I've always hand split, but I'm starting to have some physical problems from it now so I'm thinking about buying a splitter. I've only used one once, and it was a very large friends unit powered from a tractor. I don't have a tractor so I'll need a self powered unit. I looked at the Huskee 22 ton at TSC last night, they have it priced at $1099, it seemed nice but I have no idea what it is capable of. I would like to spend as little as possible as I really wasn't expecting this expense right now, but I don't want to buy something too small or too cheap that I will regret. I usually cut my wood in 16-18" lengths, and like to split to fairly small pieces for better drying and easier loading. I don't have my own place to cut wood so I pretty much take what I can get from scrounges ect, so sometimes my pieces have a lot of knots or are pretty large. Will this be able to handle what I need? How do you do very large rounds in a splitter like this? Do you split it on one side then rotate the round 180 deg and split it on the other side? I've been watching Craigslist for a used one too but no luck so far. Thanks for any advise you can give!
Josh, it sounds like you are where we were many moons ago. I had to quit splitting by hand so got a splitter. I was going into it blind as the only splitters I'd seen were on tractors and they were, well, lacking a lot. One evening I stopped at the farm store and there were no customers as they were about to close. The splitters were all set up indoors and on sale.
Manager saw us looking and came over. I told him that yes, we were thinking about a splitter but not seeing any of them work I did not know what to get or even if I wanted one. He asked questions and then pointed to the smallest splitter, a 20 ton unit (MTD with a 5 hp B&S engine) and said that would do everything we needed done. Naturally we asked questions too and in the end I offered him some dollars less than advertised....and he took it. But before I offered my comment to him was, "What if I buy this and take it home only to find it won't do the job I want done?" His reply was, "If that happens, you bring it back to the store and I'll refund all of your money."
I bought. If you hear a loud "Whoppee!" 20 some odd years ago, that was probably me when I split the first log with that thing! I was amazed. Naturally I threw some hard splitting stuff at it and it made splitting very easy. I was one happy camper.
But, how has that splitter held up? As stated, we bought this over 20 years ago and have split somewhere around 300 cord of wood. Our total cost for repairs have been $0.00. The only thing I have done is I had to re-tie the rope end of the pull starter as the knot gave out. No cost there. I do admit that it is using some oil and I thought about replacing the engine but for some odd reason this year it does not seem to be using much oil at all! So, the little B&S engine that most people bash has been good for us. (btw, the MTD is basically the same as the Huskee and I think they are built by the same company.)
I will admit we had one piece that it did not split. Perhaps it would have if I'd turned the split around and messed with it a bit but it was not worth it to me. I threw it on the brush pile and forgot about it.
While we have split mainly white ash for the last 10 years (because all our ash trees are dead), we have also split lots of elm, maple, oak, cherry, box elder and no doubt several other species because we have loaned the splitter to friends (too much of this!). Just before coming on the forum today I was splitting red and white oak plus some ash. Splitter can outwork the operator for sure.
Of course my advice is to be sure to get a splitter that will split vertically. This way you won't have to be lifting the big stuff. You can just roll it onto the butt plate and split. I do it but probably don't get many logs that are in excess of 250 pounds. If they are bigger then I'd get some help to move them but usually can handle them fairly easy. I always have my cant hook and pickeroon handy when splitting. I also do my splitting while sitting. No sense in working any harder than necessary.
Good luck.
EDIT: Forgot to answer on how I split the big ones. Best I can say is that it depends on the log. Some I split down the middle while others I slice from the sides. You learn quickly what is the easiest.
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