Hardest Wood to Split

[Billhook]

I had a look through the search engine here but could not find the subject mentioned although it must have been discussed many times.

 

A half grown hedgerow Hornbeam was blown down earlier this Autumn and I tried to put a 10 inch diameter trunk through the Palax Combi and the hydraulic splitter would not touch it. I cut the trunk into 18 inch lumps.   This was quite hard work even for the newly sharpened Stihl compared to a similar piece of Ash.

So as a challenge I took out the trusty old Fiskars X27.  Gave  the lumps my best shots and they just laughed at me.  I was joined by a strong young fit lad who thought that he would show the old fella how to do it but they laughed at him too.

We just managed to split them with the X27 when I halved them again to 9 inch lengths and only then by going round the edge rather than down the middle.

What is the hardest timber any of you have dealt with?

[se7enthdevil]

old dry eucalyptus is a don't bother type of wood. i'd say the same about whitebeam when dry.

[Big J]

Some types of elm are virtually unsplittable when dry. London plane is also very unpleasant.

[Woodworks]

Yes elm has proved tough when processing but never had problems with eucalyptus in spite of all I have read on here about it. One that always surprises me how hard to split it can be is willow! Think it's because it tends to dry in the stack and the fibres tend to bend letting the blade in but then they dont split. Also has some very knotty sitka that I had more refusals from the Farmi than I have ever had before or since. Again it had dried in the round.

[nepia]

Eucalyptus even when wet can be a bastard because it grows in a spiral.  I've been trying to split some recently and have given up on anything longer than 12" as I'm more destroying the logs than splitting them.

 

I acquired some 20" dia hornbeam a couple of years ago that wasn't a problem at all recently (Oxdale 400 splitter) except for the fact that most of the rings had been cut at 30 degrees to the grain direction so had a habit of not staying where they were told.

[sime42]

Hornbeam was used to make the teeth on gear wheels in mill machinery, because of its hardness and strength. Before iron was readily available.
Whilst Elm was traditionally used for the hubs on cartwheels, due to its toughness and resistance to splitting.
The old craftsmen were certainly far more in touch with the properties of natural materials.

[Billhook]

I forgot to mention that the tree was alive when it came down so not seasoned.

you could see just by looking at the grain that it was really tight and there looked to be no "splitting path" in the log unlike a piece of Ash which generally shows a line to attack with an axe

[s.varty]

Seasoned knotty ash Has to be up there with the hardest.

[woody paul]

Split some wood for a farmer a couple of years ago he got some large lumps of field maple they were hard .

[Steve Bullman]

8 hours ago, sime42 said:

Hornbeam was used to make the teeth on gear wheels in mill machinery, because of its hardness and strength. Before iron was readily available.
Whilst Elm was traditionally used for the hubs on cartwheels, due to its toughness and resistance to splitting.
The old craftsmen were certainly far more in touch with the properties of natural materials.

Never knew either of those things.

 

Hornbeam is also used for skittles for the same reason.

 

Interesting also that the Romans used to use Elm for water pipes