Axes

One of the oldest, most reliable ways to split wood is the good old splitting axe.

Why should you consider axes for splitting wood?

An axe is good to have as a backup to your log splitter just in case your electricity blacks out with an electric log splitter or you run out of fuel for your hydraulic log splitter. It will also give you a little bit of exercise and sometimes that is not a bad thing.

Axes are useful for quick splitting jobs when you don't want to pull out the trusty log splitter. Axes are portable and can fit in almost any car or truck.

The way an axe splits wood or logs is quite simple. The splitting axe is a wedge shaped piece of metal (usually) on top of a long handle that provides leverage for a powerful swing with the sharp edge of the wedge hitting the piece of wood or log with the grain so the wedge will split the wood along the grain.

There are a wide variety of splitting axes available today. They all have metal wedge heads with one sharp side and a heavy side to ensure optimal splitting force. Some axes have plastic reiforced handles, others have metal or fiberglass handles while the most common, least expensive axe is the one with a wood handle.

Axes are good to have in pairs. Often, one axe will break or the handle will split and you will want to have a backup nearby. They're inexpensive so if you're going to have one, you should at least get two.

There are several ways the axe compliments any log splitter. One way is that it can be used to finish splitting a piece of wood that the log splitter started to split but could not catch the bottom inch or two of the log. Another way an axe is complimentary is that you can split a log that was split by the log splitter into smaller pieces for kindling or fire starters. The axe can also be used to split standard pieces of scrap wood like two by fours - it is probably faster and more convenient to simply chop it with an axe instead of run that kind of scrap wood through a log splitter. An axe can also start the split on a log that is a little bit longer than what can fit into the log splitter.

The bottom line is that having a set of axes handy will compliment your splitting needs and it is a good backup for when your log splitter isn't as trusty as it needs to be when you least expect it.