Upside Down Wood Splitter Build

It is officially underway. As always, I grabbed Katie for the start of this misadventure and got her stole away from the kids to help hook and unhook equipment. Katie is pretty good that way, and while she had two kids soaking in the tub, stole away to help me for a moment. (We have a 11 year old that can manage things while we are out). The two girls still got pruned however by the time we got back. Hauling an old woodsplitter out of the weeds takes a wee bit of time lads.

Anyway my tractor is being rebuilt so that is down, and my dozer was 1/4 mile away, so I just used the ole Grocery-Getter, also known as a Ford Explorer to haul it back across theroad.. The old woodsplitter was on the ground with no jack welded to it, so we had to lift its hitch up high enough to get it on the SUV. That is not an issue, I have a Wallenstein! So we first had to hook on to that, haul it across the road to our other house where the old woodsplitter was, then park the Wallenstein next to it. Then we backed the trailer close, pulled the trailer into alignment with the Wallenstein and hauled it away. After that we had to jack up the old woodsplitter to get it unhooked from the SUV since that was back across the road. But once it was unhitched it was just a matter of going back for the Wallenstein. Thankfully Katie was there to direct all the backing ups and stuff.

So we documented that with pictures, and ultimately what I am starting my project with. Its already got quite the history to it.

Our old woodsplitter is home made, made back in 1970 or so and something my Dad welded up. He is pretty proud of it, but knows if it does not change with the times, it will never be used again. I could weld up a totally new woodsplitter from scratch granted, but the majority of the parts are here, and I can see how it works first without dumping a lot of money into this project.

In its first configuration back in 1970, it was a 3 point hitch woodsplitter, but Dad disliked the way it worked, so he put it on a narrow trailer. Both modes worked, BUT it had the problem of having some extra steps to the firewood process. His grip was sawing the woods into rounds, picking up the rounds to split, then picking the wood up again onto the trailer. So about 1990, he took the woodsplitter and mounted it on our old manure spreader. Taking off the rear spreader tines, but leaving the bed chain on the manure spreader, it allowed tree length wood to be cut into rounds, rounds split and immediately thrown on the trailer. Then it was backed into his woodshed where the firewood load was hand cranked off with a lever controlling the live bed chain, as it was unloaded.

It worked well...

But now that I have a Wallenstein, the plan is to cut all the extra garbage off it, flip it upside down, convert it to a 4 way woodsplitter and be operated in its new and fourth mode since its creation. The hydraulic reservoir, and control valve will be mounted on a 3 point hitch arrangement, including a seat so I can run the levers on the Wallenstein comfortably along with the woodsplitter valves, add an awning in case it rains, and for a touch of whimsy, put some cup holders for ice cold cans of Coke. A man never wants to get dehydrated too much running those levers splitting wood you know? This will be driven by a prince PTO pump off my Kubota Tractor. The 3 point hitch arrangement will have a hitch naturally to attach the Wallenstein Log Trailer too.

It all sounds complicated, but its actually a very simple woodsplitter. Well tonight was the start!

 

Can I borrow it when you are finished?

 

Sure, but after looking at my pictures, I never realized how trashy my farm looks! Yikes I have to clean up some. We actually keep this place picked up, but you would never know it from my pictures.

 

Hahaha...I always do the same thing when I take pictures of my place, I think damm that needs weedwacked, this needs trimmed, who would park a trailer there, etc!! Kinda like when I get dressed in the morning, I look in the mirror and think, Oh Yeah...Looking good today big fella, then when someone snaps a picture I look at it and think who is that fat azz!

 

I here you. My wife was actually crying last night when she got into bed. Not because of who was next to her in bed, but because she tried on some PJ's that did not fit. She is a fitness freak, but a month ago hurt her knee and has not been able to exercise and she has gone from a size 5 (okay, so there is really no size 5, but a size 4 was a bit too tight and a size 6 was a bit loose), to a size 8 and is upset at herself. I try and tell her I love her and don't care, but she does not listen to me. Some of it is because of where she is at month wise, but that may have caused some of the tears too. I felt bad in any case.

