I will, and I will respond to your post in detail Fisherking, but not for a few days. I have finals until Friday, so I have had to put things off until they are over. I can tell you now though that my attempts at making a spear have so far proved unsuccessful. On the bright side though, I have learned many ways to not make a spear. When I tried splitting the oak (The log had a 5-6" diameter on one end, and a 3.5-4" diameter on the other) it split, but it ripped into fibers and the wood itself started falling apart. I am not quite sure what I did wrong. Maybe I should have used a pull saw? What I did was make an initial split with an axe, and then drive steel wedges in with a sledge hammer. The grain was almost straight, but wasn't quite. At the very middle it waves to the side noticeably, even though the log itself was completely straight.
Should I have used a thinner or thicker log?
As I am sure you have heard on the news, we got about 2 feet of snow here in central WI, so taking the truck out to the woods is out of the question. This means that I will not be able to get logs much bigger than the one that I got unless I split them in the field.
(I used Oak because I could not find any Ash on my property.)