Gransfors Bruks Splitting Maul Modification

You guys have not seen me review any mauls, or talk much about that. The reason is that I don’t know much about them, since I don’t split a lot of wood.

Recently however, I was contacted by a reader who was having an issue with his Gransfors Bruks Splitting Maul. He ultimately managed to resolve the problem. I thought I would share the solution with you in case you have been having the same issue.

The issue was that the Gransfors Bruks Splitting Maul has a sharp transition point where the cheeks meet the area surrounding the eye. When the wood was too thick or knotted to be split with a single hit, those abrupt transitions on the side/edges would get stuck in the wood.

The solution was to file down those areas, smoothing out the sides.

Here you can see the side view. The filed down areas have been circled.

It makes sense that this would work. I guess Gransfors Bruks had not anticipated that the maul would penetrate the wood all the way to the eye of the maul without getting split. Sharp transition points in those area would certainly cause more binding.

If this has been an issue for you, you may want to give this approach a try. Most of the metal was removed with a file, and then made smooth with sand paper.

I want to thank the reader for contributing this information as well as the pictures.