My firewood tools

Going to try to start a thread showing some of the stuff I have built or bought for firewood. I am taking pictures as I go so it will take some time. We normally buy loads of ash loads but this year bought 250 tops for fun. Have 50 or so taken out so far. I build most of my stuff out of other stuff I buy, usually old farm equipment.
To start off this is a limb wood trailer I made a few weeks ago. Plan is to haul it with tractor thru the bush and man handle limbs and small trees into it, haul it home then cut it into firewood length right on the trailer. When empty just drive out over the rounds. The stakes are removable and are 2' and 3' high. This allows about as much weight as the tires will haul anyway. Used it several times and it works great already. Tows at 40 kms pretty decent behind truck. Pictures shows about 1/4 o the load cut up and on ground.

Here my truck and trailer loaded. Using my brother in laws Kubota to load.

Can you tell from my pants what kind of chain saws I run?


Hope the pic shows now.

cantoo said:

Going to try to start a thread showing some of the stuff I have built or bought for firewood. I am taking pictures as I go so it will take some time. We normally buy loads of ash loads but this year bought 250 tops for fun. Have 50 or so taken out so far. I build most of my stuff out of other stuff I buy, usually old farm equipment.
To start off this is a limb wood trailer I made a few weeks ago. Plan is to haul it with tractor thru the bush and man handle limbs and small trees into it, haul it home then cut it into firewood length right on the trailer. When empty just drive out over the rounds. The stakes are removable and are 2' and 3' high. This allows about as much weight as the tires will haul anyway. Used it several times and it works great already. Tows at 40 kms pretty decent behind truck. Pictures shows about 1/4 o the load cut up and on ground.

Click to expand...

Congratulations in coming up with a truly new method of handling branch sized firewood. I love the idea of cutting right on the wagon, and pulling it out of the pile of rounds. I applaud anyone who comes up with a way to cut down on handling firewood over and over.

Now, for large diameter logs, a loader is needed and you seem to have that under control.

I would like to ask you if you feel this wagon reduces your time and effort compared to bucking the rounds into firewood length in the woods where the trees and tops fell and either loading them directly into a pickup truck bed or loading them into a tractor bucket and then dumping into a truck bed or trailer.

Bob

cantoo said:

Can you tell from my pants what kind of chain saws I run?

Hope the pic shows now.

Click to expand...

Having some trouble with the stihl oil and gas caps?

Where the branches come from certainly no trees just stubble is all I see.Attempt at humor.

Alaskat said:

Where the branches come from certainly no trees just stubble is all I see.Attempt at humor.

Click to expand...

...but no attempt at punctuation....




"Let's eat Grandma." vs. "Let's eat, Grandma."
Punctuation saves lives. Use it.

ctrees4$ said:

Having some trouble with the stihl oil and gas caps?

Click to expand...

Right on. Blasted flippy caps !

I've been looking around at used wagons/running gears for just this purpose. Nice application.

I did that with the bar oil lid when I first got my 361. Didn't know it til I was in the middle of cutting and bar oil was all over the place. Luckily I still had some in it and didn't run out and damage anything. I always check to make sure the lids are correctly on after fill ups now.

Nice trailer!

Alaskat said:

Where the branches come from certainly no trees just stubble is all I see.Attempt at humor.

Click to expand...

Thats what I was wondering, how far do you have to go to find a tree?

The trailer was built for mainly limbs and 6" trees knocked down by the skidder. Of course I did build it strong enough for logs and tonight I cut a load of logs on it. Worked pretty much as expected, not near as much bending over and not hitting the dirt with the bar. I think the trailer will save alot of handling. We bought 250 tops so most of the wood is under 8" but they are lots of dead trees we are also getting some as big as 5' across. My brother in law has a trailer made from a single axle dump truck with pto hoist that we use for the bigger stuff.
I'm also building a big bucket for my tractor for the wood that we cut where it lies in the bush. I have a Kubota L35 and my brother in law has 2 Kubotas with loaders available. I have a grapple (not plumbed yet), stone fork and several buckets to use. Yellow bucket was built to move firewood from my pile and dump directly into basement window.

Here's the splitters.
1st one is 3 pth hitch vertical, I bought at an auction but didn't like the way it work so torch, grinder and welder and it's better suited to what I wanted. Ended up changing the cyclinder with my horizontal one as the stroke wasn't long enough. I also put a log lifter on it, attached to cyclinder so it moves up as cyclinder goes up. Works good using my Kubota TLB which has decent oil flow.
2nd one is also 3 pth hitch but horizontal. Another auction find that I cut up and redid, traded cyclinder with vertical one. Short stroke and lots of power. Decent log cradle on it and works good with my elevator (pics later) The 4 way works okay on easy stuff.
3rd one is my new Speeco 28 ton, crappy pic in my barn. I've actually only used it for 15 minutes or so but a couple of friends have put a few hours on it. I plan on redoing it this winter if I find time, cheaper to buy one and make it into what I want than to buy parts separately. TSC on sale $1550.
I also have a Unicorn screw splitter but no pics of it. Used it for real knarly stuff and hope to someday mount it on my loader powered by a hydraulic motor to split big stuff to manageable size. Safe enough sitting away from it.
If you want to see my elevator do a search using my user name and titled Free Firewood something or other.

And the pics. The Speeco one is crappy but I'm sure everyone has seen a new splitter before. I haven't done anything to it yet.

Trying out some different methods of stacking wood. This is wire mesh sitting on a pallet. I just tip it into my basement window to dump. Works good and loaded right from my elevator.

Alaskat said:

Where the branches come from certainly no trees just stubble is all I see.Attempt at humor.

Click to expand...

ha ha

Here's another pic of the trailer after cutting a load of bigger stuff. Works really good.

Here's some bigger tops.

Some nice cherry. Still look like twigs to some of you guys?

Shot of my sucker truck setup. 11 hp vac mounted by a receiver on the front end. Hose to the box on the back. Box is 6x8 and 6' high, door is hinged at the top. We recycle the leaves. We use a Walker and back pack blowers to get leaves to a central spot then vac them up. Also do some curbside pick ups with it.

Pictures of a bigger ash.


For the record, I never cut it but I did watch... From a safe distance. No one was hurt and nothing was damaged, this time. I'll do the felling next time I think. Granted it was a tough spot to cut.

Pictures of the other 2 trailers. Dually has pto dump on it.