Ideally,
its best to stick with wood no larger in diameter than
your fore arm on canoe trips. If you're in an area that
doesn't see much traffic, you can usually find lots of
firewood that is small enough to break easily. If you
can't find anything smaller than your arms, here's two
neat tricks to make getting wood for the campfire
easier.
When
wood dries, it often gets long vertical spits in the
sections near the ground, usually from being subjected to
freezing while there's moisture in the tree. When you're
cutting into a limb that has a natural split, cut
parallel to the spit and stop when the blade goes just
past the wood. Take the log and carefully bang it on a
rock. Odds are it will spit back along the trunk. This
will leave a staggered piece that juts out on both the
trunk and the piece you were working on. Repeat the cut
and bang process and you can often save yourself the
trouble of splitting wood.
When
the piece of wood you're cutting gets down to a certain
size, its usually hard to hold it still enough to cut.
Rather than struggling to hold down the wood, put your
saw on the ground with the blade away from you and step
on it with your foot. Support the saw with your knees to
keep it steady and work the log up and down on the blade.
This is much faster and safer than struggling to keep a
short stick locked in place.
