This is kinda fun, but doesn't match most of my experience splitting firewood.
The wood barely moves after it's split. If you split it perfectly, the two halves will almost certainly both fall to each side (they're pushed outwards by the axe).
You can't just randomly split it across the grain into slices like you're slicing bread.
I guess mostly: it's not tiring, which sort of sucks when you're doing it for real, but it is satisfying. This doesn't scratch that itch for me, but I guess it's fun in a way, similar to that cleaning simulator thing.
For players who are new to the game, there should be a 1/4 chance you go to bed proud of an honest day's work with your hands, and wake up the next morning having strained a muscle you didn't even know you had, and you can't chop wood for the next couple weeks.
There's a surprising amount of technique and knowledge that goes into splitting firewood. It isn't rocket science, but I know a 75 year old who can chop wood faster than any young guy who works out at the gym.
I had to take down two absolutely enormous Douglas Fir trees on my property (> 36" base), and asked them to leave the wood rounds for me. I knew it was going to be a lot of wood, but even then, I was not prepared. I spent about a fair bit of my free time over the next 1-2 months just out there slowly working my way through the pile, and you're absolutely right - you get substantially better at it. For me, it looked something like this:
Stage 1: At first, I could chop essentially nothing, probably 60+ minutes per round as I mostly puzzled about how to make progress and got lucky from time to time with a round that split easily (fortunately, I had a nice splitting axe)
Stage 2: Then I bought some splitting wedges, and I used a handheld sledgehammer to drive them in to what I thought were the weak spots, and then ultimately pried open the log, to pieces that I could split more readily.
Stage 3: I bought a massive demolition sledge hammer (essentially a two-handed battle hammer) and used that to drive the wedges in after getting them started, and made a bit more progress on actually splitting the rounds.
Stage 4: After doing this countless times, you just a knack for reading the wood, and where it will / won't split. I reverted back to using just the splitting axe, since if you hit the wood in the right spots, it really just splits on its own.
Here's where I ended up, if it helps any of you:
- Start by establishing the fracture line that will be used to split the round in half. I would eyeball any existing line on the round towards the center, and use the axe head to mark a line, away from any knots , from the center to the edge. These two center-to-edge didn't necessarily need to be inline. They could be slightly offset, like hands on a clock.
- With moderate force, just repeatedly strike that line, working from the center outwards. You'd be shocked out how quickly repeated strikes widen the line, and eventually the wood's own weight almost causes it to fall apart.
- Recursively do this with the two halves: Draw the line from (what was the center), radially out to the edge. Repeatedly strike until these pieces have been halved.
- Continue this process until you have proper pizza wedges. At this point, it's pretty trivial to just chop the pizza wedge, from the wedge to the base, into 4 or 5 smaller firewood-sized logs.
I know y'all probably didn't care to read this, but this was quite honestly weeks of my life in learning this, and I couldn't find a great guide on YouTube or anything, especially for rounds this big.
I don't burn softwood because hardwood is a much better fuel as a primary heat source, especially when you live in a mixed forest. Sugar maple, red oak, birch, and beech. Beech is the best: straight grain, good density, but less common where I live.
The trick to splitting hardwood, other than avoiding burls and knots, is to shave off chords around the outside of the buck. If you tried radial cuts or splitting on the diameter, well, best of luck with getting a season's wood split in one year. Chords around the circumference for about 50% of the buck, thenif you're lucky the core will split on the diameter.
Also, use a maul with fat cheeks and no edge rather than an axe. It's the right tool for the job.
Between yours and the parent comment, I'm just surprised how LONG splitting wood takes. A year for a season's wood feels much longer than I would have imagined.
I don’t know. Each year, my dad and I bring the chainsaw before November, fall some dead pines and cut them into logs. We either split them into firewood that evening or the next day. That’s enough for around 3 months of winter (center of Spain, cold, but almost never below 0C and never snows).
We don’t split the, into very small pieces, some logs we don’t even split as they fit into the fireplace in one piece. We don’t look for the highest girth, but for what’s more practical, yearly fires kill enough trees for that.
