See not knowing anything about oak but knowing how long it takes to season I would have thought it would be a bear to split.
Reading over my old thread, I see where I mentioned the wheels, the wheels are small and too close together. When I can, I am going to get some cheap wheels from Harbour Freight and see about changing them out and with a wider wheelbase. I almost tilted the splitter over just rolling it out of the shed to split some wood.
Notice in this pic behind the ram is a block of ash, to keep it from returning all the way , speeds things up when the ram less travel before hittin the wood
White oak, or at least the species here; maybe the shag bark oaks?, have a more crisscross grain and can be harder to split. I think black oaks are easy to split.
The way I do it is to have a block of wood the size of the ram or larger and I place it between the ram and the wood to be split. This also allows me to push the wood all the way to the wedge.
Depends on the oak; there are a lot of different oak trees; some have very straight grains and easy to split; others have more interwoven grains and are harder to split.
I would do that too on some stringy stuff if need be, but otherwise it's much better IMO to just put it behind the RAM so it doesn't return all the way, and block behind the RAM just stays there you don't have to pick it up and move it around, time saved A lot of wood doesn't require more than about a quarter of the peace be penetrated before it splits
I was afraid it would damage the splitter; so it is safe to do it that way? I won't mess up the valve or anything?
Uh, I don't know. What do you call the white oaks with the bark that is rough and curls up some? Or is that not an oak I am thinking about? I use to be well read on tree species at one time but the old adage; "If you don't use it, you lose it" is true. In fact, I saw a very interesting programme on the telly about memory the other night.
Here's the Harbor freight one. 20 ton Log Splitter There's a champion gas splitter for 600 new, you can find those at many places, and buy them on sale.
