wood splitting

[saltydog]

how much wood did you all split last year? i have a small firewood operation and we did (me and wife) a little over 450 face cord (RICK) cut all with my 2186 or my 372 split with my menards 30 ton splitter or my 1979 mongumery ward splitter .its still my favorite. been real busy this year too . has anyone noticed how slow they make the cycle time on new splitters? must be to dummy proof them . harder to get hurt going slow. i know theres some fast pro splitters out there. anybody have any first hand use on any pro models?

[Raider Bill]

How many face cords or ricks are you able to get on a full size pick up truck bed?

[saltydog]

loose or stacked? loose without sideracks only 1 .i dont use a pickup i have a f350 dump with sideracks it holds 3 loose .and a f600 that holds 8 . this aint my first year been doing it at 20some years prolly closer to 30 theres alot of people that claim a pickup will hold 3 or so cords i have never met that truck .

[Raider Bill]

I see regular pickups stacked with 4 rows sideways which they claim is 2 face cords. Seems light to me.

[isawlogs]

 Bill, If those four rows add up to 64 square feet, then they have there two face cords on the pick-up.

[CX3]

I regularly stack 4 rick on the dodge and have had as much as 5 rick on it.  Cut 16 inches.  People dont believe the amount of wood that is on there until it is laying on the ground.  But I agree there are some people delivering smaller amounts of wood for larger sums of money.

[saltydog]

a 4ftx8ft x16inch  stack of wood is the same no matter how you stack it you need some tall side racks to get 4 or 5 cords .it can be done.a truck bed is only  about 6ft wide .i get more people every year .must be doin somthin right.

[gunman63]

dont u need  84 square ft for 2 ricks/face cord, not 64

[Dean186]

Below is what 1.4 cords of rounds looks like loaded into our Dodge long bed.  The Thule rack we use to carry our Kayaks worked well for loading wood.    I just attached a 2x6 to the rack on each side and installed air lifters on the truck and our capacity increased from less than a cord per haul to 1.4 cords.

Measured this way:

Bed width is 5 feet not counting wheel well loss
Bed length is 8 feet – The wood is out past the bed for a total length of 9 feet
The height is well above the cab and is 5 feet at the center.  I estimate the average height to be 4 feet.

So, the math is:

5x9x4 = 180 cubic feet
180 / 128  =  1.4 cords

[isawlogs]

dont u need  84 square ft for 2 ricks/face cord, not 64

A face cord is 4 feet X 8 feet ... 32square feet .. X 2 .... 64 square feet .

[DouginUtah]

A face cord is 4 feet X 8 feet ... 32square feet .. X 2 .... 64 square feet .

Oops, Marcel. That would be true if a face cord was just 1' deep, but it is 16". Three face cords equals a full cord. Two-thirds of 128 is 84 cubic feet (actually 85.3, but what's 1.3 cf among friends.)

(Square feet has been used several times where I think cubic feet was meant. We are talking about volume aren't we? If we are just talking about area then Marcel is correct.)

[John Mc]

Oops, Marcel. That would be true if a face cord was just 1' deep, but it is 16". Three face cords equals a full cord. Two-thirds of 128 is 84 cubic feet (actually 85.3, but what's 1.3 cf among friends.)

A face cord is not necessarily 16" deep. It's whatever depth the cutter happened to cut it. "Face cord" refers to the face, which is 4' x 8'. It doesn't tell you how much wood you have unless you add another dimension: a 16" fce cord, or 20" face cord.

16" does seem to be one of the most common around here, so people often assume that's what is being referred to by a "face cord".

[RSteiner]

We heat our house with wood average 6 full cords a year.  My youngest son and his wife about a month ago bought a house with a woodstove and he said to me guess I'll be needing some firewood as he looked at my supply for next year.

Fortunately for me and him I offered to clean up the landing where my neighbors property was logged last winter.  The logger said he would leave a little firewood for me.  Well, after cutting what he left into 18" long chuncks I ended up with a single row over 60 feet long and 4 1/2 feet high.

