My Favorite Wood Splitter

[GeneralBill]

Years ago, I was given a dozen uncut cords with a time limit to remove them. I googled around for the best wood splitter and saw a fellow claim in the newsgroups that he could split wood faster and better than a splitter. He described a great setup, which I copied and made my job of hand splitting at least twice as efficient. I have been unable to find the old post.

The 32" round finally rotted to where I needed to make another. So I redesigned with a few improvements. Sorry if everyone already knows this -- no one in my area does.

Why is this good?
- The wood doesn't fly away after a strike. This alone is worth the price!
- The wood is at, and stays in, a nice bundle at waist height.
- The tire actually bounces the ax back up a bit! Recouping some energy
- The tire keeps the ax head from hitting the cutting base, axes stay sharper.
- Odd shapes, thin pieces, and slanted pieces are easily set for a solid strike.
- Most chips remain below where they are readily scooped for tinder/kindling

The design shown was made to be portable. My last weighed a few hundred pounds and had to be rolled at great effort to move.

Fabrication:
- Base: 4x4 treated wood, cradles Center. About 12" high. TimberLock bolts hold it together.
- Center: 4x4 wood inserts into Base, 5" of plywood are nailed into 4x4s (no nails used in middle where ax can hit), Has two 9" nails driven in, with 4" sticking out and heads cut of -- these are guides and locks for the Top pedestals
- Top: A half ton truck tire with 4 small 4x4 pieces mounted on it. These pieces raise the tire to a good height so the ax head won't hit the Center. They also provide holes for wood chips and water to find their way out.

That's it!

Bill

 

[GeneralBill]

Oh yea, the cost. I figure it was about $21. Mostly for two new 4x4s, but it used 16 TimberLock screws at 50 cents each -- pricey, but damn good screws. The other parts were scrap. This could be done for less if you have scrap wood and nails/screws. It could be as low minus one dollar if the tire place was fair and gave you a buck to remove an old tire!

I slathered old oil on the wood as a preservative.



Bill

 

[GeneralBill]

Sorry for the extra posts. But this is also good because I load it and just walk around it swinging away and quickly one large to several smaller pieces are split. It also works well for holding up small pieces to make kindling, or cleaving off small pieces every now and then to toss in the mix.

- Bill

 

[Chopslide]

looks pretty cool I usually stack rounds around my splitting zone to keep pieces from flyin to far but this looks much better

 

[WES999]

That looks good. It's very similar to the one I just built
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/46444/

I like your idea of raising up the tire, I may have to try that on mine.

It really helps increase productivity.

 

[GeneralBill]

That looks good. It's very similar to the one I just built
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/46444/

I like your idea of raising up the tire, I may have to try that on mine.

It really helps increase productivity.

Thanks for the pointer. I missed it since I've not been reading the Wood Shed forum. My post to the Hearth forum must have been redirected to the Gear forum. Time to add two more interesting forums to my list.

Will need to add rain drains as suggested by Ozzy.

- Bill