The Super-Splitter came in today and it took about two hours to set it up. It comes with the engine, wheel support/axles and wheels and front support, as well as work table, disassembled. I was able to lift it with my Cat 950 FEL and chain in order to support it to put those things on. It's quite heavy and I think that without the FEL a come-along or something else would be required to lift it to assemble it.
One minor critique: there were no unpacking nor assembly instructions, but it's fairly straightforward if you're mechanically inclined. The operating and maintenance booklet is adequate and contains a complete parts breakdown and listing. One nut securing the "go" handle bolt was not as tight as it should have been.
The SS design is startlingly and cleverly simple. When I first looked at the mechanics of it I was tempted to think they'd left a bunch of parts out. But the system is elegant in its simplicity. It looks light, but believe me, it's substantial with those two big flywheels and the push rack and I-beam and worktable. Very sturdy.
One funny: there are decals warning that if you're a person that doesn't read safety manuals or are a person without common sense or are a person that doesn't respect the danger of mechanical things, don't operate this machine!
The Subaru-Robbins 6hp started on the first pull. It's very quiet. Surprisingly so.
Now as to performance:
In a quick test before nightfall I split about 15 pieces of very green, heavy tanoak and some semi-dry fir. Tanoak ranging from 8" thru 15" on up to a 150lb beasty about 28" across. I've got to tell you, I think I died and went to heaven! The splitter is fast! A couple seconds per piece. The worktable is so great when splitting larger pieces... no picking them up off the ground, and following splits push the formerly split pieces off the end into the split pile, so no handling of the splits.
Our regular hydraulic splitter would have seriously grunted and strained at the big 28" piece before splitting it. The SS went through it like it wasn't there! I pulled one half back and got 5 sections out of that, and then the other half lickity-split. A total of 10 sections from that piece in about 1/3 time it would have taken me before and that's without knowing what I was doing. Knotted pieces and yokes, no problem either.
I can see that it will take some practice to extract all the speed benefit the SS is capable of, as I have to change the way I think about splitting and wood handling. The bottleneck now changes to how fast I can get logs to the splitter, at the right elevation so I don't have to lift. I also have to be strict about the habit of not putting my hand on the "go" handle until I'm ready to split, for safety reasons. No resting the "trigger" hand there. This thing is that fast and there would be little time to remove my hand if its between the wood and the splitting blade. The right method is use both hands to position the log making sure the wood is against the blade, then place the left hand on top of the wood, right hand then pulls the "go" handle. It's a snappy routine.
First impressions? Very impressed. Very sturdy and simple. Very fast. More later as I gain experience.
$507, and I have to go to the loading terminal with my truck over an hour away, so that's an addit'l $20 in gas, etc. But I'm sure in the end it'll be worth it to have the snappiest tanoak splitters in the area.
If I had the PTO diesel tractor, that's probably what I would have done instead of SS. In our situation I have a lot of stuff that wouldn't be appropriate for vertical splits (smaller) and the horizontal position with some sort of work table or tray would be the trick.
