Unbridled Rage...

Look, most people -with the exception of a few unnamed preteens who had me as their 6th grade math teacher- will tell you I'm a relatively friendly person. I can be patient with people, I can be calm, sometimes; but when you mix humidity, tools that slip, fail or break, and me, you're at Threat Level: Midnight.

Yesterday was supposed to be my last day splitting fence pales, those wood slat things I showed you last post. I figured one more log would more than cover it, so I asked Brinn to come out and get some shots of me splitting a log with the wedges, since so many people ask me about it all the time. "How long will it take? I'm watching the baby...", she asked. "Huh? Like, 2 minutes... It's seriously like, whack, whack, whack and it cracks wide open. Real quick." Right. I used all the good (meaning straight grained, knot free) log sections  days ago. With those guys, the log would literally pop open, from end to end, after 3 or 4 whacks on just one wedge. Yesterday, I cut the reject log from... well, let's just say I've found the perfect object lesson for any teenager that needs to learn the meaning of a hard day's work.

Knots form where tree trunks grow around protruding branches, you probably knew that. Unless you've split your share of firewood, however, you may not know how ridiculously impossible it can be to split, chop, cut (or blow up with a stick of #&$%@ dynamite) a stubborn hardwood knot. This experience is further exacerbated by the fact that most of a tree's earlier, ambitious growth efforts (growing in the shadow of the tree's newer, upper branches) die and fall off, leaving knots buried beneath years and years and years of new growth rings, which seem to form some kind of cancerous, petrified tumor around the lost limbs. The very essence of working wood with hand tools, is exploiting the wood's inherent weakness (the weaker, connective tissues between the grain), while utilizing its inherent strengths (the fibrous grain that runs the length of the tree). Knots throw a gigantic monkey wrench in the gears of that beautiful system, turning an otherwise pleasant and surprisingly efficient process into a torturous nightmare. Hence, my heart healthy bout of unbridled rage.

This log has trouble written all over it. The dark circle in the center is the good stuff, the white section around the outside is the sapwood, which is horribly distorted on the right side, because the tree was originally two trunks emerging from the same fused base. I knew it was an ambitious undertaking, but I thought I might be able to at least crack off the good side without too much trouble.

3 or 4 whacks in, and I can already tell I've made a horrible mistake. In a good log, I would have had two halves by this point. Also, for anyone who's done this before; yes, I know this wedge is far too aggressive for this job, and I really should have 3 or 4 thinly tapered wedges running the length of the log, but it's too late for that now. I don't stop and ask for directions, I don't ask what the specials are at your momma's favorite restaurant, and you can bet I'm not going to the lumberjack store in town (that's right, we have one) to get more wedges, because I'm a hard-headed, stubborn-as-a-mule man.

At this point I'm practically frothing at the mouth. I've driven a series of wooden wedges along the length of the log, before flipping it over and driving the spike right into the knot, screaming, "DIE, YOU VAMPIRE BEAST!!!" at the top of my lungs. Picture the physics for one second, the wedges on the opposite side of the spike are pushing the two halves out, thereby compressing the wood I'm trying to drive the spike into (got it?). Instead of shattering under the pressure like a florescent light tube, the wood is pinching down on the spike tighter than Mr. Miagi's chop sticks, shooting it back out like a wet bar of soap. Not helping my agitated temper.

At this point, it's muggy, I'm sweating profusely, my ears are bleeding from the 140 decibel, repetitious PING of metal on metal and the harder I wail on the spike, the farther it pops out. I am now completely enraged and smashing the holy tar out of the end of the log before turning to hurl that splitting maul with every last smidgeon of force I can muster into the field... it went pretty far.

Apparently my outburst was the only thing interesting enough to interrupt Wyoming's detailed inspection of this football. She could have been out there helping me, thanks for nothing baby.

I finally broke down and made a kerf cut (like a pre-cut to help the split get started) with the chainsaw. The sliced chunks are wide swaths of grain fibers that wanted to attach to one side in the front, and the other side in the back, causing most of the aforementioned problems. I had to cut them with the hatchet to free the section. Honestly, when it goes well, splitting is a whole lot faster than cutting with a chainsaw, wastes less material and provides a better product (for this kind of stuff anyhow). This is not an example of it going well.

The first finished panel! I built a jig to set the rails up at exact heights and line the bottoms of the pales up the same way each time. The tops are all staggered, because each log was cut a little bit different from the next. I might run the circular saw down to level them off, but I really like it the way it is. To the left you see part of the pile I amassed over the last few days, lots of work. The cool thing about these pales, is that despite their irregular contour and occasional thinness, they have an uninterrupted grain structure from top to bottom, which means they will bend into a "U" before they break. Saws cut a straight line through the wood, ignoring the natural contours of, and slicing directly through the grain, creating numerous opportunities for a board to snap. These babies might be a little funkier than what you would buy at Lowe's, but they aren't going to break in two if they take a hit from a soccer ball.

Best job ever.

Time to start on the coop and get some other knucklehead to put all these things together.

-F.W.

P.S., I got some dudes coming to help me out next week, let's hope they don't read this post first and change their minds!