Reply With QuoteYo Oldster I Replied to ur Message - Ur inbox it totally full and not excepting anymore Mail!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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I split 5-6 cords/year and use a light axe as well. I found the Fiskar splitting axes to be the cat's meow for splitting wood. Many times I don't even pick up the rounds but just chop them on their sides or what ever position they are in on the pile (saves on the back). I found the high axe head speed of a light axe works better than using a heavy maul. Of course fir and hemlock are a little harder to split than the maple, birch and alder that I mostly use.
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Yo Oldster I Replied to ur Message - Ur inbox it totally full and not excepting anymore Mail!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Oldster, I had no idea you were a writer! Get those books published!!!
Not sure if you'd be interested, but it's easier than ever to self-publish now with Amazon and e-books.
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I'm trying to avoid the self-publishing route, hector. Once you've done it, you've committed an unpardonable sin in the eyes of many of the larger publishing houses and agents. My goal for now is to be picked up by as high a powered agent as possible and perhaps be published by one of the big companies. At this point, I'm getting so much conflicting information from agents. One who sells thrillers will tell me there's too much romance. Query to romance agents and they'll say there isn't enough.
I have a couple police friends who love the thriller aspect and eat them up because of it. Women seem to love the romance and can't get enough. I'm not graphic when it comes to either sex or violence, one agent told me she needed to see less sweet and...ahem...more graphic humping. Kinda stuck between genres and I don't do graphic.
After all my rejections (over 500 now), I would have given up querying long ago except for a single woman, no, not my wife. This gal I met online to ask for help with her lifting. Turns out she was a retired editor for about a half-dozen Fortune-500 companies. She asked for a sample chapter to get a flavor of my stories. Her response? "Do me a favor please, never ever stop writing. Oldster, your style is amazing, far beyond what I could have imagined." Even though that particular story was horror (a challenge set out by my daughter), and this woman refused to read horror, she asked for the rest of the book and not only finished, but loved it! Now she's read almost all of them and stays in my cheering section, never letting me stop searching for the perfect agent.
Everything will have to come together at the same time, the perfect storm, so to speak. An agent who loves me--a publishing house willing to take a chance on an unpublished author. I've had articles published in a few magazines back in the stone-age, but never a novel.
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No squatting or deadlifting for me today. My knee is sore as heck from last weekend of wood splitting and stacking. I guess all the twisting and turning got to it. Since hunting season is open for birds, with deer and elk season just around the corner, I am going to be very careful and make sure it's up-to-snuff before I work it again. I hope that day is in 7 from today.
I've never used one of Fiskar's, skid, although I've heard nothing but good about them. My axe fetish came when I found this axe head in the early 80s and initially took it to work. I was logging at the time and was (I believe) chasing on the landing. Cutting and splicing line was a common and we went through axes on a regular basis. To do that, we sunk a double-bit axe head into a log across the grain, then lay the line overtop and beat it with a four pound soft hammer until it was severed. The mainline was about 3" in diameter and although we rarely cut and spliced it, it wasn't unheard of. But the haulback was 1 1/2" and we cut it many times. Often were the guy-lines holding the 110' yarder tube upright and those were 2". But 90% of the time we cut and spliced haywire, what is used to move the mainline over each time for a new road. It is 9/16" and still very heavy and dense. To give you an idea, a one-foot piece of 1.5" haulback weighs about 5 pounds and we were working with a few thousand feet.Originally Posted by skid
Where I am going with all this is the amount of abuse an axe head took. It didn't take long and they would be unusable and discarded. Until I found this one in my woodshed and took it to work. I'm not the sharpest tack in the box, but after about six months instead of six weeks and the edge wasn't burred, chipped, broken, or bent, the quality of steel dawned on me. Until then (early 20s) I just never thought about it. I took it home, put a good handle in it and never looked back. 30+ years later it doesn't look any different. I have about 30 axes around here, from single-bit, double-bit, cruisers, and splitters, but this is the one seeing yeomen's work when it comes to splitting. At the back door doing the little stuff is the cutest little double-bit cruisers axe you ever saw. Liked it so much I bought about 10 more from an axe guy who appreciates good steel.
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Had a bad day of falling a couple dead trees for firewood. Ended up walking away with the bar pinched, where it still hangs. Tired, almost didn't lift, but decided on it anyway. Turned out pretty good!
Close grip bench
140x12
240x12
250x9 sets of 3
335x1
350x1
Bent row
135x2x5
175x2x5
195x5
Hammer curls
45sx10
65sx5 sets of 5
Ab wheel
15 kneeling
1 standing
My strength grew as I lifted and my mood got better!
Last edited by Oldster; 09-24-2017 at 01:26 AM.
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The hardest thing about waking up in the morning is getting your foot to touch the floor. Once you do your up.
The hardest thing about lifting is stepping into the gym. Once you do your lifting something.
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Heh, not me! I don't look forward to bed, never have. When my eyes open in the morning, my feet hit the floor in a micro-second and I stagger out to meet the world!
...Although the world isn't usually prepared for me until I slip into some tidy-whities...
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I did a short video review of a Fiskar's axe - YouTube I have split probably 70 cords now with that axe... Made it look easy in the video with the knotless hardwood
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Wow! A very nice axe. I have to agree, there is nothing that splits as well as alder. Awesome video--thanks.
Mine is a bit larger. I'd say the axe in the video was about half way in size between my splitting axe and the cruiser I keep at the backdoor for kindling. I'll be putting it to good use tomorrow or the next day, a neighbor called me down to show me about six alders he fell about the size of what was being split in the video. After that, the knotty as hell fir tree that's still pinching the bar of my saw. Gotta pull it over to get it out. Can't find my wedges!
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