Myself, I am not sure what size I would be as I don't try on dresses often, something about the bible saying stuff against that, but it would mostly like be "fat".

 

Well I carved out an hour from my busy day and got to cutting a lot of the junk off from that old woodsplitter. I also got it divorced from the trailer it was attached too. That was not hard, it practically fell off, I guess that was what the rope was for. A lot easier to go and find a huge length of rope, bind the thing onto the trailer in 10 different configurations and tie just under 4 million knots then it was to tighten up the bolts that were already in place. Jeesh, two adjustable wrenches would have done it.

I also took off the woodsplitter valve and got rid of the plumbing on it. With all the black iron pipe, unions and elbows it looked like someone with a fitting fetish plumbed it up. I'll drastically reduce that to the minimal amount.

So that was as far as I got, but its progress. I had to pick it up and down to cut off some of the junk I no longer need so I swung it into the position it will resemble when done. Obviously the grapple won't be on it when in actual use, it will simply mount with a bolt to where the grapple mounts too, but you get the basic concept; and upside down woodsplitter on my log trailer.

I should probably keep track of my time on this thread too, just for fun. So far I have a half hour last night moving trailers around and getting the woodsplitter over to my house, and today I took an hour to cut all the excess junk off. Money wise, it's about $2.00 for a cut off wheel for my grinder.

 

Gosh, that is a handy little tool there; I think I want one of those.

 

Yes it is actually. It also came with a backhoe attachment, then the stakes can come off the trailer and a dump box put in its place. You use the backhoe to then dump it out. Or you can remove the grapple and put on a post hole auger for making fence posts since the grapple spins all the way around. The dump body is in one of the first pictures of this thread filled with garbage, but I got a better one of it as I used the grapple/dump box to build a retaining wall. I am building the upside down woodsplitter to make it even more versatile.

The general idea is, take the woodsplitter to the rounds, pick them up by pinching them, then splitting them while the splitter is hoovered over the dump box. In other words, NO LIFTING!

 

So how many pennies did the lift thingy sell for?

 

More then the tractor and winch it is hooked too at $18,000. (The tractor was $14,000 new and the winch was $1,800 new. My Ford Explorer was $14,000 used, and the bulldozer was $10,000 used).

It sounds like a lot, but you get a lot with it. It is not just a log trailer, it is a back hoe too and a backhoe for a small tractor would be $7000 unto its own and they don't come with a dump box. A post hole driller is not much, a couple hundred bucks, but its also a log loader which is its main purpose. Together it makes for quite the combined weapon. I use it to move round bales (and square bales) and a host of other stuff. I am glad I bought it. Very glad; there is not a day that goes by that it is not used, and it can be hooked to my SUV, my bulldozer or my tractor since its powerpack is self-contained.

 

I did a lot on this build today, and I did very little. Let me explain.

I did not do very much on the actual build, but I dug out my T-Square and drafting set and laid out Front, Side and Overhead views of the 3 point hitch arrangement. This is the heart of the woodsplitter. Think of this whole build as having two parts.

(1) The splitter itself is rather simple, a splitter run by remote control back at the hitch of the trailer where my log loader controls are.
(2) The 3 point hitch arrangement has the PTO pump, has a mount for the hydraulic reservoir, mounts for a seat (since standing all day would be fatiguing), and the wood splitter valve. It also has to have a hitch for the log trailer to bolt to so it must be fairly rugged.

So I got some tight tolerances and wanted to draw up everything that fits in such a small area. I also wanted to use as much scrap steel as I could to keep this splitter down in cost. I think I can get it to work without much fuss and even without a lot of welding. I am a welder by trade, but at home...yeah I hate welding.

 

Thats an awesome implement! Now, if they only made that grapple attached to a 6x10 or 7x12 dump trailer i think I would buy one. That would make picking up longer lengths and big rounds easier.

 

The reason the dump box is so small (1 cubic yard) is because loaded with rocks or gravel the loader has a hard time picking it up. Since a yard of gravel weighs 3000 pounds and a cord of wood weighs 5400 (green), you could get about 2/3 of a cord on it and still dump it with the grapple. The trailer itself is rated for 5000 pounds.

