Spliter Mod's ... lets see them

Now, that's real slick

 

I'm afraid that the beam is not strong enough to hold up to a 4 way. Except for the hoses, pump & valve, the whole thing was a "scrounge". That beam is only a 8"-18# house beam and can get a pretty good flex in it now. I'm almost anxious for it to break just to build a new one with my added years of experiance and way better tools! But on the other hand, it's kinda cool how old it is. I've split a mountain of wood & spent many a hour with it over the years. It's an old friend now!

 

The simple way would be to weld a horizontal minor wedge on each side, but I would like it to be removable as I split a wide range of wood and a lot of it only needs split once.

 

You could weld some angle onto it to stiffen it. Or get you some on Railroad track!

 

My old buddy always said "if it bend's it strong - if it break's it's gone"
It's almost a contest at this point to see if it's good enough for another 30 years, I know I'm not

 

For you taller guys.. I always say I will make a platform but never do....

My make it work for now is to push splitter up on the car oil ramps. and block the tire ... good set of oil ramps I had but are only 30 bucks raises it about 8 to 10 inches works for now.. use what I got multi purpose.. and not another piece of equipment I got to store.. oh I am about 6 foot but legs don't bend well.

 

If someone did a little research, I bet they could make & sell a ton of "universal" splitter lift kit's so that they could be operated by a human, standing upright as intended!

 

actually, this would work, just lower the operator

 

That is what I had envisioned. I would make a new 2 way that is straight then make a 4 way for it.

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I like your valve setup. I have often wished I had a foot operated valve to free my hands up. The leg operated valve is a good idea.

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It seems like the horizontal only splitters, with the wedge on the beam, are built at a more reasonable height, because they don't have to reach the ground, and also don't have the operator right over the axle. Admittedly you can't do vertical for big pieces or if you want to sit down, but for max production I think horizontal only is a better choice.

 

The working height was #1 on the design list when I built this thing.
One day before I started to build this I saw a Vermeer splitter that I drooled over and eventually copied - somewhat.
My buddy had a "regular" store bought splitter that the beam height was about 12" off the ground, we used to put it up on milk crates. This design was the normal machine 30+ years ago.

 

Yea a guy in town has one of those super low like 12" tall splitters from 30 years ago. My neighbor borrows it for his wood. And brought it to my house once to split a truckload I had. I think he sat down on a round and I was on my knees to move wood around.

 

I've found that the wedge on ram splitters are usually taller. That's why I went with one. I tried using my buddies iron and oak horizontal only once and it was killing me. I also realized that a wedge on beam is tough to use unless you have a an output table. You are constantly chasing the wood. Not a fan.