Slide action wood splitter - GIF

[Ricklesss]

That's a very good point. My firewood varies a fair bit in length. Sorting wood or moving the anvil would make it a pain, unlesss it was really quick somehow.
But all my firewood does have a (mostly) flat/square cut, so the cone is looking better and better..
Thanks!
RicklesssS in Oregon.

[Frank S]

I use mesquite for my fire wood because I have acres and acres of the stuff with many already dead trees. the problem with most splitters is the grain in the wood I use is never predictable also the longer dead they are the better they will readily split. I don't bother trying to cut to a specific length since I'm not selling it anyway. Often I can split a piece of wood by wielding the ax with 1 hand after I make the first split which sometimes requires swing the ax as hard as I can with both hands then 1 arming a 12 lb sledge onto the ax a few times after the first split they usually split into 2 or 3 finger width pieces easy.
I have thought about building a hydraulic log splitter with a star shaped blade of mounting a blade and anvil on my backhoe like my neighbor has done. But my backhoe is too large to be handy around a log pile so it would be slower than an ax and hammer. a vertical hydraulic log splitter would be nice but I need the exercise

[Jon]

I think we've hit peak up-and-down sliding motion.

[Toolmaker51]

I've seen similar, and somewhat more effective. Only difference, the guide rod has a set of 'clutch washers' and a light compression spring above. It adjusts to position the splitter a short distance above the wood. This adds inertia, instead of resting direct contact, when the slide hammer hits.

[ranald]

I thought the splitter was a bit high for that person: set it on a bit shorter stump. Those small sections did look pretty green and soft. I'd like to show her some real seasoned hard wood to split. My 21y.o. son loves the challenge so i always give him some curly grained with branches removed to test his skill.LOL. Some old flood wood or blackwood is tougher than steelwood & 3 times the diameter. sometimes the burn time isn't much better than eucalypt/corymbia sp.

[Jon]

2:07 video:

[ranald]

a chip off the old block: safety glasses? some recoil/ jarring but like Dundee said " this is a ....".

[old kodger]

Let me see you do that with old dry ironbark

[ranald]

Let me see you do that with old dry ironbark

at least some that hasn't had the ravages of white ants. I had many metre + long sections (about 6 to 700mm dia) that were stored poorly on the ground. Kept to mount very large mature staghorns (supurbum sp) like the small one in the pic

Anyway time to mount them (a 2 man job) came, and all that was left of my log sections were the "iron bark" exteriors: white ants ate out the whole interior of almost all the large logsections.

The one in the pic is mounted on a ext ply base with appropriate filling as trees such as the Leopard tree Caelaspinia sp.( now Libidibia ferrea) does not have suitable bark for the fern.

[Jon]

I like this purpose-built version of the trick for splitting a log by placing it in an old tire.