My experience is it takes 100 hours to buck, split, haul, and stack the 7 or so cords of wood it takes to heat my house. A cord is 4 feet by 4 feet by 8 feet. The total time includes time it takes to sharpen the saw, and time it takes for trips to the gas station for gas for the saw and the splitter. Time for replacing the handle on the maul or the oil in the splitter is extra.
But that 100 hours is using a hydraulic splitter. Hand-splitting using a maul takes several hours longer. But it keeps you twice as warm: it heats you once when you split it and once when you burn it.
Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC872sqjMNC8kHU0GU0ShZFw while cautioning that she seems to be genetically engineered to split wood. Her technique is like watching an Olympic athlete. No wasted motion at all, all energy delivered to the maul straight down. She’s a muse.
She's got a video where she explains in detail how to chop. She goes through everything from stance - including protecting the shins - to axe technique. Absolutely terrific - I feel a strained shoulder just watching the videos.
Wow! Great link. I’m better than average but… yeah, I’d upgrade her to goddess. She’ll just carve a new axe handle when she feels like it. Truly humbling.
My grandfather was like this, and not with soft wood. We try to burn Australian hardwoods and that takes quite a bit of force to split. He could pound through it like a knife through butter. There’s a definite art to hardwood, looking where the slightest fault might be. You can’t just smash it in the middle, your block splitter (preferred) or axe just bounces off it.
As a fellow australian but now former wood chopper: "Try" should be "prefer".
IE when you get a load of firewood for the winter, you want it to be hardwood. The person you buy the wood from may mix in softwood depending on their trustworthiness...
Why prefer hardwood? Hardwood density means it will burn for ages. So you have to mess with the fire less and it'll still have at least hot coals in the morning if you put a log on before bed.
Jarrah, one of the hardest of the hard woods burns hot and long and (well ventilated) leaves almost no ash behind.
If you want hot coals in the morning, throw in a log or two of river gum / softer ashy woods before bedtime and the Jarrah coals will not burn out and disappear while the house sleeps but get buried in ash and stay hot but smothered.
Stir and throw in light kindling at dawn and it'll be roaring by the time you get back to the house for breakfast.
When the days you have to break the ice on the dog's water bowl in the morning come, you will quickly learn what kinds of wood there are and what you want to burn for heat.
For example, if you choose a lot of paper birch (it splits easily, lights easily, and smells nice while burning) you will quickly get to know all the local firefighters after all your chimney fires.
In former times you had to serve a twelve year apprenticeship before you could be trusted to split wood for barrels, you can do a PhD in rocket science in less time.
It's a combination of technique and the type of wood. Even with perfect technique, some wood is simply too hard to split. I've got the bottom 5 or 6 rounds of a bigleaf maple sitting in my yard that I simply can't make a dent in. You're welcome to take it if you can split it :)
Are you trying to split it with an axe? You need a sledgehammer and a few splitting wedges. The sledge lets you apply a lot more force than an axe and striking the wedge focuses that force onto a small area. The first wedge will open a crack, then you use additional wedges to expand that crack until she splits.
Source: grew up in a wood burning family, helped split many stubborn hardwood trees (all by hand).
A wedge is still useful with a maul. Sometimes to split a large-diameter log, you'll want to start a split and insert the wedge to open it, then you continue the split with the maul. It's helpful if you have timber that doesn't have a straight grain and doesn't want to split open.
If it came from the base of the tree the wood grain will probably be squirrelly and practically unsplittable. Get a chainsaw or hydraulic woodsplitter, or throw them in a bonfire. Alternatively, use them in a woodworking project or innoculate them with your favorite mushroom spores.
These are also good for those "Swedish logs" where you drill a hole in the top and the side, and then cut grooves with a hand saw in the top and make a fire right on top.
Well they're about 4ft diameter and not really even possible to move. My electric chainsaw would just burn up trying to cut them, and the cost of a hydraulic woodsplitter wouldn't be cost-effective.
Current plan is just to leave them there until either they start drying/rotting enough to split, or I find someone who wants to take them off my hands.
> I miss the part where the axe gets stuck and you hsve tovturn it over.
