Quote:
Originally Posted by UncleTim
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Don’t get it in your eyes and don’t drink it expect positive results.
I was giving the Boy Scouts a demonstration on splitting wood with a 4 lb hammer and steel wedges. After a couple splits I let them try it. The older boys did pretty well. I told them if they had a choice to pick straight grained, dry wood and to work in the cold and that they could split anything if they would put their heart into it and read the grain.
So after a couple nice rounds were split they found the nastiest red elm crotch they could and lugged it over for me to split. I promptly buried my two wedges in the wood. They thought they had me until I went to the pickup and got two more wedges. After some serious hammer work I split that rascal.
When it fell in half I bellowed out “who’s your daddy!!!!
They fell silent and went away to fix lunch.
A new, small boy stayed back and shyly asked if he could try to split one.
I said sure and picked about a ten inch piece, very dry with good medullary ray cracks. I set the wedge for him.
All I was hearing was Tink Tink Tink from his feeble blows. The hammer was too heavy. His wrist was getting all noodley. (Technical term). So I got him a 2 pounder and told him to hit it hard and atraihht on and he banged away. The wood fell in two.
He had a satisfied look on his face I’ll never forget. I said “what do you say now”?
He said in his high 11 year old questioning voice, “Who’s your daddy?”
I turned up the volume, looked at him and said “it isn’t a question son, it’s a declarative statement. Try it again.”
He got the message and declared “Who’s your daddy”!!!
I knew my work was done.
We walked slowly down to the picnic tables for lunch and he was about 7 feet tall.
Iowa Dave
Alf
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