Rock splitting

The Mayenne département is know for the depth and fertility of its soil.  Not at my place.  Fertile yes, but deep, no.  There's about two foot of soil, then limestone rock.  Consequently, there is a lot of stone and large rocks about, some of which are too big for me to shift.

I bought some stone splitters a while ago, here is a picture of two of them.  They are made of hard steel, and comprise two outer wedges that you put into the rock, and a tapered inner wedge that you hammer between them to split the rock.   The rubber loop at the top keeps the whole lot together.

I had a chance to try them out yesterday.  I had a big rock to move, so big that it took all my weight to roll it anywhere, and was impossible for me to lift.    I used my big 1KWatt SDS hammer action drill to make some holes in the rock along a line that seemed to correspond to the grain.  I pushed the wedges in and started hammering.   Piece of cake.   The rock split into two bits, and I repeated the process until I had a number of small manageable pieces.  It took most of the afternoon, though.