Hit it around the edges, like taking a chord from the edge of a circle, and try to use the top half of the bit to do cutting. Good ax technique depends on accuracy, on top of which you can slowly add strength as your accuracy improves. If there's a crack in the end of a round, you should be able to put the bit of the ax directly into it, which will normally split it wide open without much effort. Different species of wood have different characteristics though, so terms and conditions apply.
As someone who spent a teenagehood doing the same, I agree it was far too (un)satisfying to be able to cut the pieces and not having them fall to the side. But if you have an excellent axe and true flat surface you could get pretty close to the game. But for better reality it needs more indication of splinters and blisters after a few runs. I suggest adding a cast iron wedge splitter as a next level option.
As a very novice wood splitter the thing that most jumped out to me was the wood splitting in one swing every time. That's one or two orders of magnitude off from my experience.
I dunno, what are you splitting? For full rounds or the large chunks that first split off them, I often do have stuff go flying when it finally splits. Typically I am splitting on top of another round so that adds to the distance.
Was just doing this literally the other day! But with a hydraulic log splitter which made it pretty easy and fun. The hardest part was lifting and stacking all the logs!
I only like splitting perfectly seasoned wood ( I do about a face cord every summer/fall). Otherwise it’s just too much work. Got any tips in to tooling? I use a maul.
I have a couple diamond/ grenade wedges, a rescue wedge and a traditional wedge I barely ever use. I have the big Fiskars maul and that is great for a lot of stuff. Bigger things, whole rounds I use two wedges near each other and hit them in concert with the sledge side of the maul.
Most wood is easier to split when dry/ aged, but I recently learned that does not apply to elm and a few others, so it’s worth checking. Elm is awful no matter what.
I find it much easier to use AI to vibesplit my firewood. Sure, it costs me lots of money to buy axe tokens, and sometimes all I end up with is a useless pile of splinters or sawdust, but it's the way of the future; just imagine how efficient it'll be when the tech has matured?
You're right, and I'm sorry. You specifically instructed me to split the logs in the side yard, and I split the cat. I recognize now that this was a strategic error, and cutting the cat into chunks does not accomplish the goals.
edit
AGENTS.md
+ Only chop things made of wood. Meat does not split well. NEVER cut up the cat.
I've updated the AGENTS.md file to track this mistake in the future. Should I continue chopping the rest of the firewood?
The new model is so good at splitting firewood that it's too dangerous to release to the public without safeguards to stop it from splitting things that aren't actually firewood. The old models are terrible - I can't believe we ever thought they were good.
Remember: this is the worst that splitting firewood will ever be.
Not if you also want to get excellent exercise. It would take me no time at all to build a splitter for my tractor if I wanted one, but I plan on chopping by hand until I can't because otherwise I will either be significantly less fit or have to take out additional non-productive time to workout.
I'm right there with you. I've manually split wood with wedges when I was a kid. It was tedious. Now I just use the wedges for felling the trees. I get enough exercise from the stacking.
I've always felt the attraction to manual splitting was some idyllic vision of country life, backed up by the movie trope where characters are having "alone time" but still "being strong". I'd be interested to hear if anyone in this thread burns a significant amount of wood (say 4 cords), and actually splits it all by hand.
For anyone reading the above comment and wanting to see what the commenter might be referring to, here is the first YT video I found on that channel that is relatively brief but has an example of the techniques involved:
And as someone who has split my own firewood by hand for heating for the last 30 years, he definitely knows how to throw around an axe, almost too well because he makes it look easier than it is. But even when everything splits clean, him throwing an axe around for 30+ minutes straight and not being out of breath and able to still talk shows both immense fitness and experience.
People here seem a little confused. This is a simulator in the same way Goat Simulator is a simulator. It’s from a collection called “screen toys” and it’s meant to be mindless fun.
The proper term is a shortened form of "hear him, hear him," which was necessary because British Parliament didn't allow clapping or cheering. Instead, if you wanted to show agreement with a speaker's point, you'd shout out that everyone else should "hear" him.
Not to be confused with "hear ye," which evolved from the French "oyez," which is the imperative form of "to listen," which was shouted at a crowd before an important announcement.
Thanks, that was interesting to learn, I’d never thought about how odd the phrase sounds as-is.
