Tractors and wood! Show your pics

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My two least favorite things about dealing with firewood: clearing the brush out of my way after felling and limbing a tree and stacking.

It's always a bonus when I can drop the tree somewhere that I can just leave the limbs where they land. As for stacking: if I have to do much stacking above about 4 feet high, it aggravates an old wrestling injury in my neck and upper back, often requiring a trip or two to the chiropractor within the next few days.

My favorite thing is skidding the stems in.
Even when l get stuck l still love it.
l cut the crown off and skid the stem.
l don’t (won’t) limb in the woods.
l ease cut the crown limbs that l think will get stuck and then drag the crown to the landing and rescue any wood from the crown that’s 3” thick. The rest goes into the bonfire pile.
When l was logging, we never dealt with the crown. The clean up crews did.

 

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I’ve looked forever for one at a price I liked. Conveyors are expensive.

They are. We used an old hay bailer that he replaced the motor on. We needed a generator to run the thing.

 

[John_Mc]

My favorite thing is skidding the stems in.
Even when l get stuck l still love it.
l cut the crown off and skid the stem.
l don’t (won’t) limb in the woods.
l ease cut the crown limbs that l think will get stuck and then drag the crown to the landing and rescue any wood from the crown that’s 3” thick. The rest goes into the bonfire pile.
When l was logging, we never dealt with the crown. The clean up crews did.

My favorite part is probably the felling. Almost all of what I do is more or less a thinning-type operation. (I've been doing a lot of Crop Tree Release on my property.) I enjoy the puzzle of figuring out how to get the trees down in a manner that does not damage the trees I'm keeping: threading them between other trees, or in a direction they don't "want" to go, figuring out which ones to do first to create the opening into which the next tree can be dropped, etc.

Using the logging winch to pull them out is probably my next favorite. It's nice when they can come straight out, but I also get a kick out of using a self-releasing snatch block and figuring the best anchor point and where I want it to release.

I limb whatever I can in the woods for a few reasons: less mess to clean up elsewhere, less chance of barking up a tree I want to keep, and to leave the smaller wood to rot and return nutrients to the forest floor. Occasionally I'll pile things up a bit for wildlife habitat or to discourage deer from browsing young regeneration. Fortunately, forest fires are not much of a concern here (the old timers joke that our forests are made of asbestos. If you see a fire in a field that burns into the forest, it generally dies out within a few yards of entering the forest.)

 

[wolc123]

If that is the case, how do you ever get to the older wood? Or did you mean that you burn first what goes in first?

Fixed it, thanks.

I’m hoping to finish up the swinging doors on the east end of my back barn porch (rainy day splitting shed) this weekend.

I’ve just got to nail up a few more old 1” saw-cut chestnut roofing boards (recovered from an old barn I dismantled), and make a wood latch for it, then saw across the cross supports, so that the doors will swing open.

I got a sweet deal on those big strap hinges at a local garage sale a few years ago ($ 5 for all four). I knew I’d come up with a use for them someday.

I stack and split the larger rounds in there on rainy days (we get lots of them especially on weekends when I’m off work) with my spitter in the vertical position. I use it in the horizontal position, outside next to my bucking trailer, on the non-rain days.

I’m going to frame in the other end of the porch, which will have a man-door and a widow. I’ll open those up when I’m splitting inside, for a cross-breeze and to get rid of the fumes from the Honda gas engine on my splitter.

I might put a 240 volt electric motor on that if that little Honda ever craps out, but then I’d have to split all
My wood inside.

 

[John_Mc]

I might put a 240 volt electric motor on that if that little Honda ever craps out, but then I’d have to split all
My wood inside.

I had a 2 HP motor on an 16 Ton electric Ramsplitter years ago. I ordered that because it was the biggest I could get and still run off a standard 120V outlet (it did need to be on a 20 amp breaker. 15 amp Breakers would trip occasionally.) I only had one easily accessible 240 volt outlet, but wanted the splitter to be more portable than that, so went with a 120V model.

At the time, they sold the same splitter in a version with a 5 or 6 HP gas engine that had indentical specs. (They have since switched to a 1.5 HP motor on their 16 ton electric splitter.)

It worked pretty well. I was surprised what a 16 ton splitter could handle. Pieces that were too big or gnarly for it, I just left for the bonfire pile or split with a chainsaw. I ended up selling it and getting a gas powered splitter, since I wanted to be able to split in the woods without bringing a generator with me.

I mention this not to suggest the Ramsplitter brand, just to demonstrate the difference in HP required for a gas vs electric powered splitter. If you are going 240V, you'll be able to go to higher HP motors, but no need to match the HP rating of the gas engine you are replacing.

 

[wolc123]

I had a 2 HP motor on an 16 Ton electric Ramsplitter years ago. I ordered that because it was the biggest I could get and still run off a standard 120V outlet (it did need to be on a 20 amp breaker. 15 amp Breakers would trip occasionally.) I only had one easily accessible 240 volt outlet, but wanted the splitter to be more portable than that, so went with a 120V model.

At the time, they sold the same splitter in a version with a 5 or 6 HP gas engine that had indentical specs. (They have since switched to a 1.5 HP motor on their 16 ton electric splitter.)

