# Super Split HD or Timberwolf TW-2?



## CT-Mike (Feb 2, 2009)

So my tax return is much larger than I expected and the wife has given the ok to buy a splitter. The Super Split HD and the TW-2 are about the same price so I was wondering which one does everyone feel is the better way to go?

I am leaning towards the TW-2 but please help me make up my mind.

Thanks,

Mike


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## pinewoodburner (Feb 2, 2009)

Both are nice splitters.  They each have there good and bad points.  If you are splitting really big wood, like 36". go with the Timberwolf.  The super split is fast, but I have heard that it does not handle tough wood that great.  With the speed on the super split, you need to be very careful.  That machine is not for everyone.  If you want the fastest splitter, that is it.


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## Wet1 (Feb 2, 2009)

I have a Super Splt and love it... In fact, I don't ever see myself owning another hydraulic splitter.  It really boils down to what it is you are splitting.  If you routinely work with really tough wood (very knotty, bad crotches, big elm, ect.) and over 2' stuff, I'd probably suggest going with a hydraulic.  The SS will work through just about anything, but it's not optimal for the real nasty stuff.  Otherwise, the SS wins hand down.  Looking at the size of your saws and knowing what wood is typical in CT, my guess is you'd be very happy with the SS.

I've posted about the SS numerous times over on AS (a few times here as well), but frankly I don't feel like typing it all again.  Do a search and I think you'll find a lot of good info about these splitters over there.


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## Gooserider (Feb 5, 2009)

I help a friend with his firewood business, and when we are splitting, we have two splitters going - one is a 20 ton MTD hydraulic in vertical mode, the other is a Supersplit - I generally run the hydraulic (I don't really feel comfortable with the Supersplit for a number of reasons), while my friend runs the SS.  We are mostly splitting down already split wood to a smaller size - so we are both dealing with the same kind of wood, feeding onto a conveyor that dumps it in the trailer or truck...

I feel like it's a classic "Hare and Tortoise" situation...  The hydraulic takes virtually no upkeep, though we do throw some grease on the rail occasionally.  Mostly I just sit in front of it and crank out wood.  When my friend is running the SS, he blows my doors off for production, but he can't keep it up - there is a LOT of upkeep and ongoing fiddling to keep the SS working - there is a rail that constantly needs cleaning or the bearing that rides on it gets stuck.  It likes to get jammed on wood fragments in the pusher track.  It seems to be constantly getting out of whack, and needing one thing or another tweaked on it. In the meantime I just keep on making splits with the hydraulic...  Bottom line, at the end of the day we've probably thrown comparable amounts of wood on the belt.

Seems to me like the hydraulic wins hands down on reliability, and not needing constant attention, the SS wins on pure output capacity, but it's hard to get..

Gooserider


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## antknee2 (Feb 5, 2009)

I recently purchase a new model J Super Split with the production table . Had to slide it off a tractor trailer with only a little help from the Fedex guy , heaver than I thought . Having used a high quality hydraulic splitter mostly in the vertical position for 25 years , I found the Super split a real pleasure to operate and I found production is so fast that  my pile of splits grew so large I had to stop splitting and spend days stacking . Working sanding up at perfect height fo me is a major treat , the production table is a must . The machine is well worth the money . For the monster logs I will fire up the old hydraulic splitter and reduce them down to manageable sizes vertically . 
Anthony


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## LarryD (Feb 6, 2009)

I am extremely happy with my tw-2hd.  I do have the 4 way wedge, log lift and the sorting table.  The options make the splitter.  One thing I have learned over the years is not everyone can run equipment.  With that said perhaps neither the SS or TW can be appreciated by all!  It was an investment, but well worth it.  When your wife say's thats teh best 5K you've ever spent, that is saying something.

LarryD


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## kenny chaos (Feb 6, 2009)

You must be young and dumb.  When I got extra money, I BUY firewood.

Honestly, I guess it would depend on your situation.  They're both top dollar models and you gotta remember that we got tough times coming.
You could do just as well for half the price.


