My firewood processor build

[muddstopper]

timbercreek, I welcome your opinions, More the merrier.. I am not afraid of using air for the saw lift cyl. I have been working with some sort of air circuit on different types of equipment for years. I think Valley was the one that didnt think it is a good ideal, but He lives in Alaska so its easy to see his concerns with freeze ups.

As for the barko loaders versus building my own. To me its more of a weight thing to factor in. Old logging equipment is heavy and to mount a old loader would involve a lot of redoing things so I dont know if you really save any time modifying a loader versus just building one. I have to admit, I have looked at a lot of those small forwarder type loaders and still havent ruled one out. Buying one without the engine and hydraulic systems would probably be a reasonable price and it would save a lot of work, but finding a used one around here, they are just unheard of. I have already bought the rotator and have the metal for the grapple as well as the cyls and box tubing for the boom. I'll have $2000 or less in it, but the rotator was $800 IIRC. and I have $500 already in machine work. Will be a bunch of fab work, but I have the time.

 

[muddstopper]

After two hours of looking, I'm off to buy another one. Two weeks later it is still on my mind and I'll spend ten minutes here and there looking even after I picked up a replacement.
15" Crescent for changing the hitch ball. No where to be found. A year later it was sitting in the tool drawer on top of the one I bought to replace it. That was an odd moment. I'm sure there is a story too be told there, probably by my boys at my funeral. They swear not. Maybe my daughter... (or it could just be me and old age)

I havent had anybody with me in the shop the last few days, so I dont have anybody to blame for losing things. Spent 30 min looking for my little sledge, Laid it in plain sight and couldnt find it. Keep loosing my wire brush, found it on the other end of my welding table, again in plain sight and the table aint that big. And dont even ask me where my tape measures are. I have a half dozen laying around. I usually find the one I lost when I lay the one I am using right next to the lost one. Of course when I need it again, I have two lost tapes and have to get another one out of the box. I dont know if its old age, or I am just losing my mind

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

timbercreek, I welcome your opinions, More the merrier.. I am not afraid of using air for the saw lift cyl. I have been working with some sort of air circuit on different types of equipment for years. I think Valley was the one that didnt think it is a good ideal, but He lives in Alaska so its easy to see his concerns with freeze ups.

As for the barko loaders versus building my own. To me its more of a weight thing to factor in. Old logging equipment is heavy and to mount a old loader would involve a lot of redoing things so I dont know if you really save any time modifying a loader versus just building one. I have to admit, I have looked at a lot of those small forwarder type loaders and still havent ruled one out. Buying one without the engine and hydraulic systems would probably be a reasonable price and it would save a lot of work, but finding a used one around here, they are just unheard of. I have already bought the rotator and have the metal for the grapple as well as the cyls and box tubing for the boom. I'll have $2000 or less in it, but the rotator was $800 IIRC. and I have $500 already in machine work. Will be a bunch of fab work, but I have the time.

Blockbuster 18-20 uses air return on the bar and splitter. It's complete POOP to use in the winter. I'd never consider if it you use it in a place that gets cold. Waste lots of time with heaters and methanol trying to thaw it out. Really bad if it's snowing and then gets cold, the moisture gets in the air system (humidity)


Older loaders are pretty cheap. I see them for sale for $1000-1500 quite often. Prentice, Barco, Raney, Pacific, etc.

 

[Ted Jenkins]

Air cylinders are just plain bad news in that they are not consistent and dangerous. as suggested find a used piece of equipment and tear it down. Thanks

 

[muddstopper]

Explain how air cyl's are not consistent and dangerous. Air cyl,dont have to slam in and out, they can be made to run in and out as consistent as any hyd cyl. The valves for air cost a fraction of what a hyd valve will cost. And when it comes to low pressure uses, I believe they are a better choice than hyd. I think air is often chosen simply for speed. When you apply air to one end of the cyl the air is just exhausted out the opposite end and the cyl will just slam bam out or end. A lot of air cyl are also sping loaded in that air is only needed to move the cyl in one direction and the air is exhausted, the spring slams it back the opposite direction. The key to control the speed of the cyl is to control the flow of air. Most times you will only see a pressure regulator for controlling air pressure going to the cyl. flow is limited to size of air lines. To control the cyl speed, you have to use a flow control to control airflow going into the cyl as well as the air exhausting the cyl. When you compare the cost it takes to reduce from a high pressure high flow hydraulic system to a low flow, low pressure circuit, Metering air flow and pressure in and out of a air cyl is a fraction of the cost. Air regulators can be purchased at TSC, walmart, Lowes, Homdepot and many hardware stores, for less than $10. The valves for metering airflow also cost less than $10, so for around $30 you can control a air cyl for a saw bar. Many say to use a sequence valve to operate the saw motor, lift cyl and bar clamp. I priced one designed just for that purpose and the cost was over $500. Since I need air to operate my splitter valve, to me it just makes sense to use air for the saw bar cyl instead of using the sequence valve or trying to use pressure reducing valves and flow regulators to regulate the speed and power of the saw cyl.

 

[muddstopper]

Box wedge almost finished, ran out of metal for the corner wedges. I have to drag a piece out of the scrap pile and sharpen and cut to fit.

