Yes good point you made about log splitters not caring about fresh or wet wood. I've been hand splitting for 15 years (about 5 cords a year) and finally broke down to buy an electric wood splitter (not this model though), and it has certainly opened up my window of opportunity when it comes to splitting green or freshly downed wood! This part I didn't really factor in with my justification of why it would be beneficial for me to invest in a log splitter so it was a noticeable bonus. When I was splitting with a maul normally I needed to let my scrounged "green" logs dry-age a few months first to get the wood a little more brittle in order to offset any stinginess that hold the logs together. As you said this narrows the window of time I have to split my logs and wood starts to pile up. Now I can work more methodically when I'm ready at a no rush pace. Mauls are great, but when the log is damp and stringy, instead of splitting it often flexes only to grab the maul blade where you need to pry it out for another swing. The next swing can almost be like starting over again because when you repeatedly whack the log it doesn't necessarily record your energy or hold your place in the split so your not always building any sort of compounded force towards progress. This wastes energy and gets tiring after a while, but also beats up an aging body with more bending and noodling around. Alternatively the continuous force of the Hydraulic ram can power through the full length of the log tearing and even cutting through stringy wood fibers which solves the problem keeping progress moving along! Another bonus I discovered was if the wood is already brittle or of an easy split species, say birch, beech, or maple, then the ram needs only to penetrate 2 to 3 inches before popping that sucker open. This means many times you need only 3 or 4 second cycle times! So if your machine says 13 or 16 second cycle time, that's only for stringy wood that requires the full piston stroke of the ram in order to separate difficult wood that's bound together like elm, or knotty woods. The only time I use my maul now is to break down wood too large or dangerous to hoist up on the splitter bed, or to help split down wood the machine couldn't split (Which is rare). Sometimes the maul needs to intervene due to odd shaped logs with grain going every ridicules direction. An oddly shaped log might not sit well positioned on the splitting bed for optimal directional force. In these rare or infrequent cases it's nice to have mauls waiting to assist you.
I have this splitter and have used it for my house needs (about 2 cords/year) for the past 25 years. I split mostly green oak and it works fine until the rounds get too big, about 18". So I bought a 10 ton HF manual splitter for around $100. It is slow but I have done up to 30 inch diameter pieces with it. I am 73 years old and not interested in racking my back trying to lift one of those big diameter rounds! Once I split that sucker in half, then I can work it on my 5 ton electric. I made one important modification since I do not like the 2 handed operation. I went back to HF and bought a small bar clamp, around $2, and clamped the button in the on position. To turn on the unit, I plug it in, to turn it off I unplug it. I usually split a garden cart full at a time. My 5 ton is set up on a stand under my back porch,and I do not move it around, but instead bring the wood to it once it in in rounds. Split and stacked in one place, and when ready to use is simply loaded in the garden cart and moved to the door of our basement (under the same shed roof). Easy to bring in 4 to 6 sticks to load the wood heater! Our house is built on a hillside so we have basement access from the porch. Pretty convenient! I have been working this system for some 35 years now, trying to reduce the number of times I need to bend over and to lift objects. Recently I switched around and buy already split wood, loaded on my trailer, then bring it to the back porch in the cart. Some needs to be resplit and others can be stacked as is. I have told my wood man I would take some rounds and split them, but he said, I want the exercise....he splits nearly everything with a splitting maul...and he is about my age! HA HA
I have a 1 handed operation version and i love it. I got it used for $75 and have put about 14 full cords through it, all hardwood. If you work around the edges to get smaller firewood, the splitter nearly never fails. Cherry from the graveyard across the street was the only time I gave up and used a friends 25ton. And that stuff was 6"-12"! Also, im guessing getting the motor spooled up has to do with the temperature. If I use this splitter below 40F, it does take about 1 minute to warm up (3 minutes below 20F). I have cash on hand for a real gas splitter and keep convincing myself to go another season with the 5 ton. Also, instead of wasting too much time on the splitter, I always split anything over 14" wide with my axe once. Half rounds dont roll off the truck, I can throw them off the truck into my garage easier, and they ALWAYS split. Hit it once for big rounds brother, and when you cant swing that axe anymore, then buy a gas big boy. The axe I use is a Truper 8lb splitting axe. Not a maul, 8lb axe. Absolute brutality using that. 15" rounds set in an old tire? 6 hits 7 perfect pieces for my Earth Stove.
I have the same splitter and find that if you offset some of them larger pieces you're trying to do take it off little chunks of time. (Vs. down middly) I'll get through the big stuff. it's never let me down!!I love it as well.
