Giant Log Splitter

[RVA MARK]

Has anyone purchased a Large Log splitter? Like the TW-10, Multitek Logbuster, Or cordking makes one to take 16 foot logs? These Machines cost 65-90K and wondering if anyone has made one or uses one for splitting large wood to fit into a chipper for biomass sales? I have a very large lot with plenty of logs that wont fit into a splitter. Dont have stroke for a tub grinder big enough but if I could split the logs small enough to fit into a Vermeer 2300xl, or an 1800xl I could definately make quick work of the stacks and stacks of logs?

Any Ideas?

 

[imagineero]

You might want to look into the market a little more. Biomass sounds pretty exciting until you realise what it means is "firewood". There's nothing about turning big logs into little logs that makes them magically create more energy, so you might as well save all that fuel and time and just leave them as firewood. There was a big smoke and mirrors campaign around wood chip burners that were going to magically do everything some years ago, with an export market and money involved but the only thing that got burnt was the people who put their money in.

The issues relating to biomass are the same as the issued that face firewood only worse. Crappy wood is still crappy wood if you chip it, and good wood is still good wood. Chip it up and now it's hard to handle. It's also very hard to dry. You are going to need Aerated revolving floor grain dryer setups to get it to a level of moisture where it's usable. Then you gotta load it up again.

On the flipside of the coin, if you think there's money to be made in biomass I can supply you with about 500 truck loads a year for free of chips, as can any tree contractor in your area.

 

[madhatte]

We have tried with little success so sell biomass here in the south Puget Sound region. However, we did get a whole mess of slash disposed of at no cost to our organization, save for administration, so, all things being equal, it's still probably a market worth paying attention to.

 

[RVA MARK]

You might want to look into the market a little more. Biomass sounds pretty exciting until you realise what it means is "firewood". There's nothing about turning big logs into little logs that makes them magically create more energy, so you might as well save all that fuel and time and just leave them as firewood. There was a big smoke and mirrors campaign around wood chip burners that were going to magically do everything some years ago, with an export market and money involved but the only thing that got burnt was the people who put their money in.

The issues relating to biomass are the same as the issued that face firewood only worse. Crappy wood is still crappy wood if you chip it, and good wood is still good wood. Chip it up and now it's hard to handle. It's also very hard to dry. You are going to need Aerated revolving floor grain dryer setups to get it to a level of moisture where it's usable. Then you gotta load it up again.

On the flipside of the coin, if you think there's money to be made in biomass I can supply you with about 500 truck loads a year for free of chips, as can any tree contractor in your area.

Well Mr. Imagineero, I am well aware of what it "sounds" like and what it "IS," and wanted to take this time to thank you for unsolicited advice but I am doing just fine on my own. For 20 years my tree company has not once paid to dump a load of chips or wood and have made a "ton" of money selling wood chips, regardless of the quality, to local schools, paper mills, and saw mills, that use them as boiler fuel. I have done plenty of research, and by research I mean watched first hand 2 tub grinders working for 2 days to clear my lot 3 years ago and hand me a check when they left.

There is money in it if your region supports it. Biomass is not just firewood, and I am not trying to make electricity with it. But it is used for boiler fuel enough to have a pretty consistent price of 9-11 dollars a ton. $9 on normal days, and $11 on weekends or holidays when they start calling you when they run out because they dont want to pay for electricity or natural gas to heat the schools or power the mills.

Also I am not sure where you work, but firewood by me means hardwoods, oak, hickory, fruit trees, which i do process into firewood and sell. But there are plenty of other species that grow around me. Poplar, gum, pine, ect and I am not going to try and sell them to my very satisfied firewood customers for obvious reasons.

If you have something to contribute to my original question of building vs buying a Big A$$ log splitter, then please reply.

If not please do not think that if you had the means that I wouldn't take every one of those 500 loads of wood chips a year from you!

What region do you service? I may even come and get them if its not too far.

 

[RVA MARK]

@imanineero I just noticed your in Australia, so I suppose that we are not going to be picking up your chips anytime soon, we have a boat but it barely has enough room for me and a box of beer. haha

 

[hammerlogging]

That's hog fuel. At $9 to $11 a ton you're at about half the cost to produce them. If you have to get rid of chips and your only option is to give them away or pay to get rid of them, thats a different situation, because the market value weakness is subsidized by the front end.
I'd look at selling solid wood to a larger wood yard who is set up and has the volume to support a proper machine.
Also, Imagineero seems to know what he's talking about.

 

[2dogs]

Well Mr. Imagineero, I am well aware of what it "sounds" like and what it "IS," and wanted to take this time to thank you for unsolicited advice but I am doing just fine on my own. For 20 years my tree company has not once paid to dump a load of chips or wood and have made a "ton" of money selling wood chips, regardless of the quality, to local schools, paper mills, and saw mills, that use them as boiler fuel. I have done plenty of research, and by research I mean watched first hand 2 tub grinders working for 2 days to clear my lot 3 years ago and hand me a check when they left.