There’s a fascinating complexity to what constitutes constructive feedback, criticism, or dismissal. And to when it’s okay to provide one, the other, or none at all.
Mocking too nerdy gripes on "simulator" accuracy, sharing some real world experience with physical things beyond the screen frames, and on in the same vein.
A breath of fresh air, really, in the prevailing AI smog.
Yes, but the AI will handle asking you everything. Here's how easy it is to make a game that functions like his but without the polish - put Claude in plan mode 1 prompt, then answer any questions it has:
---
Make me a threejs game in html. The "game" is where you can tap a button to add a log to a cutting block. You have an axelike (e.g., a stem cube for handle and slim cube for axe blade) object that you can axe into the wood, and wherever the head intersects the underlying "log" cylinder it splits the log.
So blade is a hittest object, where that object hits the spawned log, the log splits, use a decent physics lib (ammoJS is fine) so it feels good. Do you have any questions?
---
After answering about 5 basic questions, the above made a cute little physics based log cutting game very similar to this guy's demo - now it'd probably take about 5-8 more hours to slowly prompt out a more polished version. This stuff is really easy - you don't have to have any experience in game dev to prompt it up.
Remaking this exact game on your engine of choice would actually be a great starter project. It's extremely small and self contained, very little actual interaction, simple models and whatever textures you can make or steal.
Looks like its coded by someone who has never split firewood.
The challenge is not deciding where to split, its executing the split. Like hitting the same gap if it doesn't split, deciding orientation to aoid knots, figuring out how to put it on end if it wasn't cut straight.
And some of the cuts it allowed me would hit the ax handle on another part, the shock from that damages the ax handle and is painful on the hands.
And then there's the lifting the stuck block by the axe and hitting it axe side down to finish the split instead of pulling the stuck axe out.
So the simulation handles none of the challenges of splitting wood.
I love it also, but I think the comments are pointing to an unmet need for firewood splitting simulators.
The comments are suggesting that someone could go to town adding different kinds of hatchets, mauls, axes, woods, and different swings, and people would eat it up.
Yes, but obviously this toy faces a challenge when folks who take this stuff seriously walk by. I immediately want a bungee to put around it so the wood doesn't go everywhere. I also want to split it finer than in quarters. Had to nope out.
Well, what about when you get into a piece of apple wood, and as soon as you hit it, carpenter ants boil out of it, all over your chopping block, up the handle of your axe, and you don't even realize 3 or 4 of them got up your pant-legs until suddenly your shins feel like they've been hit with white phosphorous rounds?
That would be pretty hard to simulate. Guess they had to stop somewhere
Experienced wood splitter here. All your points are valid. I had to ruin one perfectly good axe handle before I learned how to swing. However, the sim is still a lot of fun.
> I had to ruin one perfectly good axe handle before I learned how to swing.
Is it really that difficult? Maybe my memory is vague, but chopping wood in autumn/fall for the winter just took a bunch of time, and wasn't very fun, but wasn't that bad, especially compared to other things like harvesting veggies stuff where you have to be on the ground. I'm not sure how you'd manage to ruin a axe handle before understanding how to do it well-enough, takes a couple of swings at max.
I think it very much depends on the wood too, the species and how seasoned it is and how dry it is. Some chunks you can hit it almost anywhere and it will cleave across the entire block, but other woods you will hit a half inch in from the edge of the bark and the board will split under the blade and let it through, but leave a half inch near the edge unsplit that the axe handle hits with full force. Do it enough times and the front edge of the handle can get messed up.
Sometimes you will see wire or something else wrapped up near the top of the handle for that reason to help protect it a bit. But if you get enough practice you can reliably hit with the bottom half or quarter of the axe sticking out of the log so that can't happen.
I spent a summer chopping a whole bunch of wood with a steel handled 10 lb maul. Many was the evening where my hand was numb until the morning, but by the end of the summer my shoulders were ripped.
You quickly learn the differences between locust, pine, maple, oak or, god forbid, cherry.
I see a lot of people that split infrequently use mauls. But personally I think an axe works better once you get a bit of practice. The trick with the axe a lot of people miss at first is to focus on the swing speed, and not as much as delivering force and mass behind the blow. Some species the maul can work better, but 90% of the time I feel like an axe is just a bit less effort and a bit quicker.