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## Woodrat (Feb 6, 2009)

Gooserider said:
			
		

> - there is a rail that constantly needs cleaning or the bearing that rides on it gets stuck.  It likes to get jammed on wood fragments in the pusher track.
> 
> Gooserider



Goose--- I have both a SS and a Timberwolf------- the only reason people have problems with junk building up on the SS rail is that they insist on slobbering grease or heavy oil on the top of the track which only serves to attract dirt & debris-- spray it with silicone/WD40/teflon and you won't have problems! It's true that if a splinter gets driven under the pusher in the process of splitting, it is a PITA because instead of having hydraulic pressure to return the rack to its proper position, you only have a return spring. The upside is that it doesn't happen often if you keep the top rail clean.
-----------The only time I had problems with things needing to be "tinkered with" was before I converted it to run on an electric motor---the vibration of the small gas engine would always be loosening things. If I could only have one splitter and didn't have to deal with "monster" wood on a regular basis-- I'd buy another SS.  (mine is probably 25? yrs old!

Best wishes ,Woodrat-----PS-this is a machine that has literally split many hundreds ( if not thousands) of cords of wood


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## savageactor7 (Feb 6, 2009)

Well Gooserider has provided a good side by side comparrison...

...here's my take as just some guy spiting for his own use...buy the one that will split Elm the easiest.


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## Gooserider (Feb 6, 2009)

Woodrat said:
			
		

> Gooserider said:
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> 
> 
> ...



Thanks for the advice, I will tell him what you said, can't promise he'll pay much attention, as he is sort of set in his ways in some regards....

Gooserider


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## rydaddy (Feb 7, 2009)

TW-2  4way wedge and the grate/table...  I keep two people movin' to try and keep up with it all.


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## antknee2 (Feb 8, 2009)

I have some good new about the Super Split J model , I saved a ton of knotty twisted crotches from a big old Swamp Maple cut down last year , to burn in the Seton boiler . The Seton boiler will burn anything you can lift into it . For testing purposes I switched over to  boiler that loves dry relatively small splits . So today I put the Super Split to a real test with the nasty twisted crotches of the swamp maple . The machine cut right through all the rounds , did take 3-5 hits with the ram on some . Just have to get the feel of the machine . 
Anthony


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## Wet1 (Feb 8, 2009)

I'd still take the SS any day of the week, but I did notice a like new Timberwolf TW2 with 4 way wedge on CL in Wallingford yesterday for $2400.  I don't know if this is a good price or not, but I thought I'd pass it along in case you're interested.


BTW, I've never had a single problem with my SS which required me to shut the machine down and fix it.  When I first got it, I did have a couple of issues with cleanliness under the rack which required cleaning out.  Once the machine broke in and I learned to scrape the beam every so often (along with a shot of WD40 here and there), I don't have any more issues.   Goose, if your buddies SS is up and down as much as you suggested, it sounds like he has no clue how to run it or it's in dire need of maintenance (or some Loc-tite).  The SS is incredible simple and reliable, much more so than a hydraulic splitter.  It should also run circles around the hydraulic, all day long.


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## Gooserider (Feb 8, 2009)

Wet1 said:
			
		

> I'd still take the SS any day of the week, but I did notice a like new Timberwolf TW2 with 4 way wedge on CL in Wallingford yesterday for $2400.  I don't know if this is a good price or not, but I thought I'd pass it along in case you're interested.
> 
> 
> BTW, I've never had a single problem with my SS which required me to shut the machine down and fix it.  When I first got it, I did have a couple of issues with cleanliness under the rack which required cleaning out.  Once the machine broke in and I learned to scrape the beam every so often (along with a shot of WD40 here and there), I don't have any more issues.   Goose, if your buddies SS is up and down as much as you suggested, it sounds like he has no clue how to run it or it's in dire need of maintenance (or some Loc-tite).  The SS is incredible simple and reliable, much more so than a hydraulic splitter.  It should also run circles around the hydraulic, all day long.



My friend has split hundreds, if not thousands of cords with his SS, and when it is running does run circles around me with it.  He uses it to the point where he's had to have the beam built back up with weld metal twice because it had worn down to the point where the bracket for that little bearing under the pusher was hitting the edges of the groove it had worn.  A lot of his down time is scrubbing crud off the beam - he says that one of the keys is to stop and scrub the beam any time the ram fails to retract properly...  I also mentioned the earlier comments about using spray lubes instead of grease, and he (kind of as I expected) asserted that the way he greases the unit is the way that SuperSplit tells him to do so...

