Yep there are lots of places where people starve rather than making basic improvements to technology. In Africa they use the grub hoe with a three foot handle, requiring the user (generally women) to contort their bodies.
Instead of massively improving efficiency with a five foot handle
Give that guy a big chunk of sweet gum wood!
Itās main use is for veneers and inlays because it never splits.
Iād like to see that test run again but with a couple changes.
One of my neighbors has a log splitter, and one thing that impressed me about the design was that it required both hands to move the wedge forward. There was a button to spin up the motor, and a lever on the other side of the machine to engage the clutch. A single person operating it cannot get his hands crushed. Also, most people are pretty careful with their hands when using a log splitter, because itās so obviously a danger. Itās the ordinary things that tend to cause the most injuries, like spinning belts or subtly unbalanced loads.
You donāt even have to go exotic. Growing up I split a lot of logs from our yard, mostly scrub pine. Scrub pine is so goddamn awful to split, there are knots everywhere and the grain likes to stick together so even when you do split it the logs stay held together with strands.
I always used the wedge/back of the maul technique on those logs, because they would take multiple impact to split (and would snap back together if you pulled the maul out before it was completely split), so you left the wedge in there as a way of saving your work between swings.
I wish I had thought of this tire technique for splitting poplar though, that wood hand a tendency to fly apart in both directions when hit with an axe. I loved splitting it (relatively speaking), you could do a whole tree in an afternoon.
The machines that can yank you in are the worst. A branch going into a wood chipperā¦ lathes. ā¦ grain augers.
Google (grain auger trauma )
http://www.public-health.uiowa.edu/face/Reports/REPORT-016.html
The thing about a splitting maul is that itās so freaking heavy. I had oneās head detach while swinging back, arching neatly past my own headā¦ thatās an image that stays with you.
Iām wondering if you could take a regular axe, and give it an offset weight just with a clamp or something.
Such a simple change to such a simple design. Imagine if this had been implemented thousands of years ago, when firewood gathering was much more of a basic, primary concern How might civilization have developed differently?
Thank you!
The very last split in that vid leads me to believe my inference of an internal pivot mechanism is mistaken, but thatās still mostly a guess.
Did I just watch someone chopping wood for 7 1/2 minutes?
My friends always thought that my approach to splitting wood was a bit eccentricā¦
My Dad told me to always twist the blade when it hits to stop the axe head getting stuck. Itās nifty to see this motion turned into the default behaviour of the axe!
Wow. He actually reinvented the wheel.
I like it! Take a dreary, physical task and jazz it up with some LARP-esque moves.
If I recall correctly, I think that the guy was doing a Thor moveā¦ Asgardian wood splitting?
Thatās the Assassinās Creed Technique, right?
One word: dynamite.
If your time is worth that much, you can have a full rick delivered.
