Had an interesting experience with a splitter on Tuesday and with a chainsaw today.
Tuesday: A friend drops a 3' diameter dead ash on his farm. He bucks the logs with his Stihl Farm Boss w/20" bar and we are ready to split. We are using his tractor mounted three point hitch splitter. We were able to reduce some of the rounds by splitting around the outside of the log. The splitter would not even begin to split some of the other rounds. We tried splitting with full wedge, half wedge, aligning the wedge with existing splits, etc. and none of these techniques worked. We did not try cutting a 4" - 6" deep cut across the rounds and then starting the wedge into that slot. We just canceled the splitting session and he moved the rounds back to his house for storage. I think he will wait until this fall when the logs will be drier and perhaps easier to split.
Within the month I will be ordering a new Iron and Oak H/V 26 ton splitter and would like to try this on those same rounds. I will be splitting only for myself and a few close friends so some would argue that a 26 ton splitter is overkill. However, the lesson I learned on Tuesday is that a splitter should be sized mainly by the size and gnarliness of most of the wood you will be splitting and not just by the amount.
About a month ago this same friend dropped a 3.5' to 4' diameter dead ash in my yard. He then bucked everything down to about 2' diameter. Today: I started using my new Stihl MS250 w/18" bar that I purchased last week. I figured this saw would cut anything I was interested in tackling:wrong! The saw was great for cutting up to about 12" rounds. It performed perfectly at the task it was designed to perform. However, when I started getting into the 18" lower branches of that tree the saw began to bog down and smoke like the dickens. I began the cuts @ full rpm and didn't force the saw. The chain was very sharp and I let the weight of the saw do the work. I was used to using a Stihl 036 many years ago in another life so I was familiar with what that saw could do. I assumed the MS250 would do the same:wrong! The lesson I learned today is that a person should have two saws if he is going to be cutting trees up to 4' diameter. One saw (MS250 w/18" bar) for the small to medium wood and another (MS361? w/20" and 25" bars) for the bigger wood.
I can't afford another saw at this point but I can see a MS361 or similar in my future. I was hoping to avoid this purchase but I guess a guy cannot have too many useful tools, can he?
Something else I learned today is that I can still get a chain very sharp by using only the correct size file w/handle and following the guide marks on the cutters. This is the way I sharpened the 036 many years ago in Alaska and I was afraid I might have lost the touch. God, it felt good getting back into the wood again today!
John_M
Tuesday: A friend drops a 3' diameter dead ash on his farm. He bucks the logs with his Stihl Farm Boss w/20" bar and we are ready to split. We are using his tractor mounted three point hitch splitter. We were able to reduce some of the rounds by splitting around the outside of the log. The splitter would not even begin to split some of the other rounds. We tried splitting with full wedge, half wedge, aligning the wedge with existing splits, etc. and none of these techniques worked. We did not try cutting a 4" - 6" deep cut across the rounds and then starting the wedge into that slot. We just canceled the splitting session and he moved the rounds back to his house for storage. I think he will wait until this fall when the logs will be drier and perhaps easier to split.
Within the month I will be ordering a new Iron and Oak H/V 26 ton splitter and would like to try this on those same rounds. I will be splitting only for myself and a few close friends so some would argue that a 26 ton splitter is overkill. However, the lesson I learned on Tuesday is that a splitter should be sized mainly by the size and gnarliness of most of the wood you will be splitting and not just by the amount.
About a month ago this same friend dropped a 3.5' to 4' diameter dead ash in my yard. He then bucked everything down to about 2' diameter. Today: I started using my new Stihl MS250 w/18" bar that I purchased last week. I figured this saw would cut anything I was interested in tackling:wrong! The saw was great for cutting up to about 12" rounds. It performed perfectly at the task it was designed to perform. However, when I started getting into the 18" lower branches of that tree the saw began to bog down and smoke like the dickens. I began the cuts @ full rpm and didn't force the saw. The chain was very sharp and I let the weight of the saw do the work. I was used to using a Stihl 036 many years ago in another life so I was familiar with what that saw could do. I assumed the MS250 would do the same:wrong! The lesson I learned today is that a person should have two saws if he is going to be cutting trees up to 4' diameter. One saw (MS250 w/18" bar) for the small to medium wood and another (MS361? w/20" and 25" bars) for the bigger wood.
I can't afford another saw at this point but I can see a MS361 or similar in my future. I was hoping to avoid this purchase but I guess a guy cannot have too many useful tools, can he?
Something else I learned today is that I can still get a chain very sharp by using only the correct size file w/handle and following the guide marks on the cutters. This is the way I sharpened the 036 many years ago in Alaska and I was afraid I might have lost the touch. God, it felt good getting back into the wood again today!
John_M
il ratio maybe it is off?