Aaaah, the sound of a maul on a wedge as the wedge goes flying across the shed. Live in an 1890 to 1915 house, 8 to 10 cords a year, it was leaky, now I go to Bi mart and buy 10 X 20 sheets of clearish plastic, go up 9' caulk and staple the edges, 1' goes on the ground weighted down. It takes 250' to go clear around house, used to hold up a candle in the room inside house and it would flicker as wind blew through house. Now it's stagnant air! We went through the full cycle, wood heat (single wall brick chimneys wore out, we got a 110 years use out of em, pellet stove, for 10 years wore out 2 of them, now we're on our 2nd propane stove/heater, love it! No more fear of chimney fires. But we go through $3500 worth of propane each year.
I heard you say it might struggle with hardwoods. In my area, oak is the predominate wood and a lot of people who have softer wood to split, under appreciate the stark difference. I don’t split a lot of wood but each year I use my large Fiskars ax and it nearly bounces off the oak. It’s amazing how hard that stuff is, hence the reason I’ve been looking into these electric splitters.
You are right that burning sappy pine can cause build up. We live in Washington state and pine is basically the only option. We burn only well-seasoned pine. Creosote build up is primarily related to burning temperature, so we have to make sure we burn hot to keep it in the proper burning zone. We sweep the chimney once or twice per year and don't usually have any build up. On the East Coast growing up we only burned hardwoods.
Fireplaces burn very inefficiently, as such, the smoke with creosote doesn’t have as much time to cool before leaving the chimney. It’s the cooling action that allows the creosote to attach and you’ll often find most of it right at the roofline.
I like the guy that welded a sharp axe head to his cheap electric splitter and then in worked more like an oregon products. I figure you could try just sharpening the pointed bit, but the metal might not be hard enough to hold much of an edge and there goes the paint, so must do something about that: oil or more paint.
splitting dry wood?? we always split our wood so it dries more quickly... species like red maple and yellow birch (well all birches) don't dry well at all until split???
Still using it but I've got to admit that we ended up installing a minisplit so we don't have to burn in the shoulder months. We still run through about 5 cord a year, and this little splitter continues to amaze me. We've found its limits and also found how to work around them. One issue though other than the terrible and fragile operating lever location: we left it out in the rain once for about a week before getting it in the shed. It locked up completely, I had to disassemble the motor which evidently is not waterproof (or perhaps we just had a bad one), scrub it out from all the rusty gunk, then put it back together. Working fine again.
I have model 61373 and it’s 1 hand operation. You simply press the button to turn on and it stays on. You don’t have to wait for it to return all the way either
That would be nice! I can't complain that much, it wouldn't be a. big deal at all to replace the switch to a toggle. Where it is positioned, it does cause one's face to be a little closer to the log, and I have had one pop-out incident that did some temporary facial damage. My fault though for operating it from the wrong side with an angle cut for 'just one quick split'.
If you still like doing it the old fashioned way, get a Fiskars super splitting axe. They're $60 but well worth it. My dad is 74 years old and and can split red oak quite easily with it. You'd be able to split like a mad man with it. My dad hardly need s a wedge when he uses it. Usually for more twisted pieces. Definitely gonna look into one of these electric splitters for the old man to ease up on the 4-6 cord he splits by hand.
My husband will have to check out the Fiskars sometime as he has split plenty the old fashioned way as well. The splitter is particularly nice for me, the wife, to split kindling etc. Since having kids, my abdominal muscles have never quite recovered.
I second the recommendation for the Fiskar's splitter. Having grown up splitting a lot of firewood with a felling axe, you get a notion as to what can and can't be split by hand. I recently got the Fiskar's and now I rarely find anything that can't be split. Splitting right through the crotch (sideways) of Osage, Black Walnut, and Honey Locust just has me shaking my head and laughing.
Good job, Simon! Thx for the video. Will watch some more of what you and your sweet family are up to out there. Have a look at Jeff Dixon’s video (OzarkOutdoorsMan) of the same HF splitter. He made an improvement that I bet will help you especially with the large rounds and it’ll keep the rounds from exploding like one did in your video. ruclips.net/video/bL_RCf5WOVI/видео.html
Yes good point you made about log splitters not caring about fresh or wet wood.
I've been hand splitting for 15 years (about 5 cords a year) and finally broke down to buy an electric wood splitter (not this model though), and it has certainly opened up my window of opportunity when it comes to splitting green or freshly downed wood! This part I didn't really factor in with my justification of why it would be beneficial for me to invest in a log splitter so it was a noticeable bonus.
When I was splitting with a maul normally I needed to let my scrounged "green" logs dry-age a few months first to get the wood a little more brittle in order to offset any stinginess that hold the logs together. As you said this narrows the window of time I have to split my logs and wood starts to pile up. Now I can work more methodically when I'm ready at a no rush pace.
