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i am splitting some adirondack spruce for a back right now and i am having a hard time wrapping my mind around splitting to avoid runout. i have split the stock parallel to the annular rings to get four braces out of nicely quartered stock. now do i split perpindicular to the annular rings to minmize runout? i thought i had it figured out, but now that im doing it, my brain stopped working.

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sweat the small stuff.

Yeah, you split perpendicular to the earlywood/latewood lines in order to minimize runout. Splitting parallel to those lines is not needed.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

I just set my axe where I want to start the split, then tap it with a 3lb. hammer. Gives me a nice natural split. You want to be sure you are splitting, not cutting. Then just true up the stock as close to the split as you can. There is no real need to split along the visable grain lines, that would just be wasting material.

Sorry, I didn't want to hijack so I will just start another thread.

thanks so much for your replies.

so would this be a typical split then? i can see how the split runs straight and then up and over the cathedral. also, the split runs perpindicular to the annular rings at one end of the brace and kinda rotates about 30 degrees or so along its length. i think you can see all of that in the photos.

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sweat the small stuff.

That is not an uncommon split. Sometimes you will see splits that get really funky, and they hit the scrap pile. You want nice clean straight splits, but this is wood (limit your runnout to 2% if you can).