Monday, February 11, 2019

Questions are answered


     I'm finally somewhat comfortable with the firewood progress so I thought I'd take an afternoon break and answer a question. I've been asked a couple of times what size maul I use to split wood.
    The answer is more than one. They are lined up in the photo. The orange one to the left is the main one. It is all steel and weighs 18 pounds. I use it for the biggest chunks, particularly of birch because it's such a dense hardwood. I've had it for 33 years. Sometimes even that maul won't do it and then I cut a chunk lengthwise with the chainsaw. Some of those are so tough I have to cut the halves into thirds. I usually split those where I cut them because they are way too heavy to be lifting. (I am 76 years old, after all.) The biggest piece of birch I've split so far this winter was 19 inches in diameter. The piece the maul is leaning aganst is spruce and 10 inches in diameter, so the birch was just about twice that size.
     The middle one with the yellow handle I use for lighter work, most of the spruce and some of the smaller pieces of birch. It was new last year, bought after the wood handle on my old one shattered in my hands. It weighs 6 pounds. The spruce it's leaning against is 7 inches in diameter.
    The one on the far right with the blue handle is the weight of an ordinary hatchet, but the long handle gives it more versatility. I usually use it only for splitting kindling or for trimming a branch from a chunk that I missed when I first cut it.
     For backup I have a 3-pound, short-handled maul and steel wedges for splitting the tough ones. Hint: don't waste your money on those plastic orange wedges. I have broken every one I've ever used.
    Now, did you notice the chickadee inspecting the product? If you missed him, he's standing on the edge of the sled to the left in the photo. This spot is right under the feeder. Not the best choice of a location considering the birds, but life on a hillside doesn't offer many level choices. Besides, it doesn't seem to bother the birds at all. They flit in and out all the time I am there and I have even had them land on me. It's all so quiet here I can hear their wingbeats as they fly to the feeder.
So there we have it; not finished yet, but in good shape for next winter.
    Henry David Thoreau wrote he loved heating with wood because it warms you twice. According to this account, how many times do you think someone who really cuts firewood feels that warmth?
    You cut the original into sections of the proper length. You haul it to where you plan to use it, in my case by hand with a 6-foot plastic sled. You split it. You haul or carry it again to where you stack it for storage. Stacking is warming too. Then when it's time to burn you haul it out again and carry it to the stove. Only in my case you don't do that for a year. That's six times by my count, not even considering the fire itself.
     I think old Henry had his firewood delivered, at least in the round.
     The photo at the bottom shows the progress so far: slightly bigger than a cord, counting what still needs to be brought up the hill. A cord and a half holds me through the winter and I have a month and half to get that last half. I also have a bunch of spruce cut for kindling that I only need to split.
     One year when I was quitting smoking I left a small pile to split right outside the door and whenever I felt uptight and wanting a smoke I went out there and split firewood. Haven't had a cigarette in 15 years but I still leave a pile of wood to split by the door. That's it in the picture with the splitting gear.

Firewood and revery 
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Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

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"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

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“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.― Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”―Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

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Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

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As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

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Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

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Sports malaprops

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