)

A few, I thought judiciously selected, small logs to split.

They just laugh at me, mostly :-)

Should not be too hard to figured out !!
The 2 parts froe, was (became quickly) easy to figured out how its handle went in, the basher was self explanatory once you stopped hitting yourself with it.

Select a log that somewhat appear to hold flatterish on its own, locate froe blade and grunt and bash away at the stubborn blade which did not seems to do much, except chewing away at my rock maple basher...

No way Amigo, am I not making any progress with that log.

Its really crushing the fibers of this rock sugar maple bat

 OK, so maybe I am seeing a tad bigger than I should, and the grain??? And still greenish, but have started to dry and harden.  Lets try something, smaller and a piece of Poplar should be easier?

Ah yes, that one works. Now it is at this instant that you realized why 

some genius invented the riving brake, cause...all I can do is bashing it through.

Splitted in halves, quarters and ended up with a few "useable" ?? pieces. 

About half my production, wow :-)

There should be at least a few good toothpicks in there

At the same instant I had another stroke of genius and realized I had not tried any oak logs yet, Dah!!!

Off to my wood pile outside and rescue what looks like a good candidate, except for the two large forking trunks at one end.  Probably would tend to split straighter and easier if I was to cut off that butt end, but... I am on a mission to conquer splitting wood, how hard can it be?

No, still laughed at me. 

Ok, butt jokes asides, it should had started easier???

Wait a minute Einstein, is that even Oak??  Did I mentioned it was, surprise, raining when I went to select it? 

For comparison, this is one of the two red Oak trees trunks I saved.

At the end of my feeble effort it was Wood 5 Bob 1

OK, time to regroup and analyse.  Which meant some of these logs that gave me a hard time...disappeared... just like that.  

I see nothing, I ear nothing...:-)

The white wine is a new one introduced by our good friends at Luckett Vinery

Sometimes you have to make the call.  Goes well with bonfire while your mistakes disappeared.

Oups, did I said that?

So besides being obviously blind in my wood recognition tests, my stock was not greenish anymore.  I been monitoring my wood pile of Silver maple boards, they have since stabilized at 13 % EMC and are going down ever so sloooowly. At about a year of drying time per inch, I have a way to go, most of my big boards are 2 in thick.

The stock that I managed to split by blind luck, still felt humid inside

OK so I'll have look into it more before I let that pile of wood make fun of me again 

Bob, regrouping with himselves under fire.  Move it Privates dammit !!