Posted on 07/03/2005 6:09:07 AM PDT by Cowman
Splitting ornery firewood in a flash
June 27, 2005
By Burr Morse
It started with a telephone call I got the other night. The lady said she had a friend from South Carolina who had heard that maple trees can suddenly explode. He wanted to know if it was safe to let his children go near a maple tree. The lady was a little embarrassed, having to seek out an expert maple guy, but she needed an answer for her friend. I laughed, wondering if the guy had been into the sap beer, and considered making up some wise-crack answer. I opted, however, for diplomacy and explained how maples are our friends and would never hurt anyone. She accepted my assurance that the children would be safe.
My brother told me later that there had been an Aprils Fool's satire on the subject of exploding maples on public radio earlier in the spring. It seems some down-country writer had heard the weather up here in Vermont was not right for sap runs. He'd written that the maples were so ravenous to run that they were "exploding." The humor of the piece obviously escaped some listeners, like the guy from South Carolina. Being a bit of a writer myself, I wasn't about to let some down-country guy sensationalize my maple trees better than me. At the risk of perpetuating a falsehood I started thinking up some "explosive" maple language of my own.
In the fall, maples explode with reds, oranges, and golds and cause major tremors throughout the Vermont economy. In the spring they explode with the news that winter is over and our immediate future bears lots of mud and, with luck, a sweet sugar season. In the summer they provide an explosive amount of shade to picnic and have fun in under. In the winter, well, I've heard 'em crack like a gun at 40 below zero. It's a harmless cracking — just their way of complaining about the temperature, I suppose. Then I heard about how my cousin, Stanley Morse, used to split wood using black powder. Hmmm … that sounded interesting, so I drove up to his place.
I found Stanley and his younger brother, Kent, out at an ancient tool shed installing a security light. Stanley and Kent live next door to each other on the farm our common ancestor, John Morse, owned back in the early 1800s. They stopped what they were doing and greeted me wholeheartedly. I told them the nature of my story and Stanley said he had, indeed, split wood before using explosives. He reminded me that hardwood, like people, had different personalities.
"I used to go over to the Creamery Store in Barre and buy these special wedges," he said. "Every once in a while there'd be a tree that was ornery as the devil … impossible to split. We'd drill down through the center of it with a hand auger and pound in one of those wedges. Then we'd pack it with black powder, touch it off, and run like hell. They'd usually split down to a more agreeable state and we'd work them up the rest of the way with a hammer and wedge."
He said one time there was a woodcutting bee for the Maple Corner School. They felled a huge maple that proved disagreeable right from the start. The auger handle broke before they completed drilling but they pounded the wedge in as far as it would go and packed it with black powder. Stanley said when they touched it off the wedge, not being fully anchored, followed the path of least resistance.
"It was a war zone out there," he said. "We all dropped down behind the biggest trees we could find. That powder wedge zinged all around us — sounded like a rocket. It finally echoed off into the hills. We never did find it."
Stanley is 75 years old now and still works in the woods. He said his wife, Janice, bought him a walkie-talkie set for Christmas because she was concerned about him working in the woods alone. Stanley "harrumphed" over the walkie-talkies. "I feel safest when it's just me and the trees. When someone else goes to the woods with me, I have to worry about them doing something stupid and killin' me!"
I said goodbye to the two Morse brothers and got in my car to leave. My thoughts turned toward our great-great-grandfather, John Morse, as I glanced at the field across the road from Stanley's big red barn. I visualized him looking down at the field which would soon be cut by modern, green machinery. I knew he approved of time's changes and was proud that Stanley still owned and cared for the farm. He especially focused on one thing that hadn't changed — on the hillside beyond the field, maples still gently waved in the breeze.
The Brothers Darrell.
I have maples in my yard they usually just drop dead sticks all summer.
perhaps ypu should stop killing those sticks -- just leaf them alone.
Stanley sounds like my little brother...likes to work in the woods alone so nobody kills him accidentally. He uses magnesium shavings to burn out stubborn stumps. Quite a sight to behold!!!
LOL! Mr. Redhead believed in "recreational" splitting. He would head for the woodpile after a hard day operating bulldozers and other heavy equipment, and "make choppin' music" until suppertime. The neighborhood rang all summer with the sound of his maul hitting the wedge. He never tried powder, though. I'm sure that he would have found a way to split even the spiral-grained logs if he'd known about it.
I don't know, couldn't he just soak them in LOX and then
tap them with a hammer?
The Maples here are as easy to split as slicing apple pie. When I had a bad block I just fired up the chain saw and ripped it part way and then split it easy until I bought a log splitter...
Exploding maple is quite common.
I keep a pot of water atop the wood burning stove in the workshop. I need to be careful 'cause if the water is bubbling I know the fire is too hot for maple, and there's a good chance the stove will explode if I throw a maple in.
Last year the stove exploded twice, once blowing half the roof off. I keep a construction crew and roofing company on retainer so any damage can be rectified quickly.
Of course this danger is nothing compared to the porcupine eggs growing on the burdock. I sell the eggs to city tourists at a dozen eggs for ten bucks. If placed in sunlight the porcupine eggs hatch by throwing out the egg quills at twice the speed of sound.
Yes! but what is LOX without cream cheese and bagels
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