A friend had to take down a hickory (not a shagbark, but some other species) last February. I was over to visit right after and they let me take a log. It's about 14 inches in diameter and 24" tall (long). As soon as I got it home I stripped off the bark (there were already some bugs making tracks) and it's been sitting out under the eave of my garage on the cement ever since. It got it into my head yesterday to see if I could split it because I'm hoping to make some joiners mallets this summer with my son and thought I could get some great handles out of this.
I got out my old blacksmith-made froe, which some former owner so thoughtfully fitted with a handle into which he burned "Fro" in case I forgot what it was. (Now that I think of it, I think I got it from one of you all in a workshop crawl like 7+ years ago) And I got out my Persuader. This is a quarter of a white oak log. The tree was growing very slowly in the understory of the pine trees out back and when a massive pine went over in a storm, it took the oak tree with it. I saved a couple of logs and split them into quarters and this is from one of the quarters. It's heavy as anything and tougher than an old boot.
I used an ax to score a thin line across the log to help the froe stay in line, and I started whacking the living bejeebus out of the froe. Whack! Whack! Whack! For 15 minutes I hit that metal as hard as I could. The blow was compressing the fibers in the oak log so forcefully they heated up.
After a while, those of you who have tried to split hickory will know where this is going, I tried to see if I could get a split going by focusing just on the corner.
After 30 minutes of whacking away, you can see how far I got in the pictures below.
So, am I forever destined to using non-hickory handles? Should I wait until it dries more? Am I too late? Any suggestions short of dynamite? I don't have a band saw, and frankly it's too big for most. I wanted a riven handle for added strength. Sigh. Foiled by mother nature again.
Here are my massive and intimidating (and well-labeled) tools.
The end grain of the club. Notice how closely together the growth rings are. This is very dense wood.
And yet, all of that effort yielded this.
Even with just focusing on the corner alone, one would think you could make more progress than this pitiful result.
I got out my old blacksmith-made froe, which some former owner so thoughtfully fitted with a handle into which he burned "Fro" in case I forgot what it was. (Now that I think of it, I think I got it from one of you all in a workshop crawl like 7+ years ago) And I got out my Persuader. This is a quarter of a white oak log. The tree was growing very slowly in the understory of the pine trees out back and when a massive pine went over in a storm, it took the oak tree with it. I saved a couple of logs and split them into quarters and this is from one of the quarters. It's heavy as anything and tougher than an old boot.
I used an ax to score a thin line across the log to help the froe stay in line, and I started whacking the living bejeebus out of the froe. Whack! Whack! Whack! For 15 minutes I hit that metal as hard as I could. The blow was compressing the fibers in the oak log so forcefully they heated up.
After a while, those of you who have tried to split hickory will know where this is going, I tried to see if I could get a split going by focusing just on the corner.
After 30 minutes of whacking away, you can see how far I got in the pictures below.
So, am I forever destined to using non-hickory handles? Should I wait until it dries more? Am I too late? Any suggestions short of dynamite? I don't have a band saw, and frankly it's too big for most. I wanted a riven handle for added strength. Sigh. Foiled by mother nature again.
Here are my massive and intimidating (and well-labeled) tools.
The end grain of the club. Notice how closely together the growth rings are. This is very dense wood.
And yet, all of that effort yielded this.
Even with just focusing on the corner alone, one would think you could make more progress than this pitiful result.