Anybody own a firewood/log splitter?

I have a 35 ton SpeeCo sounds very similar to yours..

I have the 4 way wedge too...

Ash is the best for everything..

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For the past 30 years, KT has heated the basement of the Castle with wood, cut and gathered from the King's Forest. We always try to keep around 8 cords of firewood available, but we had such a mild winter last year that we only burned 3/4ths of a cord. KT does have a splitter, and has had several, after renting for a couple of seasons, His Majesty purchased a DR electric splitter on a stand. After maul splitting and log too large to lift, sometimes having to quarter the piece, KT has not had any trouble splitting these pieces. The DR gave it up and finding no shop to do repair work, KT purchased a 6 ton Harbor Freight splitter and mounted it onto the old stand. It is kept under a shed roof on the back side of the castle, where the stacked split dry wood is stored. KT has had it for 4 years now and it runs fine. When KT cuts trees, He then cuts them up into firewood sized pieces and Prince John uses the Kubota tractor to bring them out of the woods and dump them by the splitter. Anything about 12 inches diameter gets split at least once since the furnace door is 10 inch square. This system works well, with KT burning the past seasons dry wood and the greener wood having a rain proof environment to dry for 12 months before it is used. KT got tired of tinkering with gas operated equipment several years ago and had found that most electric options work well, if kept in the dry. KT has both a Stihl gas saw and an electric saw, both with 18 inch cutter bars. That is large enough to cut up a 36 inch diameter tree!

KT cuts primarily oak, red and other varieties of oak, which split well.

my brother just uses one of those little electric/hydraulic machines and it seems to do a great job! i think it's a 20 ton.
but this video looks like a fun alternative way of splitting those really stubborn pieces, LOL!

I love splitting wood, I've used a 24-ton for about six or seven years now.
I buy a pickup load of logs, usually ash, cherry or red oak. I burn almost every day throughout the winter here in Mich, and if I burn an entire cord all winter, that's pushing it! I have a small Lopi stove that's really efficient, and can heat my 2500 sq ft cape cod as warm as we like.

My house is all electric and I heat/cool with a geothermal furnace, open loop. With four of us, my electric bill averages about $200/mo year round.

A Fiskars axe is my best friend! Works well on the hard jarrah wood which we use for the pizza oven. Maybe we'll get wood-fired heating in the home at one point.

Hand split with a 8# maul while I'm able. Shin guards a must! Always wanted to try the fiskars splitting axe. Figure I'll get a hydraulic when I'm too old to hand split.

Black oak, incense-cedar and doug-fir, madron if lucky, ponderosa pine if need be...

Seasoned!!!!

Living on a farm we sold firewood to help make ends meet. The doctor even worked out a deal to help pay off my mother's medical bills. All we had was a maul, wedges and an axe. I was working at splitting wood one day when my cousin and his friend showed up. His friend said "let me show you how to do it." He wasted ten minutes trying to split a piece of oak. He handed the maul back to me and said "That's how you do it." Most people don't know what goes into splitting wood by hand.

I helped put myself through 2 years of college cutting, splitting and selling firewood. Long hard weekends and lots of maul and wedge work. Pay was OK at that time with all the rich folk in town wanting a half or full cord of custom cut wood for mood fires. New houses didn't sell unless they had a fireplace. I always included a bundle of fatwood for kindling. That alone got me lots of referrals. My cords always erred slightly on the strong side. That helped also. Funny how a homeowner who could not even lay a fire efficiently would be out with his tape measure and calculating the exact volume of wood. RK

My splitter is an old Timber King that is horizontal only, and I'd guess around the 20 ton range. Every year I think about getting a bigger one or putting a two-stage pump on it, but it just keeps plugging along as it is.
Most of you folks are splitting some seriously sissy wood. A lot of what I burn is Elm, and a lot of it is insanely twisted, making it a chore to split even with a gas splitter. Doing it w/o power by hand isn't going to happen. I've seen this stuff stall 35 ton splitters. You have to "pick" your way into it to break it down.