It worked pretty well. I was surprised what a 16 ton splitter could handle. Pieces that were too big or gnarly for it, I just left for the bonfire pile or split with a chainsaw. I ended up selling it and getting a gas powered splitter, since I wanted to be able to split in the woods without bringing a generator with me.

I mention this not to suggest the Ramsplitter brand, just to demonstrate the difference in HP required for a gas vs electric powered splitter. If you are going 240V, you'll be able to go to higher HP motors, but no need to match the HP rating of the gas engine you are replacing.

I do like the portability of the gas splitter also. I made another shed for mine, using a garbage-picked truck cap for a roof, out on the creek bank by my bucking wagon.

I think the splitter I have is around 20 ton with a 5 hp Honda. It’s got to be at least 20 years old and has never given me any trouble. All I’ve done for maintenance is change the oil once a year and I always use ethanol-free gas.

When I use it vertical, I roll the big rounds onto it and sit on a chair while operating. I use it horizontal for the small stuff, never really needing to lift much because it is at the same height as my bucking trailer. I throw the split stuff into my tractor bucket or 3-point carryall (from either location) for transport to the woodshed.

For unloading the woodshed, I hand carry the wood across the lawn to the house porch (if the ground in between is froze which it didn’t this winter), or transport up the driveways with my tractor bucket.

That’s what I had to do all this winter. Hauling that wood was the main job for my larger tractor all winter so far because most of the snowfall we got was so light that I could easily handle it with my 10 hp Farmall Cub.

I imagine we are going to get blasted with one more heavy snow yet this winter because I’m going to take the blade off the back of my larger tractor and move my bush hog over to the side porch this weekend.

If I get that bush hog and my 2-row corn planter (I’m going to tuck that into the cleared out west end of the woodshed) out of the barn back porch, then I can get the wall built across that end.

It’s too wet to start any field work yet but I can knock off most of the building projects.

 

[Gordon Gould]

I had a 2 HP motor on an 16 Ton electric Ramsplitter years ago. I ordered that because it was the biggest I could get and still run off a standard 120V outlet (it did need to be on a 20 amp breaker. 15 amp Breakers would trip occasionally.) I only had one easily accessible 240 volt outlet, but wanted the splitter to be more portable than that, so went with a 120V model.

At the time, they sold the same splitter in a version with a 5 or 6 HP gas engine that had indentical specs. (They have since switched to a 1.5 HP motor on their 16 ton electric splitter.)

It worked pretty well. I was surprised what a 16 ton splitter could handle. Pieces that were too big or gnarly for it, I just left for the bonfire pile or split with a chainsaw. I ended up selling it and getting a gas powered splitter, since I wanted to be able to split in the woods without bringing a generator with me.

I mention this not to suggest the Ramsplitter brand, just to demonstrate the difference in HP required for a gas vs electric powered splitter. If you are going 240V, you'll be able to go to higher HP motors, but no need to match the HP rating of the gas engine you are replacing.

When I got my first powered splitter in 2013 I put a pressure gauge on it out of curiousity of what it really takes to do the job. It was the common 22 ton splitter with a 6.5 hp B&S motor on it. Peak pressure was 3500 psi to give 22 tons.

I was surprised that most stuff ( 80% I'd say ) split before the pressure got to 1000 psi - so less than a third of that 6.5 hp is used on average.

gg

 

[John_Mc]

Gordon - Most pieces don't seem to strain any splitter I've used at all.

The other factor besides pressure is the size of the cylinder. A 5" diameter cylinder puts 56% more pressure on the log than a 4" cylinder at the same PSI

 

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When I got my first powered splitter in 2013 I put a pressure gauge on it out of curiousity of what it really takes to do the job. It was the common 22 ton splitter with a 6.5 hp B&S motor on it. Peak pressure was 3500 psi to give 22 tons.


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I was surprised that most stuff ( 80% I'd say ) split before the pressure got to 1000 psi - so less than a third of that 6.5 hp is used on average.

gg

My first splitter was a Northern Tool advertised as 16 tons with a 5 hp B&S 4” cyl. It will split an 18” round of oak (red or white) with a 4 way attached and it’s been doing it for 26 yrs.
Your experiment has shed light on why it can which l initially always doubted.
A 14” gnarly or knotted round it will do w the single wedge.

 

[wolc123]

I finished the swinging doors and latch on the east end of my splitting shed yesterday. I wasn’t sure how those big heavy doors were going to swing, after I cut thru the center of the cross members with my sawzall, but they work pretty slick.

The little Ryobi 18 volt saw is laying on the beam on the left. That thing works pretty good but draws down the battery a lot faster than my drill.

It’s probably going to be a few weeks before I can get back on this project. Next up is enclosing the west end and installing a window and man door there.

Those 200 year old American Chestnut boards that I recovered from the roofs of my great great grandad’s old barns are nice to work with. They have a nice smell when I cut them, and I like the color. I also used one of the hickory pegs from those barns, that I pulled out of a hand hewn beam, for the handle on the new latch.

I’ve got plenty of that left to finish the enclosure of the splitting shed (far end and half of the dividing wall between the new 24 face cord capacity woodshed on the left.