Log Splitter? (Hand Held) Advice Needed, Please

[twins 0]

Good cheap log splitter look in the screwfix catalouge £6.00 or less can't remember ,but it's called a log grenade sit it on the end grain of a log in the middle hit with a club hammer and see the damage done splits log into smaller section easy to split with a axe, easer if logs are cut to the lenth that fit your burner, split air dry, I cut my logs with a rip hand saw when they are still wet 4 teeth to the inch, or dry with a log bow saw.

hope this helps.

twins

[Guest Scuba1]

Pine is a barsteward to sp`lit when it is dry. You want to split it when it is still wet ( fresh cut ) then it falls apart by just showing it the pointy bit of a splitter.

 

 

HTH

 

 

Michael

[theobenmike 0]

Get yourself one of these. I got this out of a scrap pile at a local farm, £50 for a new valve and a lick of paint good as new . Easy enough to make if your handy with a welder too, hydraulic ram and valve, a few hydraulic hoses,old rsj and a few off cut bits of steel. Should be less than £150 to do, well worth it if you burn a lot of wood and you have access to a tractor

 

 

 

Or cut the logs into shorter pieces, should split easier.

[ghengis 4]

i bought one of them splitters,fekkin waste of time paid the extra as it was a stihl. lobbed it now,just use a good sharp axe.

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

Actually, lads, just to add to this one; I think that first lot of timber that gave me so much shit may well have been from the long dead tree Noel dropped off here? Only, I was out there today fetching out the pine cuts I recently put in the cow shed; And, sure enough, they were splitting like skulls! Got myself a fair bit or aerobic exercise and a barrow load of nicely sized fire wood in relatively short order

 

Obviously, I'd like a mechanical splitter, but don't even get me started on bloody tractors ( ) and, as for buying a motorised one? Sod that! So many to choose from ~ all costing a fortune ~ and, well; Just look at what Ghengis just said!

 

I'm a tad wary of axes though. Could end up back at my " Christ! THAT F*cking Hurt! " Thread!

[Guest Scuba1]

Well Ditch, after a few decades of getting my heating material out of the woods, it is the experience that counts,at what bits one should leave where thy are and what bits to take home ....... live and learn buddy. If you want to know , what kind of wood to split at what time, send me a PM. Don't want to make things to easy forthe know it all's

As an example, try splitting elm tree with a sharp axe,ad you will more then likeley end up with a lot of wood, made out of axe handles,as the grain of those trees, ( logs ) grows like a cork skew and the axe will follow it and snap the handle at one point or another.

 

 

 

ATB

 

 

Michael

Edited November 6, 2007 by Scuba1

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

Thing is, Mike; I just about have to take all and any wood I can get. I certainly can't start picking and choosing amongst what neighbours are kind enough to bring me on their tractors. I also have a builder who's happy to dump a huge trailer load of hard wood window frames on me. Bloody long old job - and tedious - cutting those up, but my god, are they a cracking burn!

 

Any logs I get which I simply Can't split? I'll just have to bite with the chain and then hack to bits with my hatchette and use for kindling. Even that's got to be easier than prowling the fields like a Russian Peasant, picking up armfulls of wind fall! Had a winter of doing That too!

[Guest Scuba1]

Well,I used to get into the woods with a few friends and the same number of chain saws, a front loader tractor and a few traillres and that way we got our fire wood. If you know some builders, get the hard wood that they put in between the concreet ram poles and the ram ( usualy bonggossi ) and that stuff is as hard as a rock but will burn for a long time ( and hot ) so be carefull how much you put in to that oven of yours.

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

I always sort of imagined the stuff I get is mahogany, mate? I guess that's what the sales pitch would lead the original buyers to think?

 

Anyway, yeppers; Burns well and it certainly Does chuck out a fierce bloody heat! Trouble is, I've gone from 'Stocked up for winter' to 'Oops! Better find some more wood soon! ' in a matter of weeks!

 

It's a learning curve here. But I know now to to what the local natives do; Lay in a 'garage' sized shed of cut wood and, where possible, about the same again in turf is handy. I'll have to buy the turf, of course. Not expensive. And I now know all my summer free time Must be dedicated to chain sawing like a man posessed and getting that timber stacked high and deep!

 

Frankly; What I Thought could pass as my 'wood store' has proven a joke!

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

Been meaning to report back to this one for a while now. Ditch the Adaptable is now well accustomed to splitting his logs like a demon! I can fill my wheel barrow with splinters in next to no time, using my trusty Log Splitter!

 

How come? Simple. Physics! I took a log from my log pile, in the cow shed, and placed it directly on the five inch thick, solid concrete floor in there. Then I whacked it. Kindling! All that Ditch Power was transmitted into that log and the solid as a rock base beneath it kept it there. Simple as that.

 

I'd been using a stump, placed on a big stone in the ground outside, see? Half the One Ditch Power delivered to the log was simply transmitting straight through that, through the stump, against the stone and that stone was microscopically yielding in the soft earth, thus absorbing much of the force No wonder I was wearing myself out!

 

So there we have it. I can - and do - still use a stump in the cow shed. Saves me flashing straight through the log and chipping at the floor. But a stump on a rock solid base works just as well. In fact, with some logs I'd swear I'd only have to drop the Splitter head and its own weight alone would be sufficient to split those buggers.

 

Sorted!

[scottish lurcher 185]

Now this post is actually a little embarressing. But I defend myself with the simple fact that, being brought up in an inner city, I simply never got to learn about things like this on my Dads knee. In fact, I'd never ever heard of the damn things till I saw them in the creamery and eventually bought one to use here. I just tried to use it and that was the end of that idea!

 

Now; I was looking at some felling axes in town the other day. Obviously, an axe needs to be sharp and these were sold with quite an edge on them. Makes sense then. But these Log Splitters are sold with a very blunt, almost Rounded 'blade'. So I figured, if they needed grinding down, why not sell them that way? In fact, I wonder why people don't just use axes to split logs. But, if an axe isn't suitable, then perhaps that's why they sell these purpose made things and why they come as they do?

 

Well, despite all this mental wrangling; The damn thing just bounced off a log. No mater how hard I brought it crashing down. It was futile.

 

So; WTF is up with This thing, please? This is a view down onto the edge of the 'Blade', from above.

 

 

Log Beater

think you will find there is a flat square edge oppsite side from blade try hitting it with a sleage hammer should split quite easy they are for splitting large logs which a axe is to small to split so swing it untill it goes in to log as far as it will go the on the back side of splitter hit with your hammer and drive it through log should only take a couple of hits