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“Observations from the Woodpile”

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Prologue

Observations from the Woodpile” is a collection of essays bundled together and given as a birthday present for my wife, Nancy, in 1997. Twenty-seven years have passed since the collection was given. The two main subjects of the essays, my sons Justus and Jacob, have grown into men with families of their own.

Knots

I buy my firewood logs from a fellow with a small logging business. There is seldom a log that has much value as a saw log. For the most part, the logs I get are knotty or forked or have other imperfections that downgrade the value to pulpwood or firewood. That’s okay by me. I’d hate to see any wood that could be used as lumber go up in smoke.

The downside to this is the difficulty in cutting and splitting around the knots and other imperfections. Splitting a knot by hand is not easy. The grain of the wood twists itself around in every direction to where it looks like it has tied itself into some sort of a sailor’s knot. However, there are ways to get around splitting the knot.

When sawing a log into firewood lengths, I try to get as many clear, knot-free pieces as possible. The boys love to split those. They yield so easily with just a few whacks. Sometimes, I cut the log from both ends to isolate the knot somewhere in the middle. This sometimes leaves me with a short chunk that will fit into the stoves without splitting. By the time all the logs are split, I end up with about half of a pickup load of these pieces. They don’t stack as well, but they burn just fine. I usually pile them up in a corner of the barn—like lumps of coal—and burn them along with the regular wood throughout the winter.

Sometimes, the knot or fork is a little bigger. I try to split as much away from the knot as possible. This usually leaves a piece of wood that’s a little larger than the rest. I scatter these pieces through the stacks in the woodshed. Doing this makes them available every so often as I work through the stacks of wood. They tend to burn slower and are particularly good for those brutal, cold nights. 

My favorite trick is to measure out my cuts so that one of the cuts falls directly on a knot. By doing so, I have made two half-knots. Two half-knots are easier to split than one whole knot. A military history buff will recognize this trick as “defeat enemy in detail.” Napoleon was a master at the tactic. Stonewall Jackson employed it in his successful defense of the Shenandoah Valley. And there’s a little taste of victory whenever I defeat a knot.

At the end of a wood-splitting day, there’s always one or two pieces left that just aren’t going to split. I call these the Gordian knots. The solution to these is the same as Alexander the Great’s—just cut them. I don’t like doing that because it’s that much more wear and tear on the saw, but it’s the only way some wood will split. If I didn’t do that, over time, I’d end up with a pile of wood I couldn’t use.

Occasionally, I get a piece of wood that is just not worth the effort and expense. The log might be just one big, twisted knot or there might be some metal object embedded in the wood, waiting to tear my saw apart, or some other anomaly. These logs are dragged off to the corner of the property and used for campfire wood.

I don’t have much real use for campfire wood just a few hundred yards from my house. Having this derelict wood provides an excuse for a campfire, though. Some twilight winter evenings when the wind is not too brisk and cabin fever has caused the walls to close in, I’ll build a fire along an old stone wall. I tell everyone I’m burning some brush. After all, sitting around outside would be crazy. The boys usually join me after a while and poke sticks into the fire. Pyromania must be primordial.   Sometimes, we talk. Sometimes, we stare, mesmerized by the dynamics of the flames and coals. No television. No phone. No radio. Just us and our thoughts. Something about a fire nurtures contemplation.

When contemplation is about problem-solving, the solutions are not much different than handling knots. Some just need to be cut around until they are minimized away. Some need to be broken down into smaller, more manageable problems. Bigger problems need a direct approach, requiring considerably more energy and resources. They are particularly wearing, but a successful outcome is worth the effort and expense. Some problems are best left alone. Walking away is sometimes the best solution.

The wisdom and the clarity to discern what kind of problem you have is the issue. That’s the time when there’s nothing better than the hypnotic dance of a campfire to sort out the knots.

“Observations from the Woodpile”

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Prologue

Observations from the Woodpile” is a collection of essays bundled together and given as a birthday present for my wife, Nancy, in 1997. Twenty-seven years have passed since the collection was given. The two main subjects of the essays, my sons Justus and Jacob, have grown into men with families of their own.