I have a few black wattle rounds that have been sitting around for years. I have a go at them whenever I feel like I need to be humbled. There's also a fallen tree at the bottom of our property that blunts chainsaws. It's been there for years and nothing seems to eat it. I harvest what I can from it, and a good sized chunk will burn through the night.
I once took a sledgehammer to work so everyone could take a turn taking a whack at some old prototypes outside. I came to the sad realization that even hitting a particular spot with a sledgehammer is not an inate skill. If you've never done it, you miss!
My experience was a year spent working as a forester. One of our duties was to keep the wood burning stoves supplied. I remember learning that ash got its name from the fact that it burned so well, and willow left perfect charcoal.
As for the axe handle… I was told off by my boss for mashing up the handle by my constant missing. Even now, I am the same with hammers and nails - not nearly as sure with my aim as I should be. On the plus side That was also the time I learned how to replace an axe handle. also the time that
Same. I've only done it a couple times but it takes minutes to learn and you just get into a rhythm and keep going. It's like peeling potatoes.
I wonder if there's a name for the psychological phenomenon of people doing some trivial blue-collar-ish task and then dramatizing it to make themselves sound like a grizzled old hand.
You don't wear it out. You land the head long of your aim point, and splinter the handle on whatever you were trying to hit. It's certainly not hard to ruin a handle if you're learning to swing a sledge by driving steel splitting wedges.
There's a huge difference between say, weilding a hatchet on a camping trip, and trying to get the hang of a splitting axe, with a 3ft or longer handle, when you're a kid. Getting a long, sweeping arc that comes down in the right spot isn't easy and if the axe head's centrifugal force pulls it away from you, you clunk the handle down on the wood. I definitely recall my hands ringing and numb from those kinds of impact. I don't remember ruining a handle, but if it had been my chore, I think I could've come close.
> There's a huge difference between say, weilding a hatchet on a camping trip, and trying to get the hang of a splitting axe, with a 3ft or longer handle, when you're a kid.
Fiberglass handles are now standard on splitting mauls (for this reason).
Rotten hearts, or driving wedges. It is easy to miss a swing by an inch or two when fatigued.
Edit: I also broke my first axe handle. The sibling comments here are wild.
It's perfect because the kind of people who will enjoy it shouldn't be allowed near an axe, anyway.
As someone with a wood stove, for my first few chops I rotated the log to orient the checking. Then it dawned on me that the simulation likely wasn't that sophisticated, and I came here to meet up with you guys.
If this triggers your interest in IRL firewood splitting it’s a very meditative and satisfying yard job. Also great mild to moderate workout between the splitting and stacking, especially on a crisp Fall afternoon.
I have a lot of splitting to do right now, and you're welcome to it. I'll only charge a low nominal fee. But let me know before September, because that's when I usually go rent a hydraulic splitter from the local hardware store. Then I spend a very long day splitting so that I can return it the next day.
I've spent a lot of time splitting with a big maul, but for me it's harder that it looks. I've broken two mauls by striking to far. And even with "soft" wood, I have stacks of green rounds that I couldn't split at all, the maul just bounces off. But I'm glad that you enjoy the process, I'd probably enjoy watching you work.
If the hydraulic splitter could be electric, so it would not be so loud, I could see that task being meditative. Preferably if the rounds could on a raised platform, so they could just be rolled onto the thing.
Next request, the wood could stack itself somehow.
Vertical splitters are better since the splitter comes down to ground level where your rounds already are. Much less lifting.
I'm not super quick with a maul, but I can pretty easily keep up with the hydraulic splitter I've used. The hydraulic splitter is nice for the ones that have really gnarly, interlocked grain.
Until you get a log so tough, it just stalls up when you draw a splitter. Happened more than once. Usually the log is stuck so far in the wedge you can't get it off either.
Yikes. That sounds like the kind of lesson one tries to learn secondhand, or at most once. Like the time I stalled out a tow-behind wood chipper (the kind tree services use).
It was a smaller one, and the process for getting the log out involved taking the jack off the trailer tongue and hooking it up to the feed roller springs assembly to spread the rollers far enough to pull the log out.
