Vertical or Horizontal

[rarefish383]

That's kind of what my cousin says. He'll be 70 this year and doesn't like messing with the big saws anymore. I say I split off my feed table and stack as I go, or load trailer and take to wood shed. He says he doesn't stack at all, throws wood over his shoulder in a semi circle and then is done till that's gone. I say I can't make any time if I have to get up and wrestle blocks to the splitter. My feed table is hydraulic so I have to do zero lifting. He says he doesn't care about how long it takes. I say sitting on a short block or bucket hurts my back and knees. He says standing hurts his back, but that's because he's lifting. I don't lift. So, it boils down to the desired end result and personal preference. I have found that working vertical works better with 2 people, but I can't remember ever having help splitting, Joe.

 

[JeffHK454]

I'm betting if I had a log lift on my splitter I'd not have much need for working vertically ether. The stool I use is really just a tractor seat , having a back on it is a life saver.

I'll also agree that vertical splitting is much easier with a helper, sometimes my wife or one of my sons helps but most of the time it just me...which makes for a lot twisting and tossing.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

By far, the easiest "splitting" on my back is, to cut logs right over my wagon,

and roll or slide the big rounds right onto my splitters beam, as in NO HEAVY LIFTING...

Then everything goes through the 4-way and right off the end of my splitter...

I only "some times" rip a big round for the splitter,

as "sometimes" I do it, because a few of them can be fun, especially when "breaking in" a new chainsaw!

SR

 

[muddstopper]

I will say this, if you dont have anything to lift big rounds, then vertical is the only way to go. When I got back into burning wood, I rented a speeco vertical/horzonal splitter. I found that those really large rounds just didnt fit on the foot plate and I had to twist and pull a bunch of wood in order to get the wood split. Also every split I had to toss to the side as soon as it was split, often one handed, and this tired me out quickly. I never liked noodleing big rounds, always used a 55 huskey as my firewood saw. Not the best saw choice for noodleing. I do noddle some of my bigger rounds, my boom will only lift about a 48in dia round up high enough to clear the splitter beam and my log dogs dont like grabbing/holding onto that size wood. I have acquired a couple of bigger saws over the years.

When I built my own splitter, I built it horizonal. I wanted a 4way wedge and wanted it to be adjustable height. I built the blade type wedge tall enough to make a clean cut thru a 24in dia round. None of that splitting a big round and having it to only be half split and hanging on top of the wedge. I learnt the 4way didnt always have to hit in the middle of the big round, raising it just high enough to make 2 small splits at the bottom of the round and leaving 2 larger splits on the top half of the round. This allowed me to stack the two larger pieces on top of each other and run thru the wedge again and I would end up with 6 decent size splits with just 2 cycles of the cyl. If the big quarters are to big for just one extra pass thru the single wedge, raise the 4way and make the quarter into 4 pieces repeat on the next quarter split and you now have 10 pieces of wood with just 3 cycles of the cyl. You just cant do that with a vertical splitter with a single wedge or a non adjustable 4way wedge. Maybe you can, but it means man handling the round to get them in position.

Lifting large rounds using your back, just isnt something I look forward to. You know anything you cant lift by hand is most likely going to need resplitting. With a horizonal splitter, this means at least half of your round is going to fall back on the ground when its split. This means lifting the same piece of wood multiple times to process the one piece of firewood. A table at the end of the beam can catch a lot of wood and reduce a whole lot of bending over and lifting. A log lift can make lifting the logs to the splitter a lot easier than hand loading. A boom with winch can reduce a lot of bending and rolling large rounds to put them on a lift. I like the boom and winch on my setup, but I know it can be improvedby adding a table to catch the splits. Probably a lot of other things I could do as well if I put my mind to it.

 

[sb47]

The wood I get is rarely round, it's more oval or odd shaped and they don't roll very easy. If it's under 16'' in diameter, it's easy to just pick up and split horizontally. I stay bent over way to much splitting vertically vs horizontally.

 

[rarefish383]

The wood I get is rarely round, it's more oval or odd shaped and they don't roll very easy. If it's under 16'' in diameter, it's easy to just pick up and split horizontally. I stay bent over way to much splitting vertically vs horizontally.

Me too. My cousin says he has to split sitting, it hurts his back to stand. I guess it all depends on how we all hurt our backs, Joe.

 

[aokpops]

AOK, I went back and checked, but couldn't find, did you build this splitter. I't looks like a modified "Lickity Splitter"? The Lickity's would lay down and a cable to the ram pulled them back up. They were built by the Waco Aircraft Co. Very well made, engineered splitters in their day, Joe.

I never seen anyone else build one like this an no I didn't build this . But never thought about using a cable to raise it . Get some time will have to make a video

 

[rarefish383]

This is an old Lickity I had several years ago. I got home and my wife had a brand new splitter in the driveway and said I had to get rid of the old one, so I sold it. I would love to have restored it. It was one of their big ones. It was pretty fancy. Besides lifting up and down, it had an auto cycle where the ram kept cycling in and out continuously. It could be adjusted to a certain length wood. I forget what the extension time was on the ram, but it retracted in about 3 seconds, had 3 big coil springs that pulled it back. Cool old machine. There are a few OK videos on youtube, but none of a fully restored one, operating with all of the bells and whistles, Joe.