Just a friendly reminder to PAY ATTENTION whether splitting by hand or with hydraulics. Thankfully this instance only involved mechanical breakage, but could have easily gone south if luck and a little engineering wasn't on my side. The attached picture is the bolt which used to hold the wedge to the hydraulic ram of my splitter. Most will break this part eventually, hopefully with no consequence other than being out s couple bucks. Thankfully the splitter wedge has a "foot" which retains it on a channel at the top of its I-beam. This snapped suddenly and could have sent the wedge askew pretty suddenly under different circumstances. Nothing catastrophic here, but maybe just a little heads up - stuff breaks, gotta keep our eyes open while we do this thing we do.
Glad you're okay. You just never know when things like that can happen. Luckily it was just a pic of a snapped bolt and not a pic of an injury from said bolt.
I've had my splitter going on ten years now. I've had to replace that bolt twice. Both times it broke the wedge was stuck in a piece of wood. PITA to get it out.
I have noticed that all the hardware on most splitters is grade 5 or 2. Best to replace with grade 8.
Sometimes you have to be careful replacing grade 5 with grade 8 hardware as the bolt could be the wear point & if it is replaced with grade 8 then the wear point is changed to the wedge So it better to replace a grade 5 bolt rather than the more expensive piece it was attaching to .
Nah, you just get a stronger wedge. You have a valid point, but if the wedge on my splitter is of lesser metal than a grade 8 fastener, I'm going to be upset. If it is, then it would be around or lower than a grade 5 fastener, which puts you in a situation of wondering what will give first. I would hope that it is not an engineered failure point.
Glad your ok! I've busted a cylinder bolt before it scared the snot out of me... BANG! Like a shotgun going off....
