This afternoon, I tried out my Fiskars splitting axe and hatchet big time. They worked like champs! Ya'll gotta realize, I'm on the wrong side of 59, in terrible shape (ok, I'm in great shape if you consider round a shape! LOL), smoke, drink and in general enjoy life. About a year and a half ago, we had a large pecan tree in our back yard cut down and sawn into ~24-30" lengths. The wood has been sitting out since then, seasoning. I did some research on splitting implements and kept coming up with Fiskars splitting axe and hatchet. I ordered one of each a couple of months ago. They came in and I gave them a light tryout (about 3 pieces of the pecan and some pine that we got 2 years ago) a couple of weeks ago and they pretty much impressed me. Tonight, I got kinda serious. I took out about 10 pieces of the pine that were almost 10" in diameter. One good whack with the splitting axe and they came apart. A few more whacks with the hatchet and I had nice firewood and kindling. Then I got 5 or 6 pieces of the pecan tree, from 4" in diameter to 10" in diameter. It took a couple or 3 whacks with the splitting axe on the large pieces to get the splitting started, but after that, one good whack would take off a nice piece. The hatchet worked great getting them down to kindling size. The smaller pieces would split just great with one whack of the splitting axe. Also, a couple of weeks ago, I got a replacement piece of glass for my stand alone fireplace in my "manly" room and installed it a couple of weeks ago. I was having trouble with it smoking into the room before, but after installing the replacement glass, no problem. It'll run me outta the room if I put too much wood in it now! Hooray! And that's without the blower going! WOHOO I'm darned impressed with the Fiskars products. Kajun
Now was that a pea-can, paw-con or pea-con tree? Always thought there were three pies/nuts that tasted about the same. Wish I had some of that hard wood around here.
You know the pecan furniture you see for sale in stores ? I often wondered WHY anyone would cut down a tree that produced nuts worth several bucks/pound to make furniture lumber out of it..... Well, some many years back, I worked in a furniture plant, and discovered the answer. It came in the back door as hickory lumber, and went out the front door as "pecan"....some kind of magical transformation took place in the plant ! ahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...... Turns out, species wise, the two are close relatives.
Fish, how big a stick would you need?? Or maybe better questions, how many would you want and how big? BTW, cutting the tree down was not a decision lightly made. The tree was 50+ years old, had minimal nut production and, after cutting it down, we found it was rotting from the inside out. Add that to it being over our roof and down it came. We replaced it with 2 fig trees, a pear tree, a plum tree and 2 peach trees. Plus, now we have enough room in the backyard to do a nice sized garden if/when we want. Kajun
