I recently had a tree cut down in my back yard, a large silver maple. It had become diseased in a spot that I feared would make it more susceptible to falling one day, and it was close enough to my house to be a concern. When the tree service cut it down, most of the wood was in excellent shape, but we don't burn wood at our house. My neighbor told me he had a friend who did, and I told him his friend could have the wood for free. Cord wood isn't cheap anymore; the man showed up at my house within an hour of being offered the wood.
At its thickest parts, the maple was over two feet thick. I worked at my desk by a window as the man worked on splitting some sections that were about 20 inches across. He was driving two metal wedges into the piece using a sledgehammer to get it to split apart, and taking a lot of swings to do so. Then, when he got it to split in half, he would split those pieces using a maul.
My father's voice crept into my ear.
"You gotta' hit it right on the edge. Once it pops, you're all set."
I spent a fair amount of my youth cutting wood with my father. We always had a wood stove growing up, and Dad loved to work in the woods and harvest our own fuel. He loved the money he saved from not having to buy as much oil, but he also loved the work itself. I hated it. It was boring and hard and not fun at all to me. Even now, as I looked out the window, I fought the urge to go out, but just couldn't resist. I threw on some shoes and a sweatshirt and headed out back.
"How's it going?" I asked.
"These lower portions are so big... really tough to get apart" he replied.
"Let me show you something" I said. "You're putting your wedges inside too much. In fact, you really don't even need the wedges. You just need to hit it right on the edge and pop the outside layer." He looked at me incredulously. My neighbor had told me he was an engineer. He saw his use of the wedges as a reasonable arrangement of force and leverage and all that.
I picked up the maul, took a swing, and landed a bit too much on the inside of the piece. It left a mark, but bounced. My next swing landed right next to it. Another bounce. The third swing, though, caught the piece right on the outside edge, and a loud pop rang out from the wood. A ten inch crack appeared from where I struck the wood into the center. I struck another blow on the other side of the piece, and it fell into two halves. In four swings I had done what took him over twenty using the two wedges. The look on his face was priceless. I repeated the process on two more pieces, just to show him it wasn't a fluke. It took even less swings on those. Then I headed back inside.
Fathers teach their sons a lot of things, and they don't always explain why. Often times it's just "do this." In my youth, I got angry in these moments, but today I understand that my father was trying to give me a wide array of skills so that I could do things for myself. Cutting wood has always been a good example of that. Very few people cut their own wood today, but those who do save a lot of money and provide themselves and their families with heat. Choosing to invest your time and energy instead of your money is hustling, and it frees up your money to go to something else.
Thanks, Dad.
