Firewood #1

One thing we're not short of here is trees!  The great oak tree, which must predate the house by a century or more has been worrying us for a while - a lot of dead branches were hanging dangerously, and the area underneath it was really dark, cold and damp.  I'm pretty confident (I almost wrote 'competent' then and had to correct myself!) with a chainsaw, but not great with heights, so I generally confine my efforts to cutting down small trees or logging up bigger ones.  So, we decided to get a tree surgeon to tidy up the oak for us, nothing too drastic to start with, just to make it safe and open it up a bit to let some more light through.  We noticed that our neighbours were having some work done by Tof Horticultural Services from Cwmbran, and they gave them a positive report, so we asked them to do a day's work for us including tidying up the oak, cutting down a birch which had grown very close to the base of the oak, and some other smaller bits and pieces.

Mike Whittington of Tof was really good, he and his assistant worked really hard all day, did everything we had on our list and more, and also created about a 1.5 sq.m of firewood!  They logged it up into roughly 6 - 9" lengths depending on diameter, and piled it up ready for me to split later.  Not bad really when you think that seasoned firewood seems to cost about £150 per sq.m - hows that for 'cashback'?!

The pile, after 2 hours of splitting!

Log splitting and stacking is a really satisfying job - it speaks to something very primitive in me I think - makes me feel like I'm being a good father and keeping my family warm & safe for the winter!

The logpile - my pride & joy!

In a year or so these will be keeping Tymawr cosy!

I use a splitting maul and a sledgehammer (sometimes needed on bigger logs to hit the maul all the way through).  I'm a bit of a sucker for 'hardware' and have been looking at a 'wood grenade' (!) in the Screwfix catalogue (http://www.screwfix.com/p/roughneck-wood-grenade-log-splitter/51334) but not yet succumbed!

The maul is fairly new, fibreglass shaft, does the job fine.  The sledgehammer was my Dad's, I have a few of his tools and I always enjoy using them.  He was a great 'doer', very self reliant and, although I haven't really analysed it too much, I guess probably a major inspiration to be more self-suffient.  Would be wonderful to pass on the sledgehammer and also the 'doing' spirit to my kids too!