There is money in it if your region supports it. Biomass is not just firewood, and I am not trying to make electricity with it. But it is used for boiler fuel enough to have a pretty consistent price of 9-11 dollars a ton. $9 on normal days, and $11 on weekends or holidays when they start calling you when they run out because they dont want to pay for electricity or natural gas to heat the schools or power the mills.

Also I am not sure where you work, but firewood by me means hardwoods, oak, hickory, fruit trees, which i do process into firewood and sell. But there are plenty of other species that grow around me. Poplar, gum, pine, ect and I am not going to try and sell them to my very satisfied firewood customers for obvious reasons.

If you have something to contribute to my original question of building vs buying a Big A$$ log splitter, then please reply.

If not please do not think that if you had the means that I wouldn't take every one of those 500 loads of wood chips a year from you!

What region do you service? I may even come and get them if its not too far.

With a response like that don't expect anyone to help you. I for one didn't know we were working for the smartest man on the internet.

 

[bitzer]

If you really need to make chips that bad get a whole tree chipper. They make em to handle 28" wood or some such nonsense. How many times do you want to handle the wood? Usually the chips pay for the expenses and thats it. Otherwise cut em to length and send em to a pulp mill. Two days of watching a tub grinder 3 years ago is not research.

 

[madhatte]

That's hog fuel. At $9 to $11 a ton you're at about half the cost to produce them. If you have to get rid of chips and your only option is to give them away or pay to get rid of them, thats a different situation, because the market value weakness is subsidized by the front end.

Exactly right. There was a bunch of initial interest in government-subsidized co-generational electric plants, so a few local outfits bought tub grinders. Then the money all dried up, and so far, no plants have been built. Now we can't give the stuff away. Back to the old "lop-scatter-crush". So much for "green" energy.

 

[RVA MARK]

First off I want to apologize to Mr Imagineero, my initial responses to his post were abrasive and intentionally sarcastic. I was in a chitty mood and shouldnt be posting on a forum in that condition. I know when I am wrong and should definitely know better to take any advice you can get.

I am not supporting or trying to buy into the gasification of biomass as a legitimate energy resource, I just know that with my chippers idle during some parts of the year and my hands are also idle, so why not keep them busy by splitting the large piles of logs I have and feed them into my chippers. I do make money selling my chips that we produce on the street, but am well aware that I will probably just break even with selling the chips to the mills and schools that use them for heat and steam production. I would rather break even than watch the guys starve. At a few hundred bucks a dump truck load, it will cover the labor and fuel costs, and keep my lot clean of large logs that are not good enough to process into firewood.

With all of this said, I am assuming no one has made a large log splitter or have purchased one.

I am sorry for the aggravation and insults I have caused Imagineero and anyone else who responded negatively.

 

[2dogs]

We don't see many apologies on AS. Good on ya man!

 

[treeslayer2003]

well now......with gum and poplar i assume you are on the east coast. trees over 28" why wouldn't you sell as logs? the tie market is very strong as is the grade market right now. surely you have plenty of trash wood to chip.

 

[imagineero]

Sounds like you've got a more developed market than what we have here. Commercial boilers failed in our domestic markets, but did a little better in the UK though only on a large scale like what you are saying; hotels, schools. Same story there, they were only accepting straight woodchip, and only hardwoods dried to appropriate moisture content, no leaf mulch, wet wood or softwood. And at lower prices than what you could sell the straight unchipped wood for, which brings it back to the same argument of why chip it in the first place. $9/tonne sounds pretty awful, I'd pay that to anyone willing to come and take my chip and I'd chip it for them for free too. Mixed species and plenty of leaf in it though. The leaf and bark all turns to ash in the boilers (maintenance), and wet wood produces water as much as heat just like unchipped wood does. Only real advantage I ever saw to those large commercial grade chip based boilers was that they fed themselves through coreless augers which saved a little labour. Some of the earlier ones had the fire travel back up through the augers into the chip bin which was fun. I don't know anyone who has one of these things anymore.

Getting back to your situation, I just cant see splitting being practical for you. You're going to need your splits to be under 18" to get into an 1800Xl, and minimum 2' in length for safe chipping but 3' would be better. You haven't given any info on how much volume you've got, or diameter or species which would be a good starting point. If it's all straight clean wood then it'll split nice but thats a whole lot of manual labor at the prices you're running to buck, split, chip, deliver and dump for that tonnage rate. If it's all clean and straight then you could sell it as logs. I'm guessing there's plenty of forked up stuff in there (yard trees?) in which case you cant split it easily anyhow. Gonna rip it all with saws? $$$$$$$

If you've got a chitload of logs and a market for the chips then your best bet is just to bring in a big tub grinder and loader. No need to rip/split, these things will spit out tonnage in big numbers per hour and probably reduce your entire log pile to chips in a day no matter how big it is. That's what all the rubbish dumps here do. They wait till they've got a football field size pile of green waste 30' deep then get a guy in for a day or two with a big tub grinder. Rocks and such don't faze those things. Will work out a whole lot cheaper than doing it by hand.

