Looks like a great log splitter

[CADplans]

For me, a tool has to earn its keep, to stay in the shed,,
My DIY splitter does WAY more than split wood,,

It is a hydraulic press, I have pulled stumps with it,, and, most importantly,,
it takes up VERY little shed space.

 

[oosik]

Great for straight grained wood. Might have some problems with the knotty pine I have around here.

 

[ultrarunner]

Looks like the perfect size for my wedgewood kitchen stove...

 

[Hamlin6]

I like the concept but as others have mentioned I don't think it would handle tough grained wood very well. It would also need a horizontal bar that goes across the top of the round to keep it from wondering too far up. Having said all of this I'm not a huge fan of horizontal splitters. I prefer a vertical one or if it is horizontal it needs to be very low to the ground. I've spent too many days lifting very heavy rounds onto the rail and it wears on the back quickly.

 

[sd455dan]

Interesting design. Cobbled together with his standard log splitter. Good for easy stuff; some of that looked like pine.

I would like to see even some really knotty pine go through that splitter and a bit less dry rounds would work it harder also.

 

[Buggs67]

For me, a tool has to earn its keep, to stay in the shed,,
My DIY splitter does WAY more than split wood,,

It is a hydraulic press, I have pulled stumps with it,, and, most importantly,,
it takes up VERY little shed space.

CAD your engineer is showing!
That's an impressive machine.

 

[Citydude]

For me, a tool has to earn its keep, to stay in the shed,,
My DIY splitter does WAY more than split wood,,

It is a hydraulic press, I have pulled stumps with it,, and, most importantly,,
it takes up VERY little shed space.

Where are model's 1-5?

Nice looking splitter. Great design

 

[Robo 52]

As others have mentioned above, that splitter is fine for softwoods that are probably prevalent in the area of the world where the vid seems to show it being used - scandinavian countries. I'm sure it seems to do well with evergreen logs like pine, fir, hemlock, larch, spruce and such. Here in the No. US that splitter wouldn't last a couple hours against white, red or black oak, ash, hard sugar maple, beech and locust. One good locust or hickory crotch thrown in there would split that thing into ten pieces on the first stroke.
Reminds me of the vid of the guy putting a bungee cord around a nice 12" fir round and neatly splitting it into 8 nice pieces with his Fiskar axe. Cute, but not reality. A 40-ton automated 4-way wedge splitter still hangs up sometimes on aged oak and maple - have to pass it through 2-3 times.
If you're fortunate to be set up to burn readily available softwoods, great. Hard wood is a different animal.

 

[davedj1]

I do like the idea of the chunk not moving and having to be pulled back with each stroke! Most of my wood wouldn't go through it thogh.

 

[DanMc77]

I find the comments here to be very interesting. The OP has a brilliant design, and although it may not be able to handle knotty wood, his design illustrates a fully automatic splitter that will work beautifully on most rounds. If it can't handle the tough stuff, then improvements could implemented. I have to split about 6 cords each year and would love to have a machine like this. I would put most rounds on this machine and then take the tough stuff over to the "normal" splitter and do those manually. To be able to drop a round on there and then let it do its thing would be a massive time saver for me.

The first Sikorsky helicopter could barely lift itself and was useless, but the idea was proven. Now look at what we have.