Made this wedge a couple years ago. Has worked fine for kindling splitting and rounds up to 11-12 in Doug Fir and Madrone. I was splitting up that Cherry I recently got. Worked fine on the rounds, even really knotty ones. I tried it on a gnarly twisted crotch and it split but not without consequences! When I repair this one I will heat dull red and quench. Even though it is mild steel, it will toughen it a bit. If it fails again, I will purchase some alloy steel for the wings!!
What brand splitter did you have this on? If you can fab one up for a Champion Id gladly pay for one.
Made this for a Dirty Hand Tools 35 ton. Wouldn't know what to do for a Champion, shape of the wedge, fitting it up and all. I'm sure somebody makes one for your machine. Thanks for asking though.
Maybe a stress relief operation in the oven at 400 degrees for a couple hours would normalize everything… And maybe if he gets a raging fire going in his wood stove, throws half a bag of charcoal in there, then toss the wedge in, then wait a few hours for it to die down, he can get some carbon into the steel and raise the Rockwell a few points, or at least case harden it
I tried to bust a cherry crotch by hand last year. I gave it about 40 haymaker shots with absolutely no result. Not even very large...maybe 18" or so. It was green but the splitter didn't care.
This was my thought. Bury the wedge in coals in the fire pit augmented with a leaf blower. At dull red I would water quench to cool. Even with a heating in a carbon rich environment, mild steel is still low carbon even with a slight case harden effect. I don't think there is a need to heat to full austenitic temps or temper afterward, because of the low carbon aspect. It is just a quicky home made wedge after all. If I really want to get fancy I'll get some L-6 tool steel (I may already have some) or some 4130 alloy. Maybe the best bet would be to just use thicker plate and change the horizontal blade design. Or I could just buy the 4 way that they make for this machine.
Thicker plate would help . i used 1/2 stock also gave them about 15 deg up angle, back higher than front gives the split somewhere to climb a bit. I do not make them the full length of the main wedge and set them back a bit so that you do not have all three edges hitting at once. less initial stress on wedge and beam. my main wedge is only about 1" thick x 10" long and 10 " high. There is a spreader behind the main wedge, so I get more if a slicing action than brute force