We cut wood to heat our home for many years, the last couple years we haven't becayse for some reason my son is allergic to it. We have a heavy duty splitter that goes on our farm tractors and works by hydraulics. It will split about anything but if the wood isn't too narly you can cut faster with an axe. I always loved going back to the woods and falling and cutting up trees, it is so peaceful. And it is a job that there is something to show for at the end of the day.

I KNEW somebody would come along with a shot of ELM! Damn 12lb maul bounces right off! You can pound a wedge into it like its a nail! Unsplittable! Good on ya Longhair!

I also cut and split a lot of wood in my day...For obvious reasons, I prefer Ash or White Oak...but you take what you can get, Pine, Popple, Sassafras, Shagbark Hickory, Maple, whatever, and they all teach you a lot about wood...

Hey Silversmith! I also had a Doctor down the road who I bartered wood for medical treatment for my Wife and Daughter..back in 1987 it was....We were so damn poor, making 10k/yr, but he took good care of us and just wanted a nice stack of wood around....I'm pretty sure it was more out of mercy than his need for wood...It was a good barter for me..

Anyway, I like swinging a splitting maul...or an axe, running a nice balanced and properly maintained saw that starts on the first pull....Something about it...it requires a bit of wood grain understanding and the appropriate force delivered at the exact location...Lots of ancillary skills involved!

Its something only learned by doing...Its a skill...not many people can do it anymore....like splitting a match with an axe and stuff like that...hand filing a blade in field and mixing fuel right...building chimneys and dikking around with woodburners...lots of crossover skills learned...

Chains and trucks and tractors and evaluating things..Being fast and efficient for the ROI....Max payout with the least amount of effort expended...Is this particular tree really worth the effort? Is there an easier more manageable straight grain one closer that will fall right where I want it? Just a whole lot of things heating a household and putting up Firewood teaches a guy, like City Nat Gas heat is the way to go!...Especially after getting into some Elm!

Absolutely right Mud!
I like splitting Oak, Ash, and other straight grain woods that "pop", and when I was young I didn't mind doing it by hand with a sledge & wedge and/or ax. Even those can be a challenge when working around knots or anywhere that they have some "burl" to 'em. Ash in particular has been plentiful these last few years, what with the Emerald Borer killing them all off around here, but it's happened long enough ago now that the Ash gravy train is about over.

I absolutely love the way Elm burns, but it is a bugger to split. Even with a gas splitter you're talking full strokes for every split, and that alone makes it take more time and effort.

This year I'm blessed and cursed at the same time. I have a White Oak in my front yard that's over 150yrs old, and it's finally reached the end of it's life span. It's been a grand tree to have all these years, and I'm really sad to see it go, but at this point there's nothing else to do but take it down for firewood. I figure that it will provide all the wood I need to burn for probably about the next two years. The rounds I'll get from it will be a fair bit bigger than these I was lucky enough to get from a neighbor last year.

Each one of these went a good 400lbs or so, and I had to noodle them into quarters just to be able to lift them into the splitter.

We often ran into twisted wood that was hard to split. More than once I have had to use an axe to chop out a wedge. It amazes me the prices that stores get for a small amount of wood these days. A lot of what they are selling wouldn't last for more than a few hours. I think we sold ours too cheap but back then we didn't have time to argue about it.

My theories on stacking/storing wood...

I used to think it needed to be stacked, dry, covered.. But I noticed how many critters liked my stacks.. Not that it was an issue, just something I noticed over a couple years.. Also noticed my fuel was burning too quickly.

One year I slacked off and just made a stack, and it was uncovered.. I found it to burn longer, and more even with some moisture in it? I now just pile it up preciously, and no issues.. Seems the critters don't care for it either..

I do have different piles by quality/expiration date, and sometimes separate by species. I'll use ash to start, and a mix throughout the day..