The work around this issue would be to attach a hydraulic cylinder to assist in lifting instead of the loader thereby giving me more of a load as the goal for me would be ideally 1 cord. A telescoping cylinder would be easier to install over that of a shorter throw, but the complex geometry of a lifting mechanism.

The Wallenstein Log Trailer does come with an optional flat bed, but the cost as $1200 which I felt was a bit high for what it consisted of. I am not sure which route to go on this. I could build a wooden flat bed that dumps, or simply extend the sides of my existing dump body so I could get more firewood in it. The simply answer would be to have bolt on 2x4's with plywood sides to the existing dump box and achieve what I need in a low tech/low cost way, but a flat bed with fit in stake sides would be nice at times too.

 

Do you use a cad programme for this or the old by hand drafting table?

 

I'm an old duffer Kimberly, and in school we had shop drawing, but it was old school! Once in awhile I will use Excel and their tiny boxes to cobble up a quick idea, but I personally like pen and pencil, plastic triangles and T-squares. It is silly I know in this day and age, but it gets me where I need to be.

I have made progress on this, just in a very un-picture type of way. I cobbled up a surprisingly large chunk of the material I need for it with steel I had lying about. They are all measured and cut to length with bolts bought and everything to proceed to my father's house where a welder resides. Again another pitiful truth; here I am a retired welder, but have no welder in which to weld. The only thing I am missing for parts is the canopy structure (in case it rains) and a steel cup holder to hold my mug of Joe!

 

Progress...

After a lot of time thrown in the corner in a pile of stashed away metal parts, I finally resurrected this idea and went to work with welder and skill. Surprisingly, it went together pretty good with no issues. That is rare, when I usually design something there typically is some issues with this or that not working out.

I actually got a lot done. I got the carrier welded on, which houses the hydraulic tank, hitch for the log trailer, and seat. The later is important as with splitting, you must be comfortable if you are going to be splitting for hours. I stole a seat off a Ford Focus just so that it has adjustability so I can move up to the hydraulic controls on the loader with relative comfort. It has all functions though; back and forth on the track system, back tilt, head rest adjustability, and lumbar support adjustment. Sadly, the seat was from the drivers side, so I had to place the splitting control lever on the left side instead of the right just because of the way it was made, but I got all the hydraulic lines to attach.

There is a wee bit of work to do on the wood splitter itself. I did get the mounting bracket attached, and cleaned up some junk off the old homemade splitter itself that is no longer needed, but still want to put in a four way splitting head. Ultimately I have a really good design for a whole new wood splitter designed, but want to cobble this one together first just to see if it works as well as I think it will. Splitting wood without touching wood sounds idyllic at this point, but we shall see. With a PTO pump on the tractor, I should be able to get good pressure and flow to make everything work quite well.

This is not a great picture taken while cobbling it together, but you can see how the seat is situated and how the levers and stuff work.

 

It is a 540 RPM one, so I think at 3000 RPM it might be pushing 10 gpm at most. That still is quite a bit. I have used it on a 3 point hitch wood splitter so I know it has the speed and power, but my next build will be a slasher.

That will get its own thread when I start building that, but one thing I have noticed in the 9 months I have had this log loader is, it takes a fair amount of time to just measure trees to the 8 foot length and then buck them into 8 foot lengths. A slasher would speed up the process a lot. Right now I can only produce about 5 cords a day, and a lot of that is wasted time measuring and then bucking trees. That can be mechanized with what I got.

The good thing is, with this carrier, a lot of the slasher has already been built. I just need to basically build the 8 foot frame and mount a bar to it, then buy a hydraulic motor to power the saw. In that way there is no moving parts, just lower the log onto the bar and slash the wood into 8 foot lengths. I THINK 10 GPM at 2000 PSI will do it, but we will see. That is another build though.

 

Okay, did a bunch of welding today and got the four way splitter head done. I just need some hydraulic lines now and it should work. A little Kubota Paint would make everything match up too. In any case we took it out and snapped some pictures just to show the basic concept of it.

 

I would love to see a video of this machine in action.