We have an old La Font processor that has seen a lot of wood and probably its better days, well the most we can cut in an 8 hour period is 24 face cord of 16" wood. We power it with an old detroit diesel which is extremely loud with a good muffler and tall exhaust, and its quite hard on fuel too. All in all its an ok machine but i would rather cut with a saw. Last year the processor was down for most of the season for repairs and rework. I cut with a saw and didnt have any problems cutting 24 plus face cord of 16" a day on the weekends, then it was up to the splitter guy to catch up. I guess cost per cord would be a little cheaper with a processor but we get "community service " guys to split for us so cost stays down. we work em hard and feed them well and we get it done! We run through 2 or 3 chains a day on the processor vs 1 a day on my saw. I do all the sharpening so it doesn't matter.
We are in the process of building a 12 way wedge and considering a "slasher" saw instead of the saw chain. Slasher saws cut much much faster and hold up better in dirty wood. You sharpen them on the processor and replace them maybe once a year. Were sold on slasher blades. For example with our horse power a 12" maple log is about 1.5 seconds per cut. Cant come close with a chain.
We have a "Live deck" which we have about 1.5 cord of logs on at all times. The units you have to drag the log to with a winch cable just are to slow for me, to labor intensive, you move the log to the processor, hook the chooker, drag it into the processor then unkook, drag the cable/chain and rehook again. lot of extra work in my opinion.With our machine, its off the pile, onto the deck and thats it, the operator has the controls freeing your helper to do other things. We run with 2 people, sometimes 3. Were hitting about 1500 face cord a year now. a bit more than your needs...Hope this helps. . . .John
BTW i have also had experience with a Badger from Hudson, a little portable processor with a 24" saw chain. Good little machine but much to small for our needs. Its priced ok too. check it out here at
www.hud-son.com