Mauls are great, but when the log is damp and stringy, instead of splitting it often flexes only to grab the maul blade where you need to pry it out for another swing. The next swing can almost be like starting over again because when you repeatedly whack the log it doesn't necessarily record your energy or hold your place in the split so your not always building any sort of compounded force towards progress. This wastes energy and gets tiring after a while, but also beats up an aging body with more bending and noodling around. Alternatively the continuous force of the Hydraulic ram can power through the full length of the log tearing and even cutting through stringy wood fibers which solves the problem keeping progress moving along!
Another bonus I discovered was if the wood is already brittle or of an easy split species, say birch, beech, or maple, then the ram needs only to penetrate 2 to 3 inches before popping that sucker open. This means many times you need only 3 or 4 second cycle times! So if your machine says 13 or 16 second cycle time, that's only for stringy wood that requires the full piston stroke of the ram in order to separate difficult wood that's bound together like elm, or knotty woods.
The only time I use my maul now is to break down wood too large or dangerous to hoist up on the splitter bed, or to help split down wood the machine couldn't split (Which is rare). Sometimes the maul needs to intervene due to odd shaped logs with grain going every ridicules direction. An oddly shaped log might not sit well positioned on the splitting bed for optimal directional force. In these rare or infrequent cases it's nice to have mauls waiting to assist you.
I have this splitter and have used it for my house needs (about 2 cords/year) for the past 25 years. I split mostly green oak and it works fine until the rounds get too big, about 18". So I bought a 10 ton HF manual splitter for around $100. It is slow but I have done up to 30 inch diameter pieces with it. I am 73 years old and not interested in racking my back trying to lift one of those big diameter rounds! Once I split that sucker in half, then I can work it on my 5 ton electric. I made one important modification since I do not like the 2 handed operation. I went back to HF and bought a small bar clamp, around $2, and clamped the button in the on position. To turn on the unit, I plug it in, to turn it off I unplug it. I usually split a garden cart full at a time. My 5 ton is set up on a stand under my back porch,and I do not move it around, but instead bring the wood to it once it in in rounds. Split and stacked in one place, and when ready to use is simply loaded in the garden cart and moved to the door of our basement (under the same shed roof). Easy to bring in 4 to 6 sticks to load the wood heater! Our house is built on a hillside so we have basement access from the porch. Pretty convenient! I have been working this system for some 35 years now, trying to reduce the number of times I need to bend over and to lift objects. Recently I switched around and buy already split wood, loaded on my trailer, then bring it to the back porch in the cart. Some needs to be resplit and others can be stacked as is. I have told my wood man I would take some rounds and split them, but he said, I want the exercise....he splits nearly everything with a splitting maul...and he is about my age! HA HA
I have a 1 handed operation version and i love it. I got it used for $75 and have put about 14 full cords through it, all hardwood.
If you work around the edges to get smaller firewood, the splitter nearly never fails. Cherry from the graveyard across the street was the only time I gave up and used a friends 25ton. And that stuff was 6"-12"!
Also, im guessing getting the motor spooled up has to do with the temperature. If I use this splitter below 40F, it does take about 1 minute to warm up (3 minutes below 20F).
I have cash on hand for a real gas splitter and keep convincing myself to go another season with the 5 ton.
Also, instead of wasting too much time on the splitter, I always split anything over 14" wide with my axe once. Half rounds dont roll off the truck, I can throw them off the truck into my garage easier, and they ALWAYS split.
Hit it once for big rounds brother, and when you cant swing that axe anymore, then buy a gas big boy.
The axe I use is a Truper 8lb splitting axe. Not a maul, 8lb axe. Absolute brutality using that. 15" rounds set in an old tire? 6 hits 7 perfect pieces for my Earth Stove.
One of RUclipss best underrated channels. Love the content and keep it up, looking forward to seeing a restoration of the ford you got.
Thanks very much, we appreciate your comment! We just need to stop using the ford long enough to restore it, which is proving hard!
Restoration nearly complete. Hope to put out a video of it soon.
I have the same splitter and find that if you offset some of them larger pieces you're trying to do take it off little chunks of time. (Vs. down middly) I'll get through the big stuff. it's never let me down!!I love it as well.
Aaaah, the sound of a maul on a wedge as the wedge goes flying across the shed. Live in an 1890 to 1915 house, 8 to 10 cords a year, it was leaky, now I go to Bi mart and buy 10 X 20 sheets of clearish plastic, go up 9' caulk and staple the edges, 1' goes on the ground weighted down. It takes 250' to go clear around house, used to hold up a candle in the room inside house and it would flicker as wind blew through house. Now it's stagnant air! We went through the full cycle, wood heat (single wall brick chimneys wore out, we got a 110 years use out of em, pellet stove, for 10 years wore out 2 of them, now we're on our 2nd propane stove/heater, love it! No more fear of chimney fires. But we go through $3500 worth of propane each year.
