I have used a ripping chain and it does work better for what you want to do than a standard (crossuctting) chain does. But, the cutter design makes them pretty hard to resharpen; for me at least. This is the style of chain that works best for those log sawing gadgets that clamp to the chain saw bar. I had to special order that chain.
Someone else already mentioned splitting the log with a log splitter, but here's the cheapest and best answer: A Froe. It is like a large knife with a handle at a right angle to the blade. You drive it into the end grain as far as you can then twist the handle to open up the split. Here's one:
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If you were going to use it a lot for bowl turning, where you might be using woods that are less prone to splitting than cedar, I'd get one with a "deeper" blade. That'll give you more twisting ability, but the one on that webpage should work well. (I make my own from old car leaf spring).
A decent Froe won't cost any more than a ripping chain and it give you very good control of the split.
This tool works particularly well on short rounds such as you have there. A friend of mine makes his living demonstrating wood turning on a spring pole lathe. He uses the froe to even split off sections for platter turning.
The only caveat as I see it is that if you were splitting an Elm or other really stringy wood, the normal Froe might not totally part the round. In that case, I'd get a couple of steel (or wooden) wedges, remove the Froe and complete the split with them. Very satisfying method and makes hardly any noise.
Pete Stanaitia
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