Rotary Shear Firewood Processor 'Pilke'

[mitchstockdale]

Good day to all,

I have been researching shear type, small diameter firewood processors for the past couple months.  They have proven to be illusive and are almost non-existent in north america.  They appear to be very popular and commonly manufactured in Finland. See the following videos links for examples.

I end up with 60 to 70% of my firewood being anywhere from 1.5" to 7".  I think one of these processors to tackle all the small wood would save a tremendous amount of handling.  Does anyone here on the forum have one of these rotary type shears or built something of the sort. 

I have been combing through youtube videos trying to find views of the internal workings of these processors to get a read on the materials to see whether it could be easily built and haven't found much...but enough to get a rough idea of what is happening.  I only found a couple mentions here on the forum of this type of machine.

Thanks

[thecfarm]

I would not like that yanking on my shoulder for long.
What would happen if it did not get cut off? 
Now a self feed would work.
That is another reason where I got an OWB that would take a 54 inch stick. 

[711ac]

European wood burning seems so very different from... us. Is it because that we just have abundant tree's and haven't had people surviving from (cutting) them for thousands of years?
You tube is full of similar types of home made "small wood" processing machines. I would like to know more about their actual stoves or wood burning appliances.  It would seem like constant feeding of the stove would be required. Maybe their homes are very small and they batch burn. The firewood in the video, I think most of us would consider kindling. 
Gathering any meaningful amount of basically limbwood is a chore but processing it is the opposite of processing logs, maybe it works out?
Excuse my ramblings on this snowy late March day here. We're up to about 8" on the official upside down birdbath snow estimator outside my window. 

[barbender]

 I'm often blown away by how far ahead Euro equipment is of North American in terms of efficiency and safety...and then I see something like this. No thanks! 

 IMHO, a far better solution for small diameter wood, would be some sort of cutting rack that you could pile multiple stems in and cut to length with a chainsaw, and a Super Split kinetic splitter.

[Spike60]

What I don't like about the results l see there is that most of the wood is already small enough and doesn't need to be split/shredded down even further. Dont see the need to split 2 and 3 inch wood down to those scraps.

[mitchstockdale]

Interesting feedback...I guess this machine wouldn't really make sense for most people that have a good supply of large stems to cut and split, which i have as well but also lots of smalls

I still think this looks like a brilliant solution for small firewood, i guess i will have to keep searching for more info.  Although i do agree there is a limit on what needs split.

@711ac I think you are right i'm sure the style of stove has something to do with it.  I know masonry thermal mass heaters are common in Scandinavian and eastern European countries and are used for cooking and heating and fairly efficient.  So im thinking if all you are doing is "charging" up your thermal mass you don't need a huge fire like us north americans need since we are only heating the air... where thermal mass heaters rely on the storage of a fires heat for continued radiant heat after the fire has gone out. Just my thoughts.

Thanks all

[Hilltop366]

I have seen videos of DIY ones, The ones I have seen used a tractor PTO to power them and had a further reduction using a truck rear end and using part of a rim for the shear build.

Here is a smaller DIY one that I had watched a while ago. It seems to have a planetary reduction gear on it.