Workers Of Wood

When I was young, we burned wood for cooking and heating in an uninsulated 2 story farm house. It took on the average 10 cords of wood per year. So any spare time was involved cutting wood. Falling trees cutting them into lengths,hand sawing, to get them to the wood shed,then cutting them to stove wood length,No Chainsaw, then stacking the wood out of the weather in the wood shed,to be split in smaller pieces for the stove or fireplace.
Splitting the wood was a daily chore, to make sure we had wood to burn for the next day, stacked on the back porch.
If we had one of these machines, we would have been in heaven.
Herb

https://www.kingcanada.com/en/products/ ... b-78165173

my back started to scream just watching the video...

Good point! I built a rolling cart to raise my 6.5T electric-hydraulic splitter up to hip height. It means i have to lift the rounds higher to get it onto the horizontal bed, but no bending over to operate it. I think of the lifting part as exercise...

Stick,Dan, those were my first thoughts too, but if push came to shove I would just take the splitter, and a chainsaw. We can't burn wood here anymore, I voted for that law,heh,heh.
Herb

Herb Stoops wrote: ↑Thu Mar 24, 2022 2:37 pm We can't burn wood here anymore,

Insurance companies usually refuse to insure if there is a wood burner.

Even with a splitter and a chainsaw heating with wood is a lot of work and takes a lot of time.

Another reason I moved to Florida LOL I heated with wood for many years. I bought hard wood slabs from my friend at my local saw mill $ 5.00 per pick up load. Then we just cut them to length with a chain saw. I made kind of a giant miter box to cut the slabs in. No splitting but we went through a lot of saw chains from the mud and rocks on the slabs. We burned about 8 cord per year in a big house 2 air tight stoves. The only heat source in the snow belt south of Buffalo NY

A bunch of guys here about 40 years ago when we still had trees to make cedar shakes from made splitters similar in principle to the King. They used old vehicle rear axles and attached a Pitman arm with a ram on the end to the rim of the wheel on the driver's side of the frame. With a limited slip diff the wheel on the passenger side is the one normally pushing and the other side only kicks in if that one starts slipping. They still had the brake on the passenger side wheel wheel and when they stepped on the brake pedal It stopped the off side wheel and the limited slip rear end would transfer all the power to the driver's side wheel which would move the ram with downright frightening speed. In fact, the ram moved so fast it was literally a blur. I thought that was some pretty clever farmer type engineering.

DaninVan wrote: ↑Thu Mar 24, 2022 2:26 pm Good point! I built a rolling cart to raise my 6.5T electric-hydraulic splitter up to hip height. It means i have to lift the rounds higher to get it onto the horizontal bed, but no bending over to operate it. I think of the lifting part as exercise...

I did the same. I inherited my FIL's wood splitter when he was forced to move into town. He had it on a wooden frame but it fell apart when I tried moving it the first time I went to use it. I needed a quick solution so I went to the local dump and borrowed a pair of old lawnmower handles (they'll get them back eventually) and used them for legs with a couple of very lightweight steel tubes for cross bracing. That was several years ago and SWMBO told me I needed to make it more stable and easier to move. The tube braces had taken a beating over the 2 or 3 years they were holding the legs together.

I saw an exercise bike and human powered treadmill for sale at the auction and I thought I might be able to use the treadmill for a base frame for the splitter, plus I thought it wouldn't hurt if I started exercising on the bike (my doctor is now insisting I do that). I got them for $5 or $10 and I just finished the modification last night. I'm still using the lawnmower handles but I drilled and bolted them to the frame of the treadmill. The front roller on the treadmill had flywheels on the ends which will allow us to roll the splitter to where we need it and the frame is much wider and it's considerably more stable now. Not a great picture of it but good enough to get the idea of how I did it. The other picture is the other half of the logging truck load we got last year that still needs processing plus the stuff I hauled in my PU that's under the tarp. We have two houses on the property that both use wood as the primary heat source so we go through a lot.

Nice job on the stand...but where do you put your coffee mug?

Just the right height too. That one has a long ram on it too.
Herb

DaninVan wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 12:34 am Nice job on the stand...but where do you put your coffee mug?

On top of an unsplit block of wood.

Herb Stoops wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 12:48 am Just the right height too. That one has a long ram on it too.
Herb

My two heaters, one in house and the other in the shop, both take 18" wood so it's actually a little too long. I wish there was a way to adjust the stroke so that there wasn't so much time waiting for the ram to make contact with the block. But it's still better than using the 8 lb maul. I'm getting too old to swing it for very long.

You needed one of these. Logs to split firewood without handling.



Charley

CharleyL wrote: ↑Sat Mar 26, 2022 1:25 pm You needed one of these. Logs to split firewood without handling.

now we're talking...
but who is gonna feed the logs to it???

It even has a hydraulic chainsaw. WOW, sure would have been a pleasure to use one of those.
Herb

Although, I think doing it your way made you very healthy and heated you several times too. Once when you cut the tree down, once when you cut it into wood stove lengths, once when you split it, and once when you burned it. A regular Paul Bunyon by now.

You might live forever, Herb.

Charley

Nice unit but it looks like you need just the right stand of trees to feed it. Some of the stuff I get is 24" diameter which wouldn't go through it. It looks like around 12" or so max.

If you don't like to pick the logs up to load them into the machine and have a skid steer, you can get one of these attachments for it.

https://halversonwoodproducts.com/

Charley

Charley, those boggle the mind, even looks like fun instead of hard work.
Herb

Enough to make you switch to wood heat...LOL

...and it comes with a dust collector...!