Randy,
Its windy today that is for sure. We lost power for a couple of hours tonight just as I was cooking dinner!
Good thing we have a wood stove. I put the soup on top of the stove, finished putting the sandwiches togather, and put them on the stove as well. Good thing we picked soup and grilled cheese tonight!
Its cold outside and raining pretty good. Did not want to open the fridge with the power out so I put a warm beer in a bucket of water I had put under one of the roof valleys to collect water for to flush toilets. The beer chilled pretty quick so all was well in the world.
I did have my splitter plumbed incorrectly. I reversed it last weeked and now it works more better. Move the lever left towards the but of the spiltter and the ram closes/splits. Move right and the ram opens.
I'm happy with the thing. I just hope I did not mess up my hydraulic pump. The TSC instructions could be clearer on this that is for sure. But putting the splitter togather was pretty easy. Pallet forks for the FEL help. Otherwise it will take a couple of people to lift the splitter up on its stand.
I figure at this point I have split 4 cords in roughly 24ish hours. I rounded up and figured it took 6 hours to split a cord by myself. I have another 1/2 cord to go and I'll be done for this season. The wood has been cut into rounds for almost a year so its pretty dry. I had a 1/2 cord that was left over from last season and it did not burn any better than what I have been splitting lately. Tarping sure helps.
I have split wood for a good seven hour shift with no problems. No way I could do that by hand. I had the tractor in the woods last weekend getting more firewood. I'll have one or two more trips to get the last bit of firewood this weekend. I wish the TSC splitter had more weight.
I "merged" two pallets togather with some left over 2x4s wedged into the ends of the pallets. Put the pallets togather like Legos and they fit over the pallet forks for a big platform. I can load that up with firewood rounds. Not enough weight on the splitter. The tractor rear end feel light.
Being tucked in tight off the tractor is a plus for use in the woods.
Now I did buy this splitter with the idea of having it sit off to the side of the tractor unhitched from the 3PH. I have not tried this but I made the hoses long enough to do so. I should be able to use the box blade to move wood around and then hook up the splitter.
I really was concerned that the 3ph splitter would limit my work on the tractor. And it has to some extent but right now splitting wood is the priority, thank fully I'm almost done, so doing any other work with the tractor is not an option. My next batch of splitting after this weekend will be for NEXT season. At that point I'll be trying the splitter off of the 3ph and just connecting the hoses.
Later,
Dan