The Right Tool for the Job

Over the years, I’ve seen quite a few devices for splitting wood. I’ve been tempted to try them all. Sometimes, I’ve been weak and fallen for promises of wood falling into nice uniform pieces with just one whack of this tool or that. After several seasons of trial and error, I’ve ended up with a basic set of tools: a splitting maul, two or three wedges, a chainsaw, and an instrument called a cant hook.

A splitting maul is a cross between a wedge, an axe, and a sledgehammer. It looks like a wedge with a handle. The chainsaw is noisy and otherwise ineloquent, but I don’t see how folks got along without them. My hat is off to the old-timers who felled the giants of the ancient forests with cross-cut saws.

Except for the cant hook, all these tools are necessary for getting the job done. The cant hook isn’t at all necessary. It’s one of those tools that make doing a job pleasurable or, at least, less of a burden, by taking some of the drudgery out. It’s a stout handle with a hook that pivots about a foot from the end. You use it to lift and turn logs by the principle of leverage. It has, no doubt, saved me from an irreparable back injury.

Being properly equipped for a task is often quite a balancing act. Not enough of the right equipment paralyzes a project. With too many tools and gadgets, too much time is spent on tools and not the task.

Properly equipping children with the right tools for their lives’ tasks is the quintessential purpose of parenting. The tendency is to equip them with too much hardware, too much stuff. It’s easy to throw money and hope it’s the right thing. So, what is the right list of tools?  Well, just as every job is different, so is every child. It takes a bunch of trial and error and that means a bunch of time. 

When Less Than Sharp Is Best

More than once, the boys have commented about how dull the splitting mauls are. They constantly want to file them to a knife edge. I explain to them that for the kind of work the mauls are designed to do, extra sharp is not best. Something very sharp is more easily blunted and dulled. The mauls are continually being driven into the ground and hitting rocks and such. It just doesn’t pay to keep them razor sharp.

Several years ago, I ran a planing mill in a cabinet-making plant. Every day, I replaced the huge planer knives with ones that had been sharpened the day before. Before finishing, I passed a special stone across the knives to take a tiny bit off the edge. I asked the fellow who sharpened the knives why that had to be done. He explained that if the knives were too sharp, the constant friction would cause them to burn up. They would not last through the next shift.

That’s a principle I’ve seen before. Very precise instruments require an extraordinary amount of maintenance. High performance cars spend a lot of time in garages. Sharp, intense people often can’t make it over the long run. They’re too sharp to resist the constant friction, and they simply burn up.

The two boys are too young to comprehend this observation, and I don’t want them using it on me as a way of avoiding their schoolwork. Someday, they’ll be grown men with careers and families and a thousand other responsibilities. I hope they will understand then to take a little of the edge off, so they can last the long run.

“Observations from the Woodpile”

By On · Add Comment · In Columns

Prologue

Observations from the Woodpile” is a collection of essays bundled together and given as a birthday present for my wife, Nancy, in 1997. Twenty-seven years have passed since the collection was given. The two main subjects of the essays, my sons Justus and Jacob, have grown into men with families of their own.

Wouldn’t It Be Great to Have a Hydraulic Wood Splitter

Hardly a wood-splitting day went by that the chorus of “Wouldn’t it be great to have a hydraulic wood splitter?” was not sung. And, like an Italian opera, came the consistent reply, “Why would I buy a hydraulic wood splitter when I’ve got two wood splitters that I don’t have to buy or pay for?”

It has not escaped the notice of Justus and Jacob that wood stoves are a rather archaic means of heating a house. It’s an awful lot of work that the rest of the civilized world is missing out on.

To provide a little incentive, I tell my boys—who are both avid baseball players—that Mickey Mantle grew up on a farm in Oklahoma where he had to split wood.* Of course, the inferred conclusion is that swinging a splitting maul will improve the odds of hitting homeruns. Splitting wood is basically the same motion as swinging a bat, only a bat is much lighter.

Ah…the key to successful parenting: treachery. 

To my surprise and delight, Justus, the older one, hit seven round-trippers this past season. Maybe there is some merit to that Mantle stuff, after all.

The value of homeruns and physical strength is all well and good. Athletic prowess has a certain currency amongst growing boys.   There is another benefit to this kind of brutish work that I hope they’ll be able to comprehend someday:  There is a satisfaction found in few other places more profound than accomplishment. 