If you don't have that sort of volume maybe just buck it up and put a sign up out front saying $10/load help yourself. Save yourself $90k on a splitter, a bunch of labour, driving time, fuel, saws, chipper blades and associated maintenance that you'd probably have to sell at least 5,000tonnes of chip to recover your investment on. Would love to see some photos of your setup and hear how it turns out either way. Love to see the boiler setups you're delivering too and any stories related to them.

 

[RVA MARK]

Sounds like you've got a more developed market than what we have here. Commercial boilers failed in our domestic markets, but did a little better in the UK though only on a large scale like what you are saying; hotels, schools. Same story there, they were only accepting straight woodchip, and only hardwoods dried to appropriate moisture content, no leaf mulch, wet wood or softwood. And at lower prices than what you could sell the straight unchipped wood for, which brings it back to the same argument of why chip it in the first place. $9/tonne sounds pretty awful, I'd pay that to anyone willing to come and take my chip and I'd chip it for them for free too. Mixed species and plenty of leaf in it though. The leaf and bark all turns to ash in the boilers (maintenance), and wet wood produces water as much as heat just like unchipped wood does. Only real advantage I ever saw to those large commercial grade chip based boilers was that they fed themselves through coreless augers which saved a little labour. Some of the earlier ones had the fire travel back up through the augers into the chip bin which was fun. I don't know anyone who has one of these things anymore.

Getting back to your situation, I just cant see splitting being practical for you. You're going to need your splits to be under 18" to get into an 1800Xl, and minimum 2' in length for safe chipping but 3' would be better. You haven't given any info on how much volume you've got, or diameter or species which would be a good starting point. If it's all straight clean wood then it'll split nice but thats a whole lot of manual labor at the prices you're running to buck, split, chip, deliver and dump for that tonnage rate. If it's all clean and straight then you could sell it as logs. I'm guessing there's plenty of forked up stuff in there (yard trees?) in which case you cant split it easily anyhow. Gonna rip it all with saws? $$$$$$$

If you've got a chitload of logs and a market for the chips then your best bet is just to bring in a big tub grinder and loader. No need to rip/split, these things will spit out tonnage in big numbers per hour and probably reduce your entire log pile to chips in a day no matter how big it is. That's what all the rubbish dumps here do. They wait till they've got a football field size pile of green waste 30' deep then get a guy in for a day or two with a big tub grinder. Rocks and such don't faze those things. Will work out a whole lot cheaper than doing it by hand.

If you don't have that sort of volume maybe just buck it up and put a sign up out front saying $10/load help yourself. Save yourself $90k on a splitter, a bunch of labour, driving time, fuel, saws, chipper blades and associated maintenance that you'd probably have to sell at least 5,000tonnes of chip to recover your investment on. Would love to see some photos of your setup and hear how it turns out either way. Love to see the boiler setups you're delivering too and any stories related to them.

Thanks for the reply, Great post, and great information! I will send you some pictures of my setup soon, have been super busy here lately! Next run to the mill and the school I will ask to take some pics as well! We know we can make money on chips but it is getting more and more difficult to rationalize spending the money on a splitter just to stuff a chipper all day just as you say. The 1800xl is getting tired and would hate to put it to sleep just on chips. Work on the street is certainly more valuable thank yard work making $1k a day on chips. Just trying to make some extra money.

We have roughly 10 acres of logs and large brush that we want to process, we are fortunate to have such a large lot and now that the grapple truck is up and running we can support two crews. We are not even chipping brush from one crew anymore, an extra hand on the crew helps pile the brush curbside and we scoop it up when the call. Its the best piece of equipment we have on hand. We are chipping it when we get back to the lot on dreary days and weekends if the guys want extra cash.

May just have to shop around for a slow company with a tub grinder to come in and grind it up again. We have done this twice before and I am just trying to figure out how not to pay someone else such a large cut of the grindings. Plus the boilers like chips better, they also never complained about how leafy the chips were, only cared about quantity.

 

[RVA MARK]

@imagineero, also sorry once again for the crappy and inappropriate reply a few weeks ago.

 

[imagineero]

@imagineero, also sorry once again for the crappy and inappropriate reply a few weeks ago.

No big deal. Everyone thinks I'm a jerk, myself included.

 

[Reddog]

A few around here using firewood processors have had the same issue with over sized logs.
After pricing a whole log splitter, most went with a screw splitter mounted on a skidsteer or small hyd hoe.

Just one of a few brands http://www.theatomsplitter.com/

 

[KiwiBro]

A few around here using firewood processors have had the same issue with over sized logs.
After pricing a whole log splitter, most went with a screw splitter mounted on a skidsteer or small hyd hoe.

Just one of a few brands http://www.theatomsplitter.com/

Agreed. These look like a good option if already have a SS. Or if already have an excavator:


Don't know what they are worth though, but I'd imagine not cheap. Certainly not as cheap as that atom attachment.

*edit* Here's the manufacturer's website:
www.kegelspalter.com/en/

 

[paccity]

 

[KiwiBro]

Possibly buy their cone and build the rest of the splitter attachment yourself?
http://www.kegelspalter.com/en/kegelspalter-selber-bauen-drillkegel/