Splitter foot add on.

I have been splitting some stringy hickory and we have some elm coming up too. Made an extension so the blade goes thru the wood.
Did the first trial with 3" tubing, worked ok but one piece got bent a little
Trying some flat bar stock now, stacked 2 1/2" thick now. Seems to work better. Not as pretty a job as Screwloose or Eric Schamell would have done. Going to do a bit of grinding to finish it up.

 

Wouldn’t the bolt heads bite into the wood to keep it from sliding. I think I would leave them for that purpose.

 

I don't think so. They are 7/16 x 5 1/2". I think they help hold the wood. It did slide some on the tubing...
If they shear, I'll put in 1/2 or 5/8 bolts...

 

Looks really good to me, Jeff !!!!

 

Thanks, I cut the tall piece off this morning and ground the edges, beveled the inside edges too. Wedge nipped a corner yesterday...

 

I have often thought about doing something similar as my splitter will take a 24 inch round but I never cut more than 20 inch. I’d be interested to hear how it holds up.

 

I have the opposite setup as I have a push through. Probably 30+ years now and quite a few wedge nips over the years. I'll have to get a pic.

 

Great idea!

 

How did the wedge make contact...bolts loose or a bent?

 

Nothing wrong with that! Form follows function. Hey, not everything I make out of metal comes out looking like a gem, especially the stuff I fabricate at home LOL. I've made my fair share of hacked up brackets, spacers, adapters, etc. from whatever junk I had kicking around, using a pistol drill, die grinder, hack saw or the like. Ideally I'll stay late after my shift at my job and work on "government" jobs, but sometimes I need something right away when I'm working at home. You get by using whatever material and equipment you have to work with. Those solid steel plates were definitely an upgrade for you there. Nicely done

 

Kind of hard to tell from the picture, but if the heads of those bolts have 3 lines on them, they're grade 5. If they end up shearing off, you could go with grade 8 bolts (they have 6 lines on the head) They're better quality, higher tensile strength. It would be easier than trying to open up the holes in the plates to accommodate larger bolts. If you went with socket head cap screws or flat head screws like Eric VW mentioned, those come standard at grade 8 as well. - food for thought -

 

If I had to guess (because it happens to me) is the sum of all the flexes and slide clearance cause the wedge to come out of alignment when under pressure.

 

Yup, that’s the fancy way I’d say there is slop in the wedge running down the track on my spitter.

fixed my fat finger!

 

Interesting mod.. I will re think when if I ever get a wedge splitter.. I have a push plate welded 2 dozen dots on for grip.. with elm you just drop another piece on and keep splitting.

 

I said it that way because the I beam will deflect and on mine also twist a little. I shimmed all the play out and still crashed.

 

Hmm I didn’t think about that. Good info!

 

I bent the original foot plate and beam( plus a little twist on my old HF unit) been upgraded since then. Bringing this memory up gets me wondering where I stashed the old beam and foot plate . I am not one to toss something like that.

 

T.Jeff Veal
I made something like that a number of years ago and it works great. Mine just slips over the foot of the splitter so there is some slop in it where the wedge does not hit it.
Being removable allows for me to use the splitter vertically as well.