One Thursday evening after work I took my Super Split to the wood pile and started splitting.  I finished the pile in 3 1/2 hours by myself and one tank of fuel.  I would say 50% of the pieces had to be quartered and 25% split into 6 or 8 pieces and the rest just needed to be split in half.

I will admit that it was the perfect set-up I just had to keep backing up along the length of the pile so I didn't have to stop and move the split wood out of my way.  The cycle time on the Super Split is around 5 seconds which is faster than most hydraulic splitters.

Randy

[isawlogs]

 I had one of those at one time but after replacing the rack ( long gear plate ) that drives the wedge twice, I sold it and then got a hydraulic splitter. I have yet seen a hydraulic splitter have a cycle time anywheres near the super split. That thing is quick.

[Stephen Alford]

Hey saltydog sure would enjoy some pics of your operation. This is the pile I have been working on lately .  The road home is always the best.   

[DonT]

I sell a bit of wood as well. I sell it by the cu.ft-43cu.ft =1 face cord and 128cuft is=3 face cord.I also had problems with the rack on my super split as well as the knife,i went back to hydraulic as well.have to admit the super split was very fast.

[StephenRice]

loose or stacked? loose without sideracks only 1 .i dont use a pickup i have a f350 dump with sideracks it holds 3 loose .and a f600 that holds 8 . this aint my first year been doing it at 20some years prolly closer to 30 theres alot of people that claim a pickup will hold 3 or so cords i have never met that truck .

I wish that I had pictures of some loads that I put on my old Ford when I was about 18-20 years old (ie: young, dumb, and so poor I did whatever I could to feed my family of 6 back then).

The most that I ever delivered was 5 to 6 full cords of green oak and other mixed hardwoods, but that was between my pickup and a 18' or 20' trailer that I had put plywood sides on.  Needless to say, I had to pump up my tires until the compressor would go no more, then drive slow as the front tires of my extended cab truck bounced up and down off of the road.  I nearly wrecked several times.  Want to know what really sucked about the deal?  I had to hand split and deliver the wood for $25-30 per cord.  Yes, that is per full cord.

The other time I remember just using my truck, I had a full length pipe rack that went over the cab of the truck.  I had to cut a bunch of small pine trees.  So, I dropped the tailgate and filled the bed up with some logs about 20' long until they reached up to the pipe rack, then stacked about ten more 20'+ trees on top until they made a big pyramid on top and I had to lash them all down with ropes.  (I was too poor for chains and binders back then.)  ...

Both times it looked like one of those pictures that you see on the internet of some wayyyyyyy overloaded vehicle in a third world country.

[logloper]

  We do 300 to 500 full cords of firewood per year. Pine,aspen,spruce, and doug fir. And some apple. For the last 5 years we have used a 25 ton hydraulic splitter from local farm and ranch store. My oldest son (13years old) splits a cord after school each day. Keeps him in shape for wrestling. We just upgraded to a Timber Wolf TW5 fast cycle about 3 weeks ago. 4 way wedge and table grate. Amazeing difference. It has a 6 second cycle time, and the block is split into 4 pieces in this six second time. This splitter really needs 2 guys and a conveyor to keep up with the splitting speed. Cut my sons time to do a cord at night way down. I am very pleased with this splitter, just hope it holds up.

[StephenRice]

When I was younger and selling firewood, I averaged a full cord a day, cut, split, stacked, and delivered.  I did a lot of that work after getting off from a full-time third shift factory job in Grand Rapids, MI.  Of course, I had to take whatever wood I could find, buy, or scrounge up... usually monster logs.  And, my splitting was done by hand with a 16 lb. Monster Maul.  Anyone remember those?

Well, that was then and this is now.  Those Paul Bunyan days are long gone for me.  So, after reading the above post, I went to Timber Wolf's web site and, wow!  They had some nice splitters and processors there!  Anyways, I did not see the prices, but I am sure that they are up there.  But, they did give me some really good ideas for building log splitters and processors.  If anyone is thinking about building a splitter or processor and are not familiar with the Timber Wolf equipment, I would suggest taking a gander over to their web site.  It may give you some ideas as well.

