USMC615
Wood's Tougher Than Woodpecker Lips...
Took me a while to find the post also. Most of the splitting is at full throttle at charity cuts because at charity cuts there is enough people to keep the splitter busy. For personal splitting the motor is at 1/2 to 3/4 throttle unless the wood is nasty. But then 90% of the hours on my splitters are at charity cuts.
My tach for motor is just a stick on hour meter that wraps a wire around the spark plug. The meter for the fly wheel is a special device with counter and stop watch built into one. I got it at a garage sale from a old machinist.
Doug, installed a Hardline hour meter/tachometer this afternoon and my rpm's at WOT are 3850-3870 on the Honda 6.5 GX. The paperwork with the meter never gave any +/- tolerance. I can't state accuracy by no means of this thing. It did run the exact rpm range at lowest idle and WOT several times of cutting it off, let sit a few min's, crank it up again. I remember your rpm was 3760 at WOT on your same engine HD, and your SE with the 9 hp Honda GX was 3870. Seems about a hundred rpm difference btwn the HD's. Again, could just be tolerance variable of the tachs.