Cold Steel Bushman Wood Splitting

My wife wanted to have a fire tonight and I don't have much wood that is dry enough to really burn.

So, I took my Bushman and split some wood that has been sitting in my woodpile. It is a mixture of whatever.

I split about 1/2 a recycling bin full, into 1 inch or so chunks. They started out as 2-4" diameter chunks of maple, pin oak, pine, and even a couple chunks of juniper.

It took about five minutes.

There are a couple smaller chunks that I did not split at all in the very bottom, so not all of it was split.

I also took one chunk, perhaps 2 inches in diameter, and made it into smaller chunks for use as kindling.



It worked a lot better than I anticipated. I have played with it before, and it seemed to work OK for a few splits, but this is the first time I did any significant amount with it. I have always used a hatchet or ax before. This seems like a lot less work and it also seems safer, and simpler.

I got three of these knives for $39 shipped last winter. Factory seconds. I thought that the thinness of the blade would be detrimental to batoning wood like this, as I thought a thicker blade would be a better wedge. But, the thin blade seemed to work pretty good.

[added 10-24-10]
I tried it again on Friday night. It worked good on most of what I used it on but there was one chunk that I gave up on after beating on it for maybe 2 or 3 minutes. It just would not split. I got a blister on my finger from the chunk of wood I was using as a baton and still could not get that chunk to split. I have no idea what wood it is, but it was very tough. It did burn though.