EddieWalker
Epic Contributor
As usual, I'm way behind in splitting wood for the winter. We've had a few cold days below freezing and it's become obvious that I need to get busy. Log splitter is the Troy Bilt from Lowes with the Honda engine that starts so easily. We heat with a wood stove and I like my wood to be about a foot long and split fairly small. This allows us to get the fire going quickly, build up some coals and keep the house warm with a minimal amount of wood. One basket is more then enough to do this on the coldest of nights with plenty left over to start another fire in the morning to take off the chill.
If you look close you can see the plywood tables that I attached to the wood splitter. This was a new idea that I got this year that has really made a huge difference in speeding up the process and cutting down on how many times I have to pick up the other half of the round after splitting up the other half. I just cut some scrap 3/4 inch plywood to size and attached it to the existing metal brackets with some carriage bolts. Fast, cheap and simple!!!
I'm trying something new this year too. In the past, I would take down the tree, or work on one that had fallen over from a storm where it fell. I would cut off the branches and then a bunch of rounds right there, then drag the log splitter to the tree and split it there and toss each piece of firewood into the back of the Mule. I would drive it back to my house and stack it. To cut down on the number of times I'm handling the wood, and make it easier to cut the rounds, split them and get them stacked, I'm cutting the tree into 20 foot lengths, give or take a few feet, and hauling them to the side of my house with the grapple. Then I cut them into rounds there, split them and stack them all in the same place. This seems to be a lot faster way of doing things. There is more mess to clean up, but that goes really fast with a rake and flat shovel into 5 gallon buckets.
A side benefit that my wife thought up while cleaning up, was separating the small chips into buckets for kindling. This makes starting fires even easier and it doesn't take hardly any effort to do.

If you look close you can see the plywood tables that I attached to the wood splitter. This was a new idea that I got this year that has really made a huge difference in speeding up the process and cutting down on how many times I have to pick up the other half of the round after splitting up the other half. I just cut some scrap 3/4 inch plywood to size and attached it to the existing metal brackets with some carriage bolts. Fast, cheap and simple!!!
I'm trying something new this year too. In the past, I would take down the tree, or work on one that had fallen over from a storm where it fell. I would cut off the branches and then a bunch of rounds right there, then drag the log splitter to the tree and split it there and toss each piece of firewood into the back of the Mule. I would drive it back to my house and stack it. To cut down on the number of times I'm handling the wood, and make it easier to cut the rounds, split them and get them stacked, I'm cutting the tree into 20 foot lengths, give or take a few feet, and hauling them to the side of my house with the grapple. Then I cut them into rounds there, split them and stack them all in the same place. This seems to be a lot faster way of doing things. There is more mess to clean up, but that goes really fast with a rake and flat shovel into 5 gallon buckets.
A side benefit that my wife thought up while cleaning up, was separating the small chips into buckets for kindling. This makes starting fires even easier and it doesn't take hardly any effort to do.