He also feels the SS is a much more complicated machine internally than the hydraulics, and I agree 100% - a hydraulic has a cylinder (one moving part) a pump with maybe a half dozen, and a valve with one or two more.  All the bearings and other crud sensitive parts in a hydraulic are inside the fluid system, where they get constant lubrication...  On the SS, you have a bunch of semi-exposed bearings controlling a precision machined rack and pinion gear set, that essentially operates by slamming the gears together - much more complex mechanically...  (And the parts for the Hydraulic are also far less than some of the major parts for the SS if the prices my friend was quoting at me were accurate...)

Gooserider


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## Wet1 (Feb 9, 2009)

Gooserider said:
			
		

> My friend has split hundreds, if not thousands of cords with his SS, and when it is running does run circles around me with it.  He uses it to the point where he's had to have the beam built back up with weld metal twice because it had worn down to the point where the bracket for that little bearing under the pusher was hitting the edges of the groove it had worn.  A lot of his down time is scrubbing crud off the beam - he says that one of the keys is to stop and scrub the beam any time the ram fails to retract properly...  I also mentioned the earlier comments about using spray lubes instead of grease, and he (kind of as I expected) asserted that the way he greases the unit is the way that SuperSplit tells him to do so...
> 
> He also feels the SS is a much more complicated machine internally than the hydraulics, and I agree 100% - a hydraulic has a cylinder (one moving part) a pump with maybe a half dozen, and a valve with one or two more.  All the bearings and other crud sensitive parts in a hydraulic are inside the fluid system, where they get constant lubrication...  On the SS, you have a bunch of semi-exposed bearings controlling a precision machined rack and pinion gear set, that essentially operates by slamming the gears together - much more complex mechanically...  (And the parts for the Hydraulic are also far less than some of the major parts for the SS if the prices my friend was quoting at me were accurate...)


If he is truly using oil or grease to lube the beam, then I'm sure he is having a lot of very unnecessary down time as I can only imagine the amount of crud that must build up there.  Using silicone or wd40 every so often works excellent and there's minimal (if any) issues with the ram getting hung up if the beam is scraped occasionally.  I leave a 1" scraper sitting on the machine (wedged between the beam and the engine mount on the left side) and I scrape the beam down about once every 20 minutes or so.  The process takes approximately 15 seconds.  Other than this, I never have any down time.  I do spray and wipe everything down with WD40, and lube the rack/pinion at the end of the day, but that's about it.   Unless it was one hell of a hydraulic splitter, there's no way a typical hydraulic could keep up with the SS, even if the SS was down for several minutes each hour... the SS is just so much faster.

I suppose I can see your point that the SS is a little more complicated when you add up all the moving parts (although it's still a very simple machine), but overall I still think it's a very reliable design.   The issue I have with your original statement is you make it sound like the SS is constantly down for one reason or another and that over the course of a day the hydraulic splitter will do just as much splitting... That's absolute nonsense.   You're talking about an old machine with an increadible amount usage.  That's like saying you have a friend with a F150 that has 1,500,000 miles on it, but you say Fords break down a lot...  Very impressive feat to get to that point, but one should also obviously expect increased mechanical failures as well given the age and wear and tear it's seen over the years.  The big wear item on the SS is those little bearings, but they can be bought for about $5 each and changed in a couple of minutes, and even these should last a VERY long time.   The SS is pretty much built with off the shelf parts, so most of the parts that make up this machine can be bought through other avenues (such as McMaster Carr) should something actually need replacing, but you'd have to do a hell of a lot of splitting before any significant wear or rebuilding should need to be done.  On the flip side, I would completely expect a hydraulic splitter would need significant upkeep and rebuilding to keep running after splitting hundreds/thousands of cords of wood as well... but that would take a very long time for one to get to that point given the speed differential.  Just think about the cost of hydraulic fluid/filters and additional fuel usage alone (the SS sips gas by comparison), never mind the lines, seals, overheating, and other failures one would expect to occur over this kind of time frame with a hydraulic unit.  When you look the a the big picture, not only is the SS much faster, but I would expect the SS to be cheaper to run over the life of the machine as well.  If the SS wasn't faster, cheaper, and more reliable, it wouldn't be the choice of the high volume guys... which I think it's pretty much the standard for production work, short of a processor.

BTW, if your friend has split literally thousands of cords of wood with his machine, I'd say that's a damn impressive testament to the longevity of the design.  Not a lot of splitters live long enough to reach that point... and that's a number the average home owner/small reseller will likely never come close to reaching in his lifetime.


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