I and a friend tried splitting white oak logs into rib stock after the last hurricane came through and there was a lot of downed trees.

It was a sweaty exercise in frustration for us with axes, hatchets, wedges, and a burly knife as a froe. And a race to see who would run out of blood to the mosquitos first. We wound up finding a sawyer who plopped a log on the saw and peeled off custom planks for us in like 30 minutes. Those ripped beautifully on the table saw (could have used a circular saw, or even a good jig saw I bet). Ribs bent wonderfully.

We were spurred on to this exercise by watching basket makers on youtube split nice controlled pieces from White Oak saplings. A green sapling is different from a mature log I found out.