As I just described, I got an electric wood splitter to help improve my productivity when splitting. For the most part, it has worked okay. So far, I have mostly used it with a bunch of sweetgum I got from my landscaping friend.
Yesterday, I had a piece that the electric splitter choked on. I moved it over to the manual 10-ton and that choked, too. After a few tries, this is what the log looked like:
As you can see, the wedges on the two splitters didn't make much headway. The wood seemed to have a spiral grain that resisted splitting. I hauled out one of my mauls to see what I could do.
After a couple of tries, I split off a piece. However, I also did something that I have been aware of is a risk when splitting manually. It's a best practice to bring the maul straight down onto the wood being split, so that if it misses or glances off, it is less likely to impact body parts. Swinging in an arc could be bad.
Below is my left boot. When splitting off the piece, on one swing the maul went to the ground, hitting the boot on the way. I use steel- or composite-toe boots when splitting to provide some protection, although injury would still be possible. The visible cut is deeper than it looks; it was taken after I used some adhesive to close the wound. I don't think I would've hit a toe if the composite hadn't been there, but I can't rule it out. Cleaving off a toe with the maul would not be good.
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