In , on 09/28/05
at 07:34 PM, Boris Mohar said:

Taking it little further. Has anybody had the joy of splitting Dutch
Elm?. I swear that the grain is braided and bonded to itself with some
kind of resin. Some varieties (Ontario) are incredibly tough to split
even when notched with chainsaw.

Oh yes! About 30 years back when Dutch elm disaease killed nearly all our
elms, I had two dead elms on my patch , each over 5 feet in diameter -
what an absolute b*stard they were. I ended up cutting them into blocks
with a chainsaw - I lost count of the number of times I sharpened, & must
have got through 3 chains. I remember my mate coming over with hius
Kubota diesel mini tractor (about 18hp) which was fitted with a splitter
driven by the PTO. It consisted of a table with an enormous woodscrew
about 4 in diameter which wound itself into the blocks. We had to pilot
drill with a 3/4" hole before it would look at them & we finally gave up
when a block jammed on it & stalled the tractor!!! I had to chainsaw the
block off the splitter! I let the second one rot on the ground for 20
years & burned it in situ.

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