Suvival: logs/wood, split or not to split?
Given we are in a non-life-threatening situation, splitting logs is often beneficial. However, I feel things get murkier in a survival situation. I have brainstormed about this for a while, here is the best I got:
Survival: Wood Splitting Pros
- increase surface area exposed, especially useful if wood is scarce in the current environment
- better burn since its drier
- less smoke would not give away your position as easily as an unsplit, wetter round (assuming goal is evasion)
Survival: Wood Splitting Cons
a lot of effort for a questionable benefit, maybe the person is better off just sliding a large unsplit round into the fire little by little
potential for injury, (probably not a big risk factor, but it's another moving part nonetheless)
minimal smoke could be a disadvantage in terms of visibility to rescuers (assuming we want to be seen)
Question
Is it worth the effort to split logs in a survival situation? Ideally, I would like to have a clear-cut (excuse the pun) answer, but if it depends, maybe we can walk through some basic conditions. Also, let me know if my logic was on-par in my lists above; maybe there are other considerations I didn't think of.
Further Clarifications
- Survival time-frame: uncertain
- Is help coming?: uncertain
- friendly/unfriendly territory: friendly, not evasion
- other concerns: availability of wood, and other concerns will be optional. These may be important in some situations, but in the interest of simplicity I will allow the answerers to stipulate their own assumptions on things like this.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/q/20434. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
2 answers
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Splitting logs takes energy and skill. If you are unskilled, a survival situation is a bad time to play around with an axe for a nonessential reason. If you don't have much food, and do not have anything to hunt with, and are a neophyte at making hunting implements (e.g., snares, traps), or are in a place without much game, then save your energy.
If you are skilled at log splitting and are a skilled hunter in an area with plentiful game, then I see no downside to splitting logs for a hotter fire. If you need a smoky fire for rescue, build a second fire.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/20435. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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TL:DR Other than what splitting is required for making kindling, there is little benefit to splitting wood in most short term survival situations.
Stealth
A several of the points in your question, are about stealth and remaining undiscovered. As ab2 say's 'Splitting logs takes energy" that energy is partially expressed as sound that travels long distances. There is no practical method for splitting wood stealthy.
Tools
Splitting wood requires a special splitting maul and or splitting wedges. While you can split fire wood with a hatchet or ax, it works about the same as driving a car with a flat tire, you can do it, but not for long nor very effectively. Green (freshly cut wood) is particularly difficult to split without the correct tools. The tools are heavy, you will not be carrying them long distances in a survival situation.
Skills
It takes practice to effectively split wood, you are probably going to need to split some wood to make kindling to get the fire going. In a survival situation you will have other priorities for your skill building time. Other than kindling, splitting larger wood while learning the skills can result in damage to the tools and injury to yourself, either of these are potentially fatal occurrences in a survival situation, big risks for little benefit.
Limited resources
A piece of wood will release the same heat energy when burning without regard to being split. Unsplit wood burns slower and longer, split wood burns faster and hotter. The act of splitting does not add or remove potential heat energy.
Why split wood?
Split wood burns easier and drys faster, than wood in the round. But dry time is measured in months, so has zero impact in a here and know survival situation. Once the fire is going, burning easier means the potential heat is released faster for a hotter fire.
Even if the pieces of wood aren’t too big, splitting them makes it easier for the wood to catch fire. The bark is actually fire retardant and the inside will burn more quickly. But, let’s be precise: wood itself does not burn. When the wood is heated to 450 degrees Celsius, it releases gases that burn. When all the gases are burned, what is left is Charcoal, which is actually flammable. You don’t have to cut the wood for it to burn, but cutting facilitates the burning process because the inner wood is exposed when the log is split, and it has more gas containing resin. Also, chopped logs burn better because they dry more thoroughly when they’re not fully wrapped in the bark. Source
Related
How much wood can the average person expect to chop in a day?
What is the energy difference between green and seasoned fire wood?
How to stash firewood without it getting wet?
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