When I was a kid Dutch Elm disease was killing all the elm trees around me so that is what everyone was heating with. An elm log that is just large enough you need to split it can stall out a wood splitter (not every time, but you will get several in a day of splitting). When splitting by hand it is common to have the handle of the maul sticking out of the log and you can't see it from the top where it went in, you just keep beating it hoping it eventually goes.
Then we got a large oak tree once, logs you couldn't even life split clean when you barely did more than blow on them.
This reminded me when we I was a kid we had to split the wood for the whole winter and that was actually a huge job all day or few days and way harder than just a moderate workout.
I hated it then but actually now I miss the time I spend with my father and brother.
I hated cutting wood, stacking wood, splitting wood, all of it. We ran a potbelly stove in the living room when I was a kid for heat. I hated the stove too.
The only thing I don't miss is rolling a piece of piss elm over to my city living "tough" cousins after two or three pieces of oak and watching the maul just bounce off. Always funny.
I absolutely hated it as a kid, but once I got into my late 20s I started loving it. A great workout and you can go at your own pace as long as you don't wait until the last minute to get it done.
Good workout and satisfying, I totally agree. I actually really enjoy it.
But the long term effects on your joints, even if you think you have perfect technique, its better to just get a wood splitter. We can do a whole winters wood in less than a day now, with minimal effort.
Gotta agree with you there, log splitters rule. We got a little 4 ton electric one for my mom, and on some pieces it would stall. I thought, what a wimpy thing, but then hitting those pieces it wouldn't split with an axe, I realized, those were really hard to split pieces.
Just growing up in the 80s we didn't have one cause my dad didn't believe in them.
Nope, splitting green wood is much more difficult than splitting dried logs, so I often cut a tree in the spring, stack the rounds, then split those rounds in the fall.
People overestimate how dry wood needs to be to burn correctly. Just have some ultra-dry kindling (seasoned for 2+ years) and you won't have any problems.
On the contrary, I know some folks who let all their wood dry too far, and it burned way too hot and ruined their stove (and almost burned their house down).
It’s an equation. If you have dry firewood, you need less of it at once. Some folks don’t understand that.
More water in the wood means less efficient combustion, more smoke and harsher smoke, which may irritate your neighbors downwind, or everyone around on still days.
Something every pit master learns along the way. People can tell you, you can read about it, but until you actually try using wood of different dryness, they are just words.
Don't listen to this noise; it fucking sucks, it's kinda dangerous, and it's not at all meditative. It's the exact opposite of meditative. My parents made me do it because they certainly didn't want to, because it sucks. I'm so glad I don't have to split firewood ever again.
If you're looking for a meditative exercise try yoga.
Most open-hearth fireplaces are tremendously inefficient, not only sending most of the heat up the chimney, but drawing in additional cold air in doing so.
A masonry stove with an external air draw should be far more efficient, and burn much more cleanly to boot. The pollution factor from woodstoves is another major consideration, and means wood-burning is limited in many areas.
My dad and his father built the house my family grew up in. The fireplace had two vents on either side of the fire box that drew air from the floor and vented near the ceiling. The ceiling fans in the room would circulate the air in the room. It was the only place I've spent time that a fireplace actually was useful.
When those work well they're fine but be very careful. It's not uncommon of for smoke to go out what you think is the in intake and often those aren't correctly built as a chimney and so you can burn your house down.
Knowing how ours were built, I don't even know what you describe could happen. The intake vents are on the floor with a standard height raised hearth (12"???) while the exit vents are about 6' off the floor. Not really sure how smoke is any where near the intake. The smoke is contained within the chimney. I'm at a loss at how to design something so poorly that the smoke is near any vents. Then again, I've grown up around construction, so maybe that knowledge is preventing me from thinking dumb???
Maybe I misunderstand your description. I'm referring to the fresh air inlet for the fire, not additional HVAC pipes. It is common for attempts to put a fresh air inlet in a fireplace to instead have smoke go out that fresh air inlet.
My understanding is that the venting dylan604 is describing relate to airflow around the firebox / chimney, rather than in or out of the firebox.
