The firewood you split in April burns two winters later

Wood dries out through the cut ends and the split faces. Through the bark, almost not at all. Once you've accepted that, every other decision makes itself: split early, split small, stack single row, cover the top only.

A freshly felled oak round can be close to half water by weight. You want it under 20 percent moisture before it goes near a stove, and the only three things that get it there are surface area, moving air and time. Standard stove length is 16 inches, which is the number most of this is built around.

Buck to length first, and measure the firebox

Before the maul comes out, cut everything to length. Measure the inside of your firebox front to back, then subtract two to three inches so you can load north-south without fighting the door. Most people land between 14 and 18 inches.

Cut a stick to that length and use it as a gauge against the log. Don't eyeball it. A pile where a third of the splits are an inch too long is a pile you'll resent every single night of January.

If you're bucking with a chainsaw, keep the log off the dirt on another round or a sawbuck, watch for the bar pinching as the log settles, and keep your left arm locked straight with your thumb wrapped under the front handle. That thumb position is what keeps the bar out of your face if it kicks.

Set the block, then the safety

Split on a block, never on the ground. A round of hardwood 12 to 16 inches tall, sawn flat both ends, sitting on firm level ground. Shin to knee height is about right. Too low and a missed swing carries the maul into the dirt or your boot. Too tall and you lose both power and accuracy.

Eye protection every time. Splinters come off end grain like needles, and they come off fast. Boots with a toe cap. Gloves that actually fit, because loose gloves slip on the haft.

Look up. Then look behind you. Nothing overhead, nobody within about ten feet, and no dog. Splits fly sideways off the block at speed.

A useful trick: strap an old tire flat on top of the block, or a loop of bicycle inner tube. Stand three or four rounds inside it. They hold each other upright, the halves don't scatter, and you stop bending over forty times an hour to re-stand wood. Your back will notice by round eighty.

Never hold a round steady with one hand while you tap with the other. Never. If a piece won't stand, set a wedge in it, tap the wedge with a sledge until it bites, then step back and swing properly.

Read the round before you swing

Look at the flat end. You'll see checks, the cracks radiating out from the heart. Aim at one. Cracked wood wants to keep cracking, and you're just finishing what drying already started.

Avoid the knots. If a branch stub is on one side, aim your line to pass beside it, not through it. Go through a knot and you'll be standing there with a buried maul and an attitude.

Big rounds don't split down the middle, they split off the edges. Take slabs off the outside, working around like you're peeling an apple, until what's left is small enough to halve. Trying to centre-punch a 24-inch oak is how people convince themselves they need a hydraulic splitter.

Grip with both hands at the bottom of the haft, or slide your top hand down as you swing. Let the maul do the work. This isn't a strength contest, it's accuracy and a dropped weight.

Cold helps. Wood on a frozen morning splits like it's been scored. Green wood is usually easier than dry, which is one more reason to do this in spring.

Which tool, honestly

A 6 to 8 pound maul handles most hardwood. A lighter splitting axe around 4 pounds, like the Fiskars X27, swings faster and tires you less on straight-grained rounds, and plenty of people who split several cords a year never pick up anything else. Keep two steel wedges and a 6 pound sledge for the ones that laugh at both.

Elm and sycamore are stringy misery. If you've got a pile of either, rent a hydraulic splitter for a day and stop being a hero. On the splitter, one operator only, hands nowhere near the wedge, and never reach across the beam to reposition a piece while the ram is moving.

Split smaller than feels necessary

Every new face you create is a drying surface. A round left whole, or halved once, will still be wet in two years because bark is a raincoat.

Aim for pieces three to five inches across the widest face. Yes, that's more swings. It's also the difference between wood that's ready next autumn and wood that hisses at you.

Split a handful much smaller while you're there. Wrist-thick pieces for kindling and start-up, a couple of buckets' worth, stacked separately where they'll stay dry.

Stack it single row, off the ground

Get the wood off the soil. Pallets work, though they rot in about three years. Two lengths of 2x4 or a pair of old fence rails set on concrete blocks work better and last longer. Gravel under the whole thing is the best version.

One row deep, split faces exposed, gaps you could post a letter through. If you must run two rows, leave a hand's width between them. A four-row block stack is a compost heap with extra steps.

Site it in the open, where sun hits it and wind crosses the long face. Not tight against the house. The wall blocks half your airflow, holds damp against the siding, and you've just built a hotel for carpenter ants next to your living room.

The ends are what collapse. Cross-hatch them, two splits one way, two the other, choosing your flattest and squarest pieces for those towers. Lean each end tower very slightly inward. Or drive two steel T-posts at each end and stack between them, which is faster and uglier and works fine.

Skip the round holz hausen unless you enjoy the craft of it. It dries perfectly well and it's a nuisance to draw from and rebuild.

Cover the top, never the sides

Tarp over the top third only, weighted with a few splits or old boards. Corrugated roofing on a simple sloped frame is better and won't shred in February.

A tarp taken down to the ground turns the stack into a sweat box. Rain landing on the top face of a stack does far less harm than trapped humidity does.

How long it actually takes

Rough guidance, in a decent open spot, split small:

• Softwoods, poplar, willow: six months
• Ash, birch, cherry, maple: around a year
• Oak, beech, hickory: two years, and oak means it

A full cord is 128 cubic feet, stacked 4 feet by 4 feet by 8 feet. A "face cord" or "rick" is 4 by 8 by whatever length the seller cut, usually 16 inches, so about a third of a cord. Know which one you're being quoted.

Knowing when it's ready

Take a piece from the middle of the stack, split it fresh, and put the meter pins into the newly opened face, across the grain, in the centre. Testing the weathered outside of a split tells you about last Tuesday's weather. Let cold wood warm up indoors for a few hours first, because meters read low on frozen wood.

Without a meter: knock two pieces together. Ready wood cracks like a bat, wet wood thuds. Look for checks radiating from the ends and bark that's gone loose.

In the fire, wet wood hisses and bubbles at the end grain, blackens the glass, and coats your flue with creosote. If you've burned damp wood for a season, get the chimney swept by a professional before you burn another one.

Bring a week's worth inside at a time, no more. A month's worth by the hearth in a warm room is an invitation to every spider and beetle that overwintered in it.

Split what you need for the winter after next, not the one coming. Get two years ahead once and you'll never buy somebody else's "seasoned" wood in October again.