A while back someone asked me to get a pic of Dad's old wood splitter that he mounted on a manure spreader -- a bit unconventional, but it seems to work for him . . .or at least it did when he was actively burning wood.
A little history. This was the first hydraulic woodsplitter in town to my Dad's knowledge . . . built by himself out of spare parts and pieces back in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Dad has always been a tinkerer and was able to get some of the parts from the mill where he worked . . . the piston came out of a Case tractor or dozer loading arm. Originally, the hydraulic hoses connected to an old Ford tractor hydraulics, but like many things (such as the handle) Dad has changed things over time so that this now has an hydraulic oil tank and runs off a tractor's PTO shaft.
Originally this was mounted on a three-point hitch, but at some point Dad decided to mount is crossways in front of the old horse-drawn manure spreader . . . the idea being that he could split the wood, toss the splits into the trailer and then use the ratcheting mechanism of the spreader to pull the splits to the back without needing to get in and out of the trailer repeatedly.
As I said, Dad isn't using the woodsplitter much these days since his house burned down from the OWB . . . that's a whole other story. I think he mostly uses the whole get up now mostly as a trailer based on the fact that he had a bunch of junk in the trailer when I took these pics last night.
A little history. This was the first hydraulic woodsplitter in town to my Dad's knowledge . . . built by himself out of spare parts and pieces back in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Dad has always been a tinkerer and was able to get some of the parts from the mill where he worked . . . the piston came out of a Case tractor or dozer loading arm. Originally, the hydraulic hoses connected to an old Ford tractor hydraulics, but like many things (such as the handle) Dad has changed things over time so that this now has an hydraulic oil tank and runs off a tractor's PTO shaft.
Originally this was mounted on a three-point hitch, but at some point Dad decided to mount is crossways in front of the old horse-drawn manure spreader . . . the idea being that he could split the wood, toss the splits into the trailer and then use the ratcheting mechanism of the spreader to pull the splits to the back without needing to get in and out of the trailer repeatedly.
As I said, Dad isn't using the woodsplitter much these days since his house burned down from the OWB . . . that's a whole other story. I think he mostly uses the whole get up now mostly as a trailer based on the fact that he had a bunch of junk in the trailer when I took these pics last night.
![[Hearth.com] RE: Homemade splitter . . . on a manure spreader](/talk/data/attachments/17/17760-b483231ecd1ac145704cdbc13bb38faf.jpg?hash=tqBF5NB3Am)
![[Hearth.com] RE: Homemade splitter . . . on a manure spreader](/talk/data/attachments/17/17761-5938436ffdf6d763b185b37e51990fdf.jpg?hash=A7ah4KCASR)
![[Hearth.com] RE: Homemade splitter . . . on a manure spreader](/talk/data/attachments/17/17762-126eccfb87d732090b1f276038b0dcf0.jpg?hash=EoNC7XCMB0)
