Well I finally caved and decided to buy a hydraulic splitter. There was just no way I was going to get the tops of 40 or so trees split by hand, by myself, in any reasonable amount of time. Now Amy can help me. Cub Cadet 25 ton from HD - $1500. Seems like a nice unit so far. Amy and I split and stacked a little over 2 cords this weekend. We got thru all of the red pine and red maple I had sawn up so far.
I made another one of my firewood pallets as well. I had actually made most of the fixin's for this one last year, but never got around to putting it together. Black locust 4x for the runners, and just some scraps and oddball pieces of lumber for the decking. Placed it in the front yard - this is going to be the "for-sale" pile.
Good show, sir (and ma'am!) It'll pay for itself in saved Advil in no time. I like how it's got the wings on both sides. I think I'd look at extending the one on the far side of it were my splitter, maybe with something removable for cases where you need to split from the wrong side, like I just did tonight since I couldn't get the splitter turned around. I suck at backing up on lumpy ground so just reached across my little log table.
You should be happy and congrats Shawn Curry - just watch and stay clear of the hydraulic filter on tough splits-mine was a bad cast where the filter screws on and the first yr with mine it blew off on a tough piece of 50 yr old yard maple, if I'd been in the line of fire, could have been seriously hurt with the force it came off with-otherwise, its been great and I realize any part can fail, it just happens but just a heads up my friend
That, and the easy start Honda engine are what sold me on it. I've been really happy with my new Honda push mower.
Let the machine do the work! Congrats. still get plenty of a workout with the splitter. Excellent wifey is willing to help out! Double score
Yes, the wings dont catch much-gonna eventually get my welder friend to fabricate something as they really are inadequate-with the pre-drilled holes it appears as though they are ready for something but CC doesn't sell it...
Been running the same model the last 3.5 years. It's a good machine. Gets a little hot on the warmer days so I'll shut it down to cool down once in a while. I run mine vertical 99% of the time and it works great for me. Congrats. You're gonna love it.
Hard to beat a Honda for reliability. I have a motor just a little bigger than that in my commuter and its got 270k. Maybe when I start a job closer to home and go back to driving the truck every day I'll pull the vtec and put it on a splitter.
Congratulations Shawn that's going to speed up the operations for sure. :stacke::stacke: Once you get a back table on there it will be better also, in the meantime you could use a workmate, stack of pallets, or something behind it.
That Cub cadet splitter looks to be exactly like my parents MTD. M I'm certain that they are really one in the same, except paint, and they have a Briggs motor on it. I can tell you that those splitter wings won't hold up to any abuse. The ones on my parent's MTD are pretty bent up. That said, it's a great splitter. No issues in 10+ years.
Great splitter Shawn Curry Remember how Backwoods Savage said to use it..... When necessary, of course Does that satisfy ya Ashwatcher?
Ugh, hardly-mine only goes the wrong way to clean out the chafe or when rounds approach 200 lbs...otherwise it stays the way its meant to be used...upper body workout my friend...my body up, the splitter down...
Have you taken a vacation this summer? Played enough golf? Got stuck with a metric ton of 200 pounders?
If you recall, I'm been out on golf since March, full-thickness tear of main rotator cuff tendon, partial tear of another. I've got lots of work done, stripped my cedar siding, etc-I can lift from ground to about waist height so I can still process wood-logger buddy has some butt offs I'm going to look at this week...no golf, wood good and surgery in December when I dont have grass to mow and can have some help-4 weeks in sling, 4-6 wks of PT, had L side done in 2010 and its a painful ordeal,,,but just orthopedic, not life or death so buttercup will suck it up...Hope you are well my friend
