What doesn't kill you will make you strong

Shortly after we moved in here, we had a huge hickory tree come down on the property, leaving me to cut it up and split it to burn. I was over at my in-laws bitching about having to split that entire tree with just a maul and wedges, so they went down and bought me the commercial version of the tool in the video. I don't think they realized how much wood I had to split.

While I appreciated the gesture, that thing liked to have killed me. Oh, it works - if the wood is dry and if the grain is straight. I managed to split everything but the trunk using that and a maul, but when it came time to do the trunk I broke down and bought a wood splitter.