How to Chop Wood With All Your Body Parts Intact

This weekend I set out to split round logs into some other shape-preferably one that will not cause them to roll out onto the carpet on some not-too-distant winter evening. I have made the attempt once in the past and came to the conclusion that our ax was just not sharp enough, because it seemed to land with a thunk on the log, and either bounced off or became slightly embedded.

This time I was determined to show the ax (which had been sharpened, so that was no longer an excuse) and the logs who was boss.

Now I had heard that you need to read the log, look for its fault line or the sweet spot or some other such nonsense. Oh, I'm convinced the logs have them, just not convinced I could hit them. In fact, there were some swings where I missed the log entirely, having to jump out of the way of the ax as it came dangerously close to burying itself in my shin. But little by little, I turned big logs into littler logs, and I did it without injury.

My swing, which started out looking like I was trying to hammer a nail, improved, and while it never approached that of a thirty year old lumberjack, the ax did make it above my shoulder and that seemed to make all the difference. Momentum and gravity and a tiny bit of aim, resulted in a satisfying heap of split logs, that along with the lots and lots of kindling I created at first will last us at least till Halloween.