Bruce's Journal

[RollingAcres]

Y'all are a bunch of trouble makers!

 

[B&B Happy goats]

Y'all are a bunch of trouble makers!

Yupper...and fun was had by all

 

[Bruce]

So how much of that wood do you think you'll go through?

All of it and some I haven't yet split. We go through about 4 cords a year, half a run a week. There is 1 run in each rack and probably about 2 runs left in the stack that was put up before I got the tractor and started on the "let's have Bruce do a WHOLE lot less wood moving" project. There are also about 1.5 cords on the porch. Left over from last year and then we filled the racks with some of the wood in the stacks since some of it blew over. Used the bucket on the tractor to move the wood to the porch. If it is super cold when I need to replace a rack on the porch landing or foul weather, I'll use some of the porch wood until the weather improves.

Welcome to the lonely hearts club @Latestarter

 

[Bruce]

Jury has returned, guilty as charged. The new splitter is going back. I bought a replacement set screw for the pulley yesterday. Put it in today and tried splitting again. In 1/2 hour DD2 and I managed to get about 4 pieces of wood off the splitter. Most of the time was spent with a 3' crowbar trying to free the wood being split as it was crammed against the wedge by the ram. The ram apparently can not retract without going slightly forward first. When the wood wasn't trapped, but also didn't split, I had to turn the machine off then back on to get the ram to retract. This is the same thing that happened Monday in the short time I had to try the splitter. I understand this is maple which is pretty hard though the tree was cut about 3 years ago and I had blocked it a month ago. All but one of the ~20" (?) rounds and one with an 8" Y branch (that one was only about 14" diameter") had been split into 2 or 4 pieces with wedges and a sledge prior to trying to split it on the new splitter.

So I gave up right? NO! I put that POS back in the barn and brought out the old 10 ton hydraulic electric DR. It split EVERY dang piece of wood including the round with the Y branch AND the full round. DD and I could barely lift the full round onto the splitter. I tried these for S&G not expecting to be able to split them. Yes we had to try various orientations to get those last two to split and sometimes got some small little bits chunked off but with time the little dude did the job where the big guy was a near total fail. It HAD totally failed on the Y branch piece even though it was given at least a dozen chances in various orientations on Monday. I guess slow and steady wins the race. Sure am glad I hadn't yet posted it on CL and sold it before finding out the new machine couldn't do the job. It took about 1 hour with the old SLOW splitter to split that pile I posted a picture of before. The only good thing about the RapidFire is that when it isn't stuck, the ram does move very quickly, no standing and waiting for it to get ready to start the next attempt.

 

[B&B Happy goats]

Sorry about that bud, that really stinks when you buy a piece of eqipment THINKING it will make the job easier...wish you were closer, not using our splitter...works fast and slick.

 

[Baymule]

It may be slow, but it beats pounding on a wedge or using a maul.

 

[Bruce]

OK, now I need that pickup. I can either take the splitter back to the factory store (aka 'depot') about 50 miles or pay nearly $500 to have them pay a freight company to collect it. I paid $99 to have it brought to my house, apparently a "promotional" price.

 

[Baymule]

They are just shoving it up your where-the-sun-don't-shine. Good thing it don't work or it would hurt a lot worse. Road trip?

 

[Mike CHS]

It might be money ahead to rent a pickup

 

[greybeard]

what brand and model is the malfunctioning splitter?
rent a trailer.
Load the splitter on to the trailer.
pull the trailer to the dealer with the alpacas.