Rosary Ruck on Saturday morning. It was good to get out and moving again. 5 miles, slow, but still rehabbing my right heel from Captain’s Career Course.
After the ruck I swung by the farm to do chores and pick up my wine making supplies. Uncle Adam had already done the chores, and was splitting some of the wood for his morning exercise. Because we could, we decided to tackle the biggest of the logs. He was skeptical and I was far from confident, but hey, you never know until you try.
I was able to get a wedge started in one end, and Edmund came out to help, at least doubling our total muscle power.
The best wedge we have is actually an old rusted go-devil head that Edmund found on the farm with Seppi’s metal detector. It has just the right taper to bite well for starting; the roughness from the rust and pitting helps it grip instead of being kicked out by the green, sap-filled wood; and it widens farm more aggressively than any of the commercial wedges. Anyway, I was able to get it started and then put two commercial wedges in the crack to help propagate it up to the outer layer of the log.
Once it hit the outer layer, we pushed it down the length of the log on one side by tapping in a wedge every foot or so.
When the crack was all the way to the other end, we left the widest wedge in it, removed all the others, and rolled the log. Then we propagated the crack down the other side.
While Uncle completed the crack back to the center of the starting end.
After the crack was wide enough, and seemed to go all the way through, we went back to the pry-bars.
This was not a quick finish, but by working them progressively down the log and cutting the crossing fibers with the ax, we were eventually able to pry the thing apart.
Victory! Time for breakfast.
Little Farm in the Big City 