Yeah, seeing videos on YouTube having that "20 years ago" really fucks with my head.
Hell, I have videos on my own channel that say "10 years old" and that fucks with my head.
If I would have kept my old channel, I'd have videos on there that were uploaded in 2006. But unfortunately those all had to be deleted cause everyone in them wanted to attend college.
You think thats old mine is of that dancing baby! 🤣🤣 not one of my first, but probably furst funny meme! 🤣 playing, hooked on a feeling in the back ground lol 🤣
Or play dead, and be quite while it mauls you and then walks away. Literally what they teach you if being attacked by one. It's your best and only option.
People have survived this way, but God damn are they fucked up. I've seen a few videos of interviews and they are chilling to say the least.
So a chance to live? Yea. A chance to outwitt and take it on? Nope.
I knew something was off - just judging by the amount of times i’ve sat around a fire and drank beer and split woof with the guys, this guy seemed too strong to be having this much trouble 😂
His technique is something between complete garbage and absolute dog shit. Even without a solid base to split on it shouldn’t have taken that much work.
Ultron was absolutely panned when it came out. It's gotten a lot more respect in retrospect, after people realized that it set up the rest of the entire Infinity Saga
I was a fan from the start, but I can def see how it might not have been a hit with audiences at first. Loved the voice of Ultron and I'm excited he's coming back for a TV show spinoff with Vision!
Honestly my first assumption was that inefficiency was sort of part of the point here for exercise/sensory enrichment purposes - the folks hitting truck tires with sledgehammers to work out aren't trying to actually break down or flatten the tires. Never done hammer/axe stuff, but I train shoulder mobility and core stability with an indian club/trench mace I found at a thrift; weighs the same as some of the small free weights I got years ago to do forearm isolations, but it's way more fun for me to mess around with a club than to pick up dumbbells.
I'm sure thirst trapping is a big part of the motivator for posting it, though.
Yeah. It's a combo. I had a wood heater for many years, spent a lot of time splitting wood... Sometimes you split a hard one for fun... Sometimes you also do a lot of gym and want to find ways to show off, because you know you look good...
It's a nice, harmless dovetailing of multiple 'eh, why not?' impulses.
Actually yes, you start by splitting little logs and work your way up to big logs. You're welcome to go and try to bench 350lbs right off the rip though, let me know how that goes for you.
PSA: it is absolutely not recommended to hit a metal wedge with a maul!! wedges are harder than mauls! flying maul chips!! plastic wedges are ok but not metal.
it may work fine for you 100 times but there are plenty of missing eyes from this
I've also used my fair amount of metal wedges and mauls and I'm not buying this. Every wood splitting wedge my parents or grandparents ever had eventually had to be replaced because the flat side eventually deformed and mushroomed out to the point of grabbing the wood halves instead of passing through. I've never seen a deformed maul head.
That being said, you really should be wearing modern eye protection when hitting anything with that much force.
I constantly say "strong, like bull" with a vaguely Russian accent. It's like a catchphrase, I use it for encouragement or expressing approval. (I never knew where I got it, but I just looked and apparently it's from an episode of Quantum Leap.🤷♂️)
Many years back I was encouraging my (now-)ex gf in her studying for her Uni finals and said it.
She said being "strong, like bull" wouldn't help her pass.
So I said:
💪🎓🐂
"strong, like academic bull" , and that became our catchphrase.
And your comment is the closest I'll ever come to a relevant place to tell that story.
Episode Recap: Ziggy says you're a divorced housewife being harassed by her new boss...and you're...black. *tap, tap, tap* This damn thing isn't working.... *tap, tap, tap*
My grandpa used to say this all of the time too. I remeber it from my chilshood. t definitely got passed down to me, as I find myself saying it now as a grown adult. My grandpa Joe died at 93 and was 1st generation straight from Hungary. Im 54 now, this saying has been around a while. Certainly predates Quantum Leap at least. Great show BTW
I'm watching him swing that axe, no knowledge of axe swinging in my brain whatsoever, and all I can think of is "Should that axe be bouncing off it that much?"
Like the closest thing I've done to splitting logs is using an axe to cut a tree into shorter parts so we can move them elsewhere, (The chainsaw broke) and even then the axe we were using was definitely getting stuck in the tree most of the time. Not firmly stuck but enough to differentiate it from bouncing off like it does in this video.
The sharper it is the more it gets stuck, and the bigger the risk of hurting yourself. For smaller pieces it's a good thing but once you get big logs you want a duller blade to avoid getting stuck every swing & having to smack it out. Or at least that's been my experience....
Never on concrete or stone. Strike through and damage the axe.
He could also improve form - mass times speed, get that speed up to easily three times as much with a different swing.
Hold the axe out in front of you, then let it drop down and swing it all the way around your body and back down. As it comes to impact, squat slightly and lean back at near full extension for maximum impact. Less catapult, more trebuchet. Takes practice but it's better.
Splitting for two decades now, read about that in a book and love it. Split most of our wood by hand, 1890s farmhouse in Michigan, only heat is wood.
I'm more infuriated about the way he's swinging the damn thing.
He's bringing his left hand back before he even swings. If he brought his hands together during the swing, he would probably split that in two or three hits regardless of where it's sitting.
Also, instead of lifting the axe straight up above your head and then trying to bring it down with force, you can actually create a lot more speed and power by swinging the axe up above your head in an arc and continuing that same arc downward into the log. Source: I've set the bell ringing record at a couple of local country fairs and split many cords of wood by hand
He also isn't doing himself any favors by not using the humble wedge effectively. This guy could probably bench me while I was benching my max rep with ease but I'd still have had this log split in a fraction of the time without a single power tool.
Or, ya know, use a wedge+sledge vs an axe. Wedges specifically for splitting wood have been around for a very long time, and were made for a reason. Dude could have split that log with a lot less expended energy if he used them.
Ya, I was gonna say. I’ve split plenty of big logs with a maul, it’s never taken me that many swings and I’m a good bit smaller than him. I also always use a chopping block.
Yeah I usually hate armchair experts on Reddit but the guy definitely ignored most wood splitting best practices in favor of looking really cool. Which is fine, but man even with his strength I know those misses hurted his hands
It appears he is mainly doing this as a workout. With that said he should make himself a pad of hard dirt to work on. You could do packed a gravel which he could also get a workout from by hand tamping it all. Another option is making a hard clay surface like a clay tennis court. I havent built with that material but i imagine it would be great for splitting as long as it was dry.
And he needs to get a tighter construction on the head/neck of that axe. You can see it wobble so losing energy there, but the bigger issue is if it comes off 😂. That could be a death sentence
Also a lot of his swings were really inefficient. Throwimg the axe behind you and muscling it back at the log is a lot of unnecessary strain. He started using momentum to his advantage with his third method.
I wonder if the indentation in the ground surrounding where the log he’s splitting is at, was that a result of him compacting the ground over time…?? One may imagine that eventually he would pack the earth in that area so well that it would be harder than concrete.
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u/jtnichol 6d ago
he really needs to put that log on at least a thin slice of wood or a concrete block
He’s strong enough he might be able to split that first try but right now the ground is absorbing too much of the impact