I heard you say it might struggle with hardwoods. In my area, oak is the predominate wood and a lot of people who have softer wood to split, under appreciate the stark difference. I don’t split a lot of wood but each year I use my large Fiskars ax and it nearly bounces off the oak. It’s amazing how hard that stuff is, hence the reason I’ve been looking into these electric splitters.
I thought that pine was a no-no for fireplaces. Coats the chimney interior with flammable creosote?
You are right that burning sappy pine can cause build up. We live in Washington state and pine is basically the only option. We burn only well-seasoned pine. Creosote build up is primarily related to burning temperature, so we have to make sure we burn hot to keep it in the proper burning zone. We sweep the chimney once or twice per year and don't usually have any build up. On the East Coast growing up we only burned hardwoods.
Fireplaces burn very inefficiently, as such, the smoke with creosote doesn’t have as much time to cool before leaving the chimney. It’s the cooling action that allows the creosote to attach and you’ll often find most of it right at the roofline.
I like the guy that welded a sharp axe head to his cheap electric splitter and then in worked more like an oregon products. I figure you could try just sharpening the pointed bit, but the metal might not be hard enough to hold much of an edge and there goes the paint, so must do something about that: oil or more paint.
splitting dry wood?? we always split our wood so it dries more quickly... species like red maple and yellow birch (well all birches) don't dry well at all until split???
The bit that's driven into the wood. buy a Axe head, and weld in the the end. Cutting wise it supercharges what it will do.
Are you still using this log splitter? I think if it is keeping up with your workload, it would be a good purchase.
Still using it but I've got to admit that we ended up installing a minisplit so we don't have to burn in the shoulder months. We still run through about 5 cord a year, and this little splitter continues to amaze me. We've found its limits and also found how to work around them.
One issue though other than the terrible and fragile operating lever location: we left it out in the rain once for about a week before getting it in the shed. It locked up completely, I had to disassemble the motor which evidently is not waterproof (or perhaps we just had a bad one), scrub it out from all the rusty gunk, then put it back together. Working fine again.
I have model 61373 and it’s 1 hand operation. You simply press the button to turn on and it stays on. You don’t have to wait for it to return all the way either
That would be nice! I can't complain that much, it wouldn't be a. big deal at all to replace the switch to a toggle. Where it is positioned, it does cause one's face to be a little closer to the log, and I have had one pop-out incident that did some temporary facial damage. My fault though for operating it from the wrong side with an angle cut for 'just one quick split'.
Like you, I've seen those around and have just smiled and shaken my head. But that is surprisingly effective. Hopefully it lasts for you!
We hope it lasts too and will add commentary to document as time goes on how well it functions and if any issues crop up.
New to the channel. Just found your channel. We have just started our family farm we have videos on it.
Have a great day.
Farming is a fun family enterprise. Good luck with your adventures!
If you still like doing it the old fashioned way, get a Fiskars super splitting axe. They're $60 but well worth it. My dad is 74 years old and and can split red oak quite easily with it. You'd be able to split like a mad man with it. My dad hardly need s a wedge when he uses it. Usually for more twisted pieces. Definitely gonna look into one of these electric splitters for the old man to ease up on the 4-6 cord he splits by hand.
My husband will have to check out the Fiskars sometime as he has split plenty the old fashioned way as well. The splitter is particularly nice for me, the wife, to split kindling etc. Since having kids, my abdominal muscles have never quite recovered.
I second the recommendation for the Fiskar's splitter. Having grown up splitting a lot of firewood with a felling axe, you get a notion as to what can and can't be split by hand. I recently got the Fiskar's and now I rarely find anything that can't be split. Splitting right through the crotch (sideways) of Osage, Black Walnut, and Honey Locust just has me shaking my head and laughing.
You will have more success with a maul if you hit close to the edge of the log instead of the middle
Good job, Simon! Thx for the video. Will watch some more of what you and your sweet family are up to out there.
Have a look at Jeff Dixon’s video (OzarkOutdoorsMan) of the same HF splitter. He made an improvement that I bet will help you especially with the large rounds and it’ll keep the rounds from exploding like one did in your video.
ruclips.net/video/bL_RCf5WOVI/видео.html
watched the ozark video. it was good idea to add sharp axe to the front...
Stupid allowing a little kid near power equipment.
Get a real second hand splitter. You won't regret it.