"The wedges pop out on me all the time."
You know what works better than wedges is railroad spikes. They might not be as big, but they seem to get stuck in there and you can pound em down without worrying about them popping out on ya. I hate when they pop out, they always seem to go straight for my knees every time. lol A good thing about them too is that you can get the split going on one side, leave the spikes in and turn the log over and put one in the other side without the wedge (or railroad spike) sticking out. I have to use a hatchet to keep opening up the split though. I open the split up a bit with the hatchet, then pound a railroad spike in next to the newly opening up split, and then repeat. Using only railroad spikes would go really slow without using the hatchet, which actually makes it go pretty fast.