Another homemade splitter...

What kind of paint did you use? That's no rattle can job. Looks like iron, or maybe a 2 part epoxy paint.

 

Actually, it is rattle can for the most part. The green and orange are Rustoleum over primer. The gray is Massey Ferguson gray paint from TSC with hardener in it.

 

Wow, that looks great for a rattle can jobbie!

 

Short update: Hoses came in and I have all but one hooked up. I am missing one pipe fitting which I will pick up this week. I hope to have it all set and fired up on Sunday (Saturday is deer hunting; priorities...). I should have everything working except the winch on the hoist. I still need to get a battery, mount it, and complete the wiring.

 

That is a BEAST of a splitter !
Only thing Id do is make a guard over your hydro cap.
Reminds me I have to finish up my build that I started last spring and hid in the lean to as we got busy.

 

I have a sheet metal "table" that covers the grid area and will cover the cap as well!

 

Fantastic job there. Maybe you can do a video of it in operation, from lifting a log onto the table, splitting etc.

 

Another update: Finished all the plumbing Friday night. Saturday, after hunting I put 15 gallons of hydraulic fluid in before thinking "Gee, maybe I should run this to make sure it's not leaking anywhere..." Then, the old faithful Honda wouldn't start. Had good spark so fuel was suspect. Decided to quit for the night.
Sunday morning, I walk into the barn and I'm greeted by an overwhelming smell of hydraulic fluid. The lower drain plug on the tank wasn't tightened and I dumped about a quart +/- of fluid all over the floor. Arrrrgh! Fixed that and began working on the fuel situation. I drained the tanks and cleaned the carb. Put new gas in and viola, started second pull!
While it was running I decided to cycle the valves. Splitter cylinder worked great (my phone was dead so I couldn't check the cycle time with my stopwatch). When I tried the hoist however, it shot up WAY too fast! If I had a round hooked up it would have flung it like a Trebuchet! I definitely need to put some flow control on it. I was able to feather the valve and have it operate sanely, but to be safe I'll look into reducing the flow to the hoist cylinder.
As I mentioned, the phone was dead so no new pics, but I'm working on it!

 

Those small cylinders will sure move fast as you found out! I put a needle valve in my boom cylinder circuit to slow it down. I call it a needle valve for lack of a better name for it but that may be what they are called.

 

I believe you are speaking of a pressure valve. There are a few kinds of pressure vslves; relief valves, counter balance valves, sequence valves, and dump valves.

 

Something like this?
3/8 NPT 8 GPM PRINCE WFC-600 IN-LINE FLOW CONTROL

A guy at work told me to put a washer type disc in the hole to act as a smaller orifice for the fluid to go through which would slow it down. You don't have the advantage of adjusting it like the valves I posted the link to, but it's cheaper. Thoughts?

 

1/2 NPT 15 GPM PRINCE WNV-800 NEEDLE VALVE

I believe this is the one I used. How do you copy a link where you can click on it like the one in Deer Meadow Farms post?

 

Never mind half of that last post, it worked when I posted reply.

 

More updates and my first failure! :'(
First, the update: Added a fire extinguisher I had from a vehicle I sold:


Also added "teeth" to the push plate:


Now for the failure. I was splitting wood yesterday and I had completed over 1/2 cord. I picked up a large knotty chunk, but nothing worse than I had split previously (?) and I heard a loud "bang". I stopped everything, looked everything over as best as I could and finding nothing amiss proceeded to finish splitting the chunk and the remainder of the pile with no real issue. When I got back to the barn, I noticed a missing bolt on the rear cylinder mount. Upon closer inspection, I found the beam had also bent! I went to remove the remaining bolts and found that 5 of the six had sheared off; all of them were 1/2" grade 8. I took the mount of and used a sledge hammer to beat the beam back in shape. I am going to get some plate to widen the foot print of the base and another plate to mount underneath to sandwich the top of the beam. I think spreading the load out will be the fix (hopefully!) Damage below:

 

Yikes, what do you think was the cause of the bolt failure?

 

I don't have a good answer to that question.... Maybe I had forgotten to torque them when I reassembled everything after painting...?

 

I would think you would want some weld on that in addition to the bolts.

 

Single Shear strength on a 1/2" grade 8 should be a little over 17,000 lbs each. That is if they were tightenened to spec. My guess is it was flexing/twisting/lifting as the front bolts went first and worked their way back. You could guess mislabeled offshore bolts but they still "should" have about half the strength of grade 8. Grade 2 is supposed to be over 8000 lbs.

How thick or what size is the beam? Check the slop on your slide now too that it gave way. Force compounds as is evident here when you have narrow contact areas.

 

The beam is made from two 6" x 3/8" thick angles. Look at my first posts for the construction of the beam. I can check the slide tonight but it felt pretty snug when I disassembled it yesterday