So a couple of weeks ago my parents decided to have an oak tree that was leaning way too far out cut down and removed.  Ran over there asked the tree cutters to save me a 4 foot chunk that was 10 to 12 inches in diameter.  They had it dropped and cut the same day and by 5 pm that night wound up comin back home with a 400 to 500 pound chunk of oak tree.  Weighed the back end of the subaru down quite a bit fortunately there not that far away.

So I got it home dragged it out cut a chunk off normal way youd cut fire wood to see how it would look turned  a bit turned it down into a bowl shape the grain is quite nice.  But today I said nope I'm splittin the hole thing down the middle and savin half the time so one piece went to waste as a test piece but I still got 4 foot or so.  I do not have a decent splitting maul just a little electric wen chain saw sharpened up that does pretty decent work as long as the chain is sharp and oil in the saw.  But this morning I got that thing split finally.  Now I can start makin bowls out of it.   Did someone say make like a tree and split?

I'd seal the ends of the cutoffs to avoid drying too fast and cracking. I use old Titebond glue but I've read that latex paint woks well too. Another option would be to seal the ends of the long pieces and only cut off pieces you are ready to turn. If it does crack, the defects will be shallow, leaving you more wood to work with.

yea I'm gonna go with the glue I'm just giving myself a rest  I've only got the wood glue available should hopefully work for the time being until I can get some wax and a burner plate to melt it down.

 

Try Goodwill or similar places I just had to get a new skillet for $8 there. When doing the rip cut use the full blade in the log all the way thru from each end. Use some kind of support or log to get it off the ground.

I cut a starter and then split it with wedges worked quite well.