In-depth tutorial on splitting notoriously difficult eucalyptus firewoodfrom @bradley.thor

Transcript

When you're talking about the hardest woods in the world to split, everybody's gonna have an opinion. And I'm not talking about the hardest wood in the world based on its density. I'm talking about hardest to split in half. Now the thing about firewood is hardwood is a good thing. It burns for a long time and it heats your house really well. Unfortunately, a lot of the best hardwoods in the world for burning also happen to be extremely, extremely difficult to split. And this, my friends, is no exception. What we have right here is a species of wood, eucalyptus, but more specifically, river red gum. Not this specific tree, but its ancestors came over here on boats as seeds, got planted on the Best Coast Of The United States in an attempt to find a wood that grows really quickly and would serve as solid railroad ties, wind screens for people's properties, and good material for building. And it turns out it's not good for any of that shit. In fact, it's super invasive. It's kinda poisonous to a lot of the stuff around it. And at the end of the day, it's very thirsty. So when you plant a eucalyptus tree, one of the things it wants to do is grow very invasive roots and try to suck up all the moisture and the water from the ground water table or your well or your pipes, etcetera, etcetera. So at the end of the day, yeah, maybe it belongs in the land down under, but it doesn't belong tier, which lends for perfect firewood because that means it's perfect for me to be removing. Now the first thing we're gonna talk about is how to split it because it's extremely, extremely hard to split. And because of its grain pattern and the way that it grows in a twisting shape on its way up, it can give you hell. And there are some tricks to making it work for you. So we're gonna start with the most obvious one, ax selection. Now this is widely considered to be one of the greatest axes ever made, but I don't consider it to be very good for this specific application, which is splitting eucalyptus, and this is why. The rank worst head is very narrow rank it stays pretty narrow, meaning it doesn't have wide cheeks pretty consistently until about here. The unfortunate thing about eucalyptus is is because of the way the grain pattern acts and it's a really, really hard wood with not a lot of moisture, that's gonna get stuck on every single swing and leave you trying to pry it out every single swing you make. I'm gonna show you right now. Well, it's in there. Now if you know anything about eucalyptus, you're not gonna wanna do that 15 times, which is probably how many times it's gonna take you to swing on the damn thing. Beautiful axe, wonderful 99% of the time. This is not one of those times. Next, we have ourselves a maul with a similar issue, very narrow cheeks in the very front of the bit. Now this looks like it would be a better choice because it's heavy, because it's a maul, because it's designed for exclusively splitting. It seems like it would make sense. Unfortunately, you'll run into the same exact problem. I don't even wanna get it out, but I have to. Now this is where things get interesting. This little ax is handmade, but the thing that's very unique about it, it has very wide cheeks. See how quickly those cheeks flare out? This thing does not like to get stuck in anything. In fact, all it wants to do is bounce and be swung again. So I'm gonna show you why this is the better choice for eucalyptus. This is the ax that's gonna do a better job. I'll show you why. That's what you're looking for. Repeat swings. You don't wanna dig in that thing every single time you have to swing. Now not to state the obvious here, but if you're splitting eucalyptus, you probably don't wanna be swinging down the middle like I just did. To make it even better, we're gonna work on the next tactic that will make this even easier for you. Good, that beautiful fucking result. That's a hell of a piece. So some of you already know this, but to the ones who don't, this trick is imperative with eucalyptus or gum trees. You're better off chipping off the edges. And I know I know that's an effective strategy for most types of good, but with this type of wood, it's even more important. So we're gonna chip off some edges, and instead of taking as many swings down the middle, hopefully, it results in less. Perfect. We'll give it one more little tap. And so on and so forth. Why is this wood so horrible to split if it's not the hardest wood in the world? Grain better, grain pattern. There are some very strange stoppages all down the grain. Those are capable of absorbing a lot of force vertically, but this tree is not capable of absorbing almost any force horizontally. So they snap, they break, they drop branches on people, often called widow makers, because it's so hard, it's really fragile too, at least from a shearing worse perspective. Now if eucalyptus is such a pain in the ass to split, why is it my favorite firewood in the world? Well, one, it's kinda nice to know that you're taking away a tree that somebody doesn't want on their property, very flammable, not good for the ecology, not good for biodiversity, all that stuff. So it's very sustainable as a resource for me. It burns so hot. In fact, if you have, like, a catalytic converter in your fireplace, you really gotta be careful not to overwork it because it can actually warp and mess up the mounting system on a lot of fireplaces. So that's how hot it burns. Now that's like the perfect tier, obviously, for great firewood. People want it good. It breaks and falls all of the tier, and it's bad for its general environment. It really sets you up and puts you in a perfect position to heat your home with the wood that no one's really gonna yes, especially here on the Best Coast Of The United States. For good measure, I'm gonna split one more piece just to get back at it because I know you guys have seen me struggle with eucalyptus before. Let's do it. Beautiful.