An incorrectly-placed firebox intake, or even a poorly-drafting open-hearth fireplace, can indeed dump smoke (and carbon monoxide) into the living / heated space.
Well, it's the kind of "meditative" you get when training martial arts forms. It gets good after a few years of preparation; before that, it's not as fun as spars and way less useful than general conditioning.
Coming from a kendo background, when I had to chop firewood for a few years while living in the countryside, I generally focused on accuracy. The swing is completely different than with a sword, and getting the chop to land at the exact spot (I drew lines with a marker) tens of times in a row was very satisfying, but required a lot of conscious effort to get there. It's not trivial to land a chop at the exact spot you want, and it's also quite hard to ensure the axe travels at its fastest exactly at the moment of impact.
It can be fun, but you need to be into things like that in the first place; plus, having to do it no matter the weather and all the other things you need to do can kill all the joy instantly.
There was this old Piers Anthony short story about a little kid who likes playing with his dad's wood-splitting kit. He's a little kid so he doesn't handle an axe, but he does use adzes, hatchets, I dunno stuff I don't remember now[1]. Anyway he gets kidnapped by aliens and gets to join a great intergalactic wood-splitting competition. I won't ruin it but maybe if you get really good at this simulation you could be next.
Nice sim, there's one thing missing though: splitting two sections at the same time. It do this all the time as it can almost double splitting speed when dealing with mid-size logs. Split the log in two halves, making sure to keep the halves close together. Rotate around the splitting block by about 60°, split again hitting both halves at the same time. Do this once more and you've split the log into 6 60° sections, a good size for stacking in the fireplace and also a good section size to be able to light a fire. I split between 5 m³ and 7 m³ of firewood per year which is enough to heat our house and cook our food, have been doing this for about 20 years now so I have some experience. The double-split is a good time saver.
The pieces look like they retain the shapes I cut them in when stacked. I started cutting them as pie slices, but then tried a few as parallel chops, and they get stacked in those shapes.
Also interesting is the shadows of leaves that stay consistent on the scene as the pile grows, but they don't appear on the splitting area itself.
Lots of engine noise too, I guess that's the ambience in this person's back yard! Probably true for lots of us.
After the first cord or two, the ground around the block should be covered in chips and splinters. That might be easy to add to the sim. Otoh, it's a fun little sim as is.
In case anyone is wondering, the quote "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water" is an ancient Zen Buddhist proverb. It speaks to how the life you live, and actions you perform, before and after enlightenment are not materially different. But how and why you do and experience them changes, becoming more mindful and less mired in “attachment” and overthinking.
It bothers me that I can split a log in 3 parallel pieces, rotate 90 degrees and then magically can split the middle piece. That's physically difficult!
Besides that it was fun.
This task has what I'd call asymmetrical reciprocity.
That is, it's probably easier for the development professional to code a pretend version of chopping wood, than it is for the professional axeman to chop out a pretend version of a computer.
I have completed 4 rows of firewood, onto my 5th! The stacking animation is very satisfying, I am sad I can't actually see the wood stacking anymore (because my wood pile has grown to large). It would be nice if it persisted across refreshes, and maybe provided a counter for how many rounds/cords of would you have split.
Beautiful sim. Looks like red oak. As someone who has split a lot of wood, wish it could incorporate more of the struggles of splitting logs.
- missing your spot by 6” or more and creating a tiny shard that goes flying
- the log you’re aiming at falling as you are in your backswing
- getting your maul stuck halfway down the split
Could do with a difficulty setting that includes when you inherit someone else's log pile, someone who really enjoyed making every cut on a new and more inventive angle than the last.
Normally a wedge is used to split the wood, but it also doubles as a wedge to be wedged underneath just so you can get the log to stand up.
Also, Y sections (ycombinator mode?). 40 hits later and you might have a nice pile of woodchips, very rarely will it actually split in any clean way.
Yeah this needs pieces with knots, and having to swing at least 3 times before the initial split works. Very unrealistic, 3/10. Need some wedge + sledgehammer modes.
Also how do I simulate my shoulder and lower back hurting?
With your additions, it probably could be a really neat mini game to have in a survival-crafting game... Game, so, it doesn’t have to be perfect.