That feeling of satisfaction comes at many levels during the life of the woodpile. There’s the big satisfaction of seeing it all done, but there are little triumphs along the way. When the maul finally elicits that sound of wood fiber reluctantly separating in a particularly tough piece, there is a small, but definite, feeling of mastery. I hear the satisfaction in the boys’ voices whenever they tell their buddies how hard their “Old Man” works them. Martyrdom is very important to growing boys.

When the heart of winter is upon us and the work ceases because the logs freeze together, there is a no better feeling than the warmth of the stoves.  That feeling of security is precisely what I want the boys to feel, and I want them to know they contributed to the welfare of the family. There is a purpose beyond themselves in their work.

I suppose there is nothing worse than living with no other purpose than oneself. I am convinced all kids need to see themselves as integral, contributing members of a family, of society, of something larger than themselves. They need to be assigned a purpose.

I won’t be buying a log splitter for several years yet. Not until the boys are grown and gone. I have a different purpose in mind.

“Observations from the Woodpile”

By On · Add Comment · In Columns

Prologue

Observations from the Woodpile” is a collection of essays bundled together and given as a birthday present for my wife, Nancy, in 1997. Twenty-seven years have passed since the collection was given. The two main subjects of the essays, my sons Justus and Jacob, have grown into men with families of their own.

I don’t really know what my dad used to navigate through life. I understood his dad’s view of the world much better because we talked about it from time to time. One of my biggest fears as a parent is I’ll make the same mistake with my kids. Because of this fear, I’m always looking for a way to convey what I think is important. 

During the 1995-96 winter, the vehicle to deliver this perspective came from a most unlikely source.

Every year, late in the fall, I buy a truckload of logs for firewood. The pile of timber becomes the project for the winter months. Nearly every Saturday of the winter and early spring, my two boys, Justus and Jacob, and I spend a few hours sawing and splitting and stacking and hauling wood (my daughter, Sarah, is not too keen on this sort of thing). Usually, I’ll run the chainsaw until I’m out of gas. Then, we split what’s been cut. The boys and I spend a boatload of time together in this enterprise. I don’t know if it’s the quality time that I hear the experts yap about so much or not.  I get the impression from the boys, it’s the kind of quality time that road gangs spend with their guards.

Early that November, we ordered the truckload of logs and arranged to have it delivered on a day my wife was home. The logs were stacked in my small field, not far from the creek. After they arrived, I looked at each log to determine the quality and species of the wood. Were there a lot of knots? Any rotten spots? How big in diameter? The pile was taller than me at its peak and 16 to 20 feet long. How many cords? I was a little intimidated by the amount of work I saw stretched out before us. Jacob (Jake), who was seven at the time, was something more than intimidated. I’m sure from his seven-year-old perspective, the task before us must have looked like something akin to the building of pyramids. He kept asking if we were really going to cut and split that entire pile of logs, as if I were playing a prank on him.

After sawing a couple of the logs into firewood length, Jake’s suspicion of a joke subsided, but his doubt of ever cutting and splitting the entire pile hung on. We sat on the logs for a breather, and I explained to him how we were going to cut and split that entire pile of logs. We would do a little each weekend until it was all done. We didn’t have to kill ourselves trying to get it done. He nodded his head like he understood and believed we would. Kids do that sort of thing for dads even when they really believe the old man is stark raving mad.

Broken Handles

p the log splitting for a year or two and just burn the handles. Hobb’s Hardware has made a fortune in the handle trade.   Once, I even invested in an expensive maul with a fiberglass handle, and they broke it quicker than a wooden handle. 

The handles break when the maul’s handle, rather than the head, hits the wedge. It’s easy to do, and I have done it myself. I try not to get in a twist about a broken handle, but the two boys will tell you how entertaining a grown man trying to contain his temper can be. At one point, I could have sworn they broke them just to watch me.

They’ve gotten better as they’ve gotten bigger and sharpened their aim. Experience does that, and patience allows for the experience. More than once, I’ve wanted to take the splitting maul out of their hands and just do the job myself. But, I’ll have to sacrifice a few broken handles if I want them to grow into proficient wood splitters. A broken handle is really just a part of the job.

Epilogue

This past autumn, my son Jacob told me how he had won the Bell Ringing Contest at a carnival that he and his wife had gone to. He had beaten much larger guys and won the cupie doll for his wife. He attributed the victory to his years of forced child labor in the woodpile. I took it as a parenting success story.