Problem: almost 15 cords of rounds that need to get split, up to 30"x20", and the rounds are in a few big piles. I have a tractor with bucket and forks, and a 40 ton County Line splitter. Who here thinks I should add a hydraulic log lift in place of the bolt on platform? I am willing to spend the money on it, but not sure how hard it would be to do. Hydraulics are new to me since recently grabbing a used Bota L5460. If you vote no to the hydraulic lift, or if you have any other ideas, I would appreciate a description of how you might go about tackling these piles. Build a table for the rounds and lift with tractor, a ramp like @T. Jeff Veal uses, or whatever else you think would work best. The ground is asphalt. Thanks for all of the help from these great people on this great forum! Edit: Posted before I got the poll added. I guess it isn't crucial. Maybe post your vote?
Do you split by yourself, or do you have help? I think of just about everything in terms of time effort and cost. Which has more processes involved? Which would make your work easiest? Which consumes less time and fuel? Getting on and off tractor hooking up, or sliding on and positioning tractor seems like a lot of steps for 1 round. Rolling round onto lift and pulling lever seems simpler.
Noodle the big rounds down to manageable size? Maybe? Does your splitter go vertical? Big chunks or rounds don’t sound to difficult on asphalt and splitting vertically.
Here is how I do it! Got some splitting done this weekend! Let the Kubota do the lifting! I think the forks work better than the bucket for these big rounds. With rounds that size you will only get 1 or 2 on the forks but it makes lifting easy.
I have seen people put a number of large rounds in the tractor bucket and lift to the splitter platform opposite the controls. Slide a round off the bucket with a pickaroon and process. Repeat. Could be done with forks also. Seems it would go fairly fast.
I will mostly be by myself, might get some help from my wif if she gets time. She is very enthusiastic but looses focus pretty quickly. it’s the starting and stopping of the tractor that bothers me about lifting with the FEL. The tractor won’t ever get up to temp and will be at idle most of time. Hundreds of starts or left idling for many hours. Neither of which sounds good. Seems like you vote yes to the ~$500 hydraulic lift idea?
Noodling is fine, and yes it goes vertical. I am not a big fan of doing it much though, sorry Backwoods Savage . I will keep that as an option though, it’s zero cost! I need a grate like Mr. T Jeff has for vertical splitting.
I don’t go vertical very often myself, but if the rounds are big enough I will at least get them small enough to go back the proper way
I should have clarified, there are rounds from 3”x20” to 30”x20”. I would guess most are 10-16” dia. The forks would be a good table for a load.
We load up the oversized table, either with the loader or by hand. Works great and the table is not that heavy to move around.
I often split off the back of the truck, so I don't really have need of a lift on the splitter. But I have thought of a system that I would try out if I did...I would make a large hinged ramp/shelf that has a folding support leg under it. I would weld a post on the end of the beam to attach a pulley to ~3' above the beam height. Run a cable from the end of the ramp/shelf, around the pulley and over to the end of the ram where it attaches with some sort of easily removable hook...then extend/retract the splitter ram to lift the ramp/shelf, drop the folding leg, unhook the cable, split wood! Obviously some details would have to be tweaked to make it work well on each make/model of splitter, and to accommodate individual preferences...
