Split it in March, burn it in December

If you're splitting firewood in November for a stove you're lighting in December, you've already lost. Wet wood doesn't burn, it steams. It hisses, it smoulders, it packs your flue with creosote, and it gives you maybe half the heat you paid for in sweat.

The whole job runs on one rule: split and stack it in spring, burn it the winter after next. Everything below is in service of that.

Work out how much you need before you cut anything

A full cord is a stack four feet high, four feet deep, eight feet long. That's 128 cubic feet of wood and air. Most people don't stack four feet deep, so what you'll actually build is a row 16 inches deep, four feet tall, and 24 feet long. Same cord, different shape.

A "face cord" or "rick" is four feet by eight feet by whatever your log length is. At 16-inch logs that's about a third of a cord. Sellers use the term loosely, which is why you should buy by the full cord and stack it yourself before you pay.

For a house heated mostly by wood in a cold climate, you're looking at somewhere between three and six cords a season depending on the house, the stove and how much backup heat you run. If it's a woodstove that takes the edge off in the evenings, one or two will do it. Track what you actually burn in your first year and you'll never have to guess again.

Then add half a cord. Everyone underestimates.

Cut to the firebox, not to habit

Measure the inside of your firebox and subtract three inches. That's your log length. Sixteen inches suits most stoves. Eighteen suits some. Nothing is more annoying than a pile of rounds that sit diagonally and won't let the door shut.

Be strict about it while you're bucking. A tape measure or a stick cut to length, marked on the log every time. Eyeballing it gets you a stack where a third of the pieces are two inches too long, and you'll be re-cutting those in a snowstorm.

The block matters more than the maul

Split on a round, never on the ground. Dirt dulls an edge in three swings and a soft surface swallows the energy of the blow.

Get a big flat-topped round, wide enough to be stable, and set it so the top is around knee height. Higher than that and you're swinging down on a short arc with no power. Lower and a glancing miss travels toward your shins.

An old car tire laid on top of the block is the best trick in the job. Stand two or three rounds inside it, split away, and the pieces stay upright instead of flying off into the grass. It'll save you a thousand bends over a winter's wood.

Maul, splitting axe, or hydraulic

A six to eight pound maul is the traditional answer and it still works. It's heavy, it wedges, it doesn't get stuck as often as a felling axe. The downside is that it's tiring, and tired people swing badly.

A modern splitting axe is lighter, usually four to six pounds, with a wide flared bevel that pops the wood apart on impact rather than burying itself. For straight-grained rounds under about 14 inches, it's faster and less punishing than a maul. For big knotty stuff, the maul wins.

Keep steel wedges and a sledge for the rounds that beat both. Drive the wedge into an existing check on the end grain, and if it buries without splitting, start a second wedge beside it. Never strike the poll of a maul or axe with a sledge. It mushrooms the steel and throws chips.

A hydraulic splitter earns its keep the moment you're doing more than about three cords, or the moment your back starts filing complaints. It's slower per piece than a good swing on easy wood and vastly faster on everything else. If you buy one, buy the horizontal-vertical type so you can split the monster rounds on the ground without lifting them.

The swing

Stand with the round at the far edge of the block, feet shoulder width, weight balanced. Don't aim at the centre of the round. Aim at the edge nearest you and work in, especially on anything over a foot across. Splitting a big round is a series of slabs off the outside, not one heroic blow through the middle.

Look at the end grain first. Every round tells you where it wants to go. Follow the existing cracks radiating from the heart and it splits itself. Fight them and you'll be there all afternoon.

Raise the tool overhead with both hands apart, then let the top hand slide down to meet the bottom as it comes through. That slide is where the speed comes from. You're not muscling it down. You're dropping a weight and steering it.

Knots and crotch wood will stop anything. Set them aside for the splitter, or cut them shorter and split them into smaller pieces, or accept them as overnight logs and toss them in the pile whole.

What splits easy and what doesn't

Ash, maple, cherry and most straight-grained hardwoods split cleanly and dry reasonably fast. Oak splits well but takes a long time to season, often the better part of two years. Elm and sycamore are stringy misery and you should feed them straight to a hydraulic splitter or leave them in the woods.

Frozen wood splits noticeably easier. If you've got rounds left over in January, that's the time to attack them.

Stack it so it dries

The stack is not storage. It's a drying rack.

Off the ground. Pallets, two rails, scrap 4x4s, anything. Wood in contact with soil wicks moisture and rots from the bottom up.

Single rows, not a big block. A row 16 or 18 inches deep, with the ends cross-cribbed or held by posts, dries from both faces. A four-foot-deep pile has a wet heart in it for years.

Where the sun and wind are. South-facing, open to the prevailing wind, away from the shade of the building. Air moving through the stack does more than sunshine does.

Top covered, sides open. A tarp over the top third only, weighted down. Wrap the whole stack and you've built a sweat lodge.

Bark side up on the outer course so it sheds rain.

Keep the stack away from the house wall. Wood piles bring carpenter ants, mice and wasps, and you don't want them scouting your siding. Move a week's worth to the porch at a time and leave the rest at a distance.

Keep stacks under about four feet tall unless you're cribbing the ends properly. A collapsed stack in a rainstorm is a whole Saturday you don't get back.

Know when it's ready

Split wood sounds hollow when two pieces are knocked together. Green wood thuds. The ends check and crack as they dry, and the bark starts loosening.

A moisture meter costs very little and removes the argument. Split a piece open and test the fresh inner face, not the weathered outside. You want under 20 per cent. Above that, leave it another season and burn last year's.

Wear eye protection. Wood chips come off faster than you can blink, and safety glasses cost less than a co-pay. Steel-toe boots, gloves that let you feel the handle, and no loose sleeves near a hydraulic ram.

The reward for all this is a cold February night, a stove that draws clean, and a stack out back that's already two winters deep. You did that in April, in a T-shirt, when it was pleasant to be outside.

Your future self will not remember the work. He'll just be warm.