Hey all! Happy to see the site is up and running again. Hope you had a great 4th. So a good friend of mine got this for me as a birthday gift a few months ago. It's not something I would buy for myself, but he understands and actively enables my wood hoarding addiction. He's the kind of friend we all need. I finally got around to mounting the contraption to a red oak round this past weekend. I cut up some pine slats from broken pallets (my preferred and overly abundant kindling source) and was amazed how safe, simple and amazingly effective this little unit is. I had a pile of kindling at my feet in minutes. I grabbed a sugar maple split and pounded it through as well. Quite a remarkable little kindling splitter that can handle the hard stuff, and it's definitely nice to have my fingers out of the way too. I plan to start ripping through my pallet stash soon to have my kindling ready for the fall. I feel like I always run out of kindling no matter how much I stock ahead of time. Happy to hear anyone else's preferred kindling processing methods.
Looks like a nice setup. A little bit of an ornate design on it but simple to use. Up until now I've just been splintering rounds of white pine with my hatchet. Pretty labor intensive but it works. That's a good idea using the pallet wood seeing as it's readily available and comes in manageable shapes. My kid is taking an interest in helping split the smaller stuff so I've been eyeing one of these for myself:
I've seen that too. I usually use pine for my fire starters as it lights easy. I just split it down really small. My hardwoods I leave larger for a longer hotter burn. Your friend probably got that from Northerntool.com. I've seen it in their catalogs.
That's great that he/she is interested. This would definitely be a safe way to get them going. I use the poll of my hatchet to pound the wood through, but a hammer or another split of wood would work as well. Yeah, I can get broken pallets just about anywhere... there seems to be no shortage of them. I cut the slats off, saw them in half, and split away. Easy peasy.
There's definitely no shortage of free pallets if you know where to look. On the other hand, try finding that Sip Of Sunshine at just any store and you're likely to come up dry
On my homemade kindling kracker, I started using a dead blow hammer to pound the wood through. Works well and since it is made of some type of poly, there is no danger of damaging either hammer or the frame of the kracker.
I love my kindling cracker. I make kindling as needed during the winter, which I find to be a lot more effective than having a big pile of it. Sounds silly, but it ends up taking up a lot of space to have a stack of kindling so I like the option of making it as needed.
Nifty gadget. Looks like it works really well. Im old school. Hatchet/ax on a block. Ill accumulate a bunch of softwood board scraps. I have an old chop saw on a folding stand. Ill pull that out, cut em all then split. Ill do this every six months or so. Ill bag, box, or bundle the kindling and store for when needed.
I was doing the hatchet and chopping block method for years. Had no problem with it at all, but this neat little thing came my way and I'm pretty impressed with it. I got a decent pile together after dinner today and was surprised how quickly it went.
I use a chop saw to cut pallet boards to size, then I have a portable table saw I can use, have used the straight rip claws on my hammer, works pretty good. Also have several metal trash cans with lids to store it in.
My kids got me one a few years ago and it does work well! But It was more work than what I was doing to make kindling I watch when someone replaces cedar stockade fencing. Around here many times it's left roadside for pickup and disposal. I grab a couple sections and disassemble them. I discard the back rails and remove any nails from pickets. Use chopsaw to cut to length and place in milkcrate. I only use 3 short pieces split with hatchet to start a fire in shoulder seasons so two milkcrates usually get me thru a winter. If my wife makes a fire half the crate could be gone . She thinks it's firewood not fire starter.
I have the smaller model Kindling cracker got it 2 yrs ago , I like it , It's built tough , I use it in the basement in the winter also to make more if I need it