[saltydog]

ill try to post pics .im pretty busy right now.i also remember the young and dumb days .i used a modified boat trailer .it had 1x1 square tube frame we made it heavy duty.... by pounding round pipe in the square. had to tighten the wheel bearings every trip.and couldnt go over 35 to 40 mph or tires got hot and blew .our binders were one old bent comealong .we put 1 full pulp cord on that thing.we cut and hauled a whole 40acrs on it. miss them days.no stress no bills .im over 40 and i can still split and load 8to10 facecords a day.but im not to quick the next day usually run the forwarder .sure hard to find help that will work.most last 1 day.

[StephenRice]

ill try to post pics .im pretty busy right now.i also remember the young and dumb days .i used a modified boat trailer .it had 1x1 square tube frame we made it heavy duty.... by pounding round pipe in the square. had to tighten the wheel bearings every trip.and couldnt go over 35 to 40 mph or tires got hot and blew .our binders were one old bent comealong .we put 1 full pulp cord on that thing.we cut and hauled a whole 40acrs on it. miss them days.no stress no bills .im over 40 and i can still split and load 8to10 facecords a day.but im not to quick the next day usually run the forwarder .sure hard to find help that will work.most last 1 day.

Yeah, saltydog, I think our generation was the last of the hard working Mohicans... 

I remember driving an hour home on the interstate with several cords of wood between my truck and a trailer borrowed from my ex-wife's uncle.  I was always severely overloaded to the point that I would have to floor it to race down one hill on I-131 at about 80-90 mph just to make in up the next "hill" (these were not even hills compared to what a lot of you think of as hills) at about 30 mph.  I bet I scared the bologna out of a bunch of people back then with my fast - slow overloaded rig.

I wore that 300 ci inline 6 cyl. in that Ford right out until it was using so much oil that I had to buy a case a day along with a bunch of STP Motor Honey to make it to work and back.  Then, I just started buying gallons of thick chainsaw bar lube and using it.

Also, I would always have to stop and get a used tire at Jim's Tire Shop a couple of blocks from my house because I would invariably arrive home with three tires and a rim full of cords instead of four tires.  Good thing he took care of me and did not charge much, especially since I was nearly a daily customer.  I guess that is what happens to severely overloaded automotive tires when run in excess of 100 psi to keep them off of the rims. 

Yeah, buddy... Those were the days!

[Buck]

I hear ya Dog,  that ole" not as good as I once was" is common around here.

[John R]

  has anyone noticed how slow they make the cycle time on new splitters? must be to dummy proof them . harder to get hurt going slow. i know theres some fast pro splitters out there. anybody have any first hand use on any pro models?

Yeah, everything has to be made for stupid people, stupid people shouldn't use any power tools.

And if they do, it's called thinning the heard.

[beenthere]

Need more gpm to increase speed. Likely that controls the speed more than dumbing down the splitter for users. My opinion, anyway. 

More gpm, need bigger pump and bigger engine hp. Higher cost comes with that.
A lot of trade-offs.

Design one and see what those trade-offs are. 

[RSteiner]

Need more gpm to increase speed. Likely that controls the speed more than dumbing down the splitter for users. My opinion, anyway. 

More gpm, need bigger pump and bigger engine hp. Higher cost comes with that.
A lot of trade-offs.

Design one and see what those trade-offs are. 

To get more GPM you also need larger diameter hoses and valves to handle the increase in volume.  You have to get more oil moving in and out of the cylinder at an acceptable pressure. 

I don't know if all the hydraulic splitters come with two stage pumps, first stage to give low pressure and high volume for speed second stage to provide high pressure at a lower volume for splitting power.

Could be some of the less expensive splitters have single stage pumps which provide pressure but not volume making them slower.

The speed limiting factor could also be in the valve body itself because internal port sizes. 

Randy