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Hi Longhair, I'm just a little crushed to learn that I have been splitting sissy wood. I felt so powerful! Oh well, my Wif still thinks I'm a hero so I'll just have to get over it. I have dealt with some of those fibrous and twistiferous woods myself. I once had some locust butts and crotches that defied a sledge and wedge, I ended up just sawing them into stovable pieces.


Silversmith, many wood suppliers around here have gone to marketing their wood in small shrink wrapped bundles. They get many times the price of a cord sold the conventional way. My sometime supplier, who was very reasonable, went that route and won't even consider selling split and delivered anymore.

Ice, in Western Washington, the humidity is so high that we have to cover our wood to get it to burn decently. Add to that all these Puget Sound Particulate Emissions Standards and you need to very efficient with your burning.

All that being said, I still love the independence of heating with wood. Last big ice storm when the power was out for 4 days, we plugged in the generator, threw a pot of stew on the woodstove and watched old movies. not a bad way to spend an evening!..........Russ K.

Mine is 25 ton.

Biggest thing to remember.
Let splitters warm up some, especially when cold, so fluid can flow.

Hard on pumps.

Some wood like elm can be harder to split.

Usually the stringeeer the wood the harder to split.
Dry wood also harder to split.

I based on using different splitters,,,25 ton is the bottom end as far as Inwould recommend.
Those 22 ton jobs, they will split wood like oak, ash, cherry, no problem.

But you move to hard maple, elm, dried hickory,,look out.

love hand splitting ash or cherry, makes you feel like superman. Elm, beach and stuff like that make you feel like a grade a wimp

You think about a lot of things when you are cutting,splitting,stacking and burning wood for heat....I wonder about what people did Way way back before there were chainsaws and trucks and iron wood stoves and mechanical splitters? Let alone automatic pellet feeders!

Surely, a guy could not dedicate this kind of time consuming effort with basically an axe, possibly the luxury of a crosscut saw, and maybe a horse? There were more important tasks on hand...I tend to think a guy had to build a fireplace and chimney right...something that would throw the heat into the dwelling and not up out the stack? Fire going all the time year round for cooking even?

A guy would probably command his kids to go and gather various dead branches no larger than your wrist to burn? You cannot trust a kid to swing an Axe without busting off the handle, and that would set a guy back half a day to whittle out a repair? Plus, you would never waste your main crosscut saw for cutting 16" lengths of 16" diameter Oak blanks day after day? Just to burn? Theres a LOT of BTU's stored in leaves and pinecones even! Just have the kids go and haul in various scrap such as this on the daily or as required??

I think in the 1800's, a lot of this was done barefoot as well...we all know how tough it is on modern footwear slogging around in the slush and mud...I cant imagine some old timey gear holding up at all...Just try making a set of shoes or gloves or knitting up socks from scratch! Let alone trusting a kid with important tools or wasting their energy and limited daylight putting up a nice orderly stack?..I just dont know how they did it, but I have thought about it a lot....

Anyway, Mankind somehow managed to make fire and survive before all the modern luxuries we have access to....Chainsaws are a relatively new invention...Woodsplitters even more so...just try chopping down a 30" diameter Oak tree with an axe, into manageable lengths, dragging them home, cutting up stove blanks with a bow saw or crosscut or something, then splitting and stacking? It would take a grown man all day! Try getting a modern day kid to do it! Damn! Within a week, All you will have to burn is busted axe handles, leaves, twigs and pinecones!

In the light of this historical context, WE got it easy!

On our farm we had a large field that was originally cover with trees. My grandfather and his hired hand cleared the field with axes and crosscut saws. He then chained a log to the stumps and twisted them out of the ground with his team of horses. I can't even imagine doing it today with chain saws and a tractor to pull the stumps. I have plowed that field many times and there aren't any stumps left. Most people don't know the work that the old farmers put into their farms.