 

[Timbercreek]

such a great wedge design. care to weld me a slip on for my american splitter? hahaha

 

[muddstopper]

such a great wedge design. care to weld me a slip on for my american splitter? hahaha

Sure, bring it on down. Mine you, it took me a week of cutting, grinding and welding and I still dont have my wedge finished. You can just leave you splitter here and i will test it on some 4ft dia white oak I havent gotten around to processing yet

 

[muddstopper]

Finishing up the wedge, Had my son help me turn it up to finish a few welds. Thats when I noticed I had made a big mistake. The wedge is 90degrees out of proper orientation. The first wedge the wood was supposed to contact was supposed to be vertical, but now its horizonal. I guess it really doesnt matter whether the wood strikes the vertical or the horizonal wedge first, but its to late for me to cut it all out and change it now. Only advantage i can possibly see to the wedge being horizonal is that it should help keep the wood from kicking up when it strikes the wedge. If it works out ok, I'll just claim I planned it that way. I cant just turn the wedge over 90 degrees because the wide channel is whats going to support the wedge as it slides up and down, plus it would limit how high I could raise the wedge due to the wood striking the channel at the bottom. I would loose about 3inches of rise.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

That's a big sum *****! Will it also be able to handle normal sized wood (2"- 12"?)

 

[KiwiBro]

Any concerns over the size of the splits? They look monstrous. Is this processor more of a primary breakdown machine and you intend to resplit smaller thereafter either on another machine or load up the splitting chamber with resplits and push as many through at once, rinse and repeat until splits are smaller?

 

[muddstopper]

I dont know that I need to split 2in wood, I usually leave anything that small in the woods. I can quarter a 12in piece and a 24 inch round should be about 12 equal splits. I can raise the wedge and still split rounds smaller than 12in by using just the bottom half of the circle wedge. and anything smaller than about 6inches I should be able to just split in half. The center circle is 12inches across with a 2in spread toward the back. Everything else is straight. I am 100% sure there will be splits bigger than some people like, but dont expect any big problems until the wood starts getting around 24in dia. Anything over 24in dia will probably have at least 8 pieces per round that would need resplitting. Thats sounds like a lot of resplitting, but in reality I dont expect to put a lot of wood thru the machine that is larger than 24in dia. I can always add a few more wedges later on. Best laid plan of mice and men, as they say, We'll see how it works out. Wedge is built now and outside the shop. Next step is to re-enforce my hbeam to hold up to the 50+tons of force this splitter should make. Then I will mount the wedge on the beam and hook the hyd up to my other splitter and throw a few chunks on to see how it behaves.

 

[cantoo]

Pic might be a little deceiving, the guy is standing back farther. Table is approx. 32" off ground and top looks to be just a little wider so I assume 36" wide box. This means 18" to center so the round looks to be about 12" diameter so that makes the 1st split a 6" quarter circle. The next split starts at 3" so a 24" round centered on the wedge would be 4 sided with small side at 3" and bigger side at 6". I think small enough splits on 24" wood, bigger logs and you got some big overnight blocks for sure.

 

[cantoo]

Mudd, how close was my guess?

 

[muddstopper]

Inside of wedge is 30x30 inches, Center circle is 12in dia. A perfectly round 12in dia piece of wood should yield 4 equal size pieces, but it wont. The wood will spread once it hits the first two cross wedges, so in reality, a 12in dia round will fit thru the wedge, but it will have a little shaved off the outside edge. Because of the wood spreading as it passes over the wedges, the outside splits of a 24in dia round will also end up a little bigger than 6 inch's. That would be perfectly round wood, which we know aint going to happen. I have more material to add 4 more wedges outside the circle, but I decided to just wait and see how it works before adding something I might have to cut off later.

 

[cantoo]

I think you will likely be fine with the customers you will end up getting. Anyone who hires you to come split their wood will likely have a decent sized stove or furnace and the bigger splits won't be an issue. The people with smaller stoves usually burn a lot less wood and would likely just buy split wood and not hire a processor in.

 

[muddstopper]

Well another advantage I might have is I will be able to split up to 30in long wood. Most processors are limited to just 24in lengths. I think that might make a difference for customers with outdoor burners.

 

[cantoo]

Mudd, I made my big splitter 36" so I can split doubles of 16" wood. It really speeds the process up.

 

[muddstopper]

My cyls are the length they are, I got to good a bargain on them to pass them up. I do understand what you say about splitting two shorter rounds at the same time. I figure for my own use, 20-22" is what I will process the most of, for hire, probably 16-18 inches which is what most of the firewood sellers produce. Lots of outdoor burners will handle really long wood. I know of a builtrite processor that will handle 4ft long wood. He has one commercial customer that burns year round in a large open fireplace. What I found with long wood is that unless its split pretty small, its really hard to load in a outdoor burner. Most of the people I know with big stoves will throw in 2 rows of 24in wood because it so hard to load the longer wood. Another thing I have experience with on long cyl is the cyl rod bowing. Unless you have a really large dia shaft, at full, or almost full extention and you hit something hard, the cyl will bow and wear out the seals. I have actually bent the shafts on 4in bore cyl with extra long strokes. When you stop to think about the overall length of a 4ft stroked cyl, total lenght is over 8 ft fully extended. You can bend a 2in dia rod pretty easily at those lengths.

 

[cantoo]

My owb can fit a 54" piece. I cut everything 32" for mine though, easier to handle. I wouldn't want to have to handle a 54" split or round. I don't fill mine full either, 4 or 5 splits and that's it for the day usually.