Real men play with unicorns (log splitter)

[Egon]

I was wondering if the Hat was required?? I need one like that!

 

[Bill Barrett]

Thanks! I love it!

 

[jimmysisson]

Wow, that skidsteer mounted stickler is almost as slow as my old home-made rig! His does cost a lot more and tear up the lawn, though.
I used an axle-mount Stickler for a couple years but you have to be young and alert, no limited slip as stated, and not mind spending a long time on your knees. No thanks!
Jim

 

[Highbeam]

I got the wood all split up. It took about 14 hours total of splitting over three days and sucked up about 4 gallons of diesel. Plenty of breaks to rest. I hit one huge ants nest that totally dumped out milions of carpenter ants. Gross. I brought out the chickens which sat there and ate a million ants. Our eggs our going to taste fANTastic.

Those fence posts are either 10 or 12 feet apart. The real fun is stacking (NOT).

 

[dirt ditch]

Nice pile of firewood Highbeam. Looks like your helper is waiting on you to start stacking.

 

[RockyMnt1]

I have a unicorn splitter bolted to the axle of a 1981 Bronco (manual trans). It works great. Engine is at idle and transmission is in first gear, so the thing is not rotating very fast at all, but does have all of the torque that I need. I have split 2.5 ft diameter pine pieces. I do use a log on the ground to prevent the wood from spinning. Only very occasionally does the engine stall due to resistance from the wood. I do agree that the knotty stuff is hard to work with and I also have a hatchett handy.

I don't have any kids around, no loose clothing, and only work for an hour at the most. I usially split 5-8 cords of pine/aspen and have been doing so for about 4 years.

Saves tractor engine time and is a very simple, reliable device.

 

[Highbeam]

I'm not looking forward to the stacking but I need to stack it to measure it and make room for another load! The plan is to have two years of supply put up this summer. The first year's supply needs to be drying ASAP and then I can use this summer to process the following year's wood. I expect to go through 6-8 cords per year in my leaky old uninsulated farmhouse.

The tractor was bought to use so I do not mind putting hours on it. I rather prefer to use the tractor engine with the cheap off-road diesel that it sips.

The benefit to using your pickup is that you can use the reverse gear to unscrew the unicorn horn if it runs into a tough round of wood.

 

[AlanB]

We used those in Germany, but the ones we had were mounted over a table type deal.

It has been a while, but if I remember right, you adjusted the table a bit up or down for the "basic" size wood you were doing.

You set the wood down flat on the table, then jammed it forward onto the spinning screw.

I used the stuffing out of that thing, and that other type saw in another thread so that we had firewood to heat the house (yes, that was the only heat)

I may have been too stupid to realize the dangers, but it was as safe as many of the things I was doing at the time.

 

[daBear]

Any splitter can look like it does great when you use clear short blocks of wood without knots. While most of my wood splitting has always been done with an 8# splitting maul and wedges I did have to rent a splitter after Katrina two years ago. We had a twin trunk 28" diameter white oak tree blown across the front of our house. A horizontal splitter means you have to pick the wood up to work it. So I chose a vertical splitter with a 28T ram and finished several cords in one day. Anything to do with firewood is work, but the vertical splitter gets my vote.

 

[copperdog]

I lost a good friend because of one of those things.
Get it to the junk yard while you are still able, because it will HURT you!
The price of scrap is high now, use the money to buy some heating oil.