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You cut it, split it, and stacked it. Now it sits through summer and fall and you pull from it all winter. Simple enough. Except a lot of men spend real time processing firewood and then lose a third of it to rot, pests, or moisture because they did not pay attention to how it was stored. Wood piled wrong does not season. Wood stored wet does not burn well. Wood stacked directly on the ground in the back corner of the yard is doing something, but not what you want it to do. Here is how to store firewood...

Before the chainsaw existed, every tree that came down came down by hand. Men felled timber for a living with nothing but an axe and the technique to use it well. That technique was learned carefully because the consequences of getting it wrong are serious and immediate. Felling a tree with an axe is not complicated, but it is also not something you improvise. There is a specific process with specific steps in a specific order, and each one exists for a reason. This guide covers that process for small trees, which for the purpose of this article means trees...

The Fiskars IsoCore maul is the most purchased splitting maul in America by a wide margin. You can find it at every Home Depot, Lowe's, and hardware store in the country. It is consistently reviewed well. It has genuine engineering behind it and it works. If you own one and like it, you are not wrong. We carry the Council Tool Ol' No. 7 at Whiskey River and not the Fiskars. Here is the honest breakdown of what each tool does, where each one has the edge, and why we made the choice we did. What Fiskars Gets Right The...

Running out of firewood in February is one of those situations that feels like bad luck but almost never is. It is almost always a planning problem, usually compounded by burning wetter wood than you should be, running a stove that is less efficient than you assume, and starting the season with less wood than you counted. Here is the actual math, explained plainly, so you can do it for your situation and stop guessing. What a Cord Actually Is A full cord of firewood is a stack measuring 4 feet wide by 4 feet tall by 8 feet long,...

Creosote: What It Is and How to Keep It Under Control If you heat your home with wood, creosote is not something you can opt out of. It forms every time you burn, in every stove, in every chimney. The question is not whether you have it. The question is how much you have, what stage it is at, and whether you are doing the things that keep it from becoming a serious problem. The guys who have chimney fires are almost never surprised by bad luck. They are surprised by the logical conclusion of burning wet wood, running smoldering...