But the axe could wobble a bit, depending on some combination of chopping skill and how tired your guy is (simulating shoulder pain and lower back pain). Number of hits required depends on character strength and how straight on the hits are.
I’m not sure how the game would track the pieces of various sizes, though. I guess this would just be for firewood (building wood might have to be handled separately) so maybe it would be fine to just calculate the volume of each slice and have it provide fuel based on that…
The most satisfying part of splitting wood is doing it in temperatures well below freezing. The wood is crystalline in hardness and really does tend to split as it does in this over-optimistic simulation. "Split your own wood and it will warm you twice".
CSB: I had no idea my uncle was unaffected by poison ivy. He invited me over to harvest some dead ash trees on his property. I was destroyed for a month by rashes and he didn't even know the wood was covered in urushiol.
I once lived in a giant country side house in Estonia and nothing matched wood splitting when it comes a morning exercise. You start a bit drowsy and cold but after a few splits you warm up, your mind starts to wake up and body becomes engaged to take on the day. It's a very good exercise that I miss dearly so this simulator is a lovely reminder!
Small nitpick (not of the neckbeard type): if you split the wood in slices then rotate it so the cut strikes perpendicular to the slices, it tends to split horizontal pieces of wood without touching the rest, even if it's "sandwiched" between the other slices, which seems odd since it makes the axe edge feel like a surgical strike rather than something with length.
I think it would feel better if it modeled the length of the edge, which should disturb the other horizontal slices.
The page was developed by Claude, maybe you can share the prompt(s) so we can develop variants of it ? I was surprised to see it handles 3D like that so well
I enjoy trying to get the maximal number of pieces from the log. My record is 16. The game is slightly annoying about forcing a rotate when i'm trying to shave thinner sections out of the log, so it's somewhat constrained.
I got to 19. I found you can split some slices into 3 pieces before they hit the floor and so if you get a thicker log, you can get 6 to 7 cross sections, letting you get past 16
It's all very satisfying: the animations, the chopping, the graphics, and the sounds. I spent more time than I should have chopping splitting firewood.
I have warm memories of splitting wood at my uncle’s with a sledge hammer and wedge. It is that right mix of physical activity (but not too much) and a little brain work. Great to do early while my aunt is making breakfast.
Advice: WEAR STEEL-TIPPED BOOTS! It saved my toes.
Used to watch the competitive wood chopping at my local agricultural show all the time.
The highlight was always the tree felling competition. Each competitor has an axe and four springer boards, and it's a race to basically chop the top off a standing telegraph pole.
This is oddly satisfying. Only weird part is it seems to split whichever piece I click, even if it's behind another piece or in between two other pieces, where it would be difficult or impossible to hit just that one piece and not the others around it.
This is fun and looks amazing, however there seems to be quite a bit of texture in the out of focus blur. There's also a lot of aliasing on the grass. Also, I think the camera shake could do with a very slight delay after the axe hits, and maybe a slightly slower decay curve.
This is cool, but I just got incredibly sidetracked by the fact that author Gavin Shapiro has a fake museum in the arctic (museumzoetrope.org). Half as a ploy it seems to raise the value of his penguin NFTs, half as quite a little prank on the internet.
Delightful little experience. Very nice. What would be even cooler would be if the axe only went partway down sometimes and then you have to lift the log up with the axe inside a couple of times to finish it off with that satisfying full split.
If you like this, then try playing Red Dead Redemption 2. While just a tiny part of the game, you improve your relationship with the rest of the gang by doing chores like splitting wood, and also carrying hay to feed the horses.
That and the fact that you can rotate w/ left click as well. Turns out I naturally drag the mouse a little. So having rotate on right click only would be way less annoying, especially when combined with the momentum.
Gaussian splat based game will probably become popular. This game is not gaussian splat rendered 3d, but it is pretty close. Next step is gaussian splat and animations.
Fun but hugely unrealistic simulation, so many "bugs":
- Able to split log into unrealistically thin slices and they remain perfectly upright
- Split a log into two, rotate 90 degrees, and by some miracle you can split the half further away from you whilst the piece nearest to you doesn't get hit or move an inch
