Thread: Log splitter tonage

I have always just cut 16" wood for my wood stove and most generally a 20 ton splitter would handle 95 percent of my wood splitting needs. For those of you splitting bigger wood like for an OWB, does it take more tonnage to split a 3 or 4ft log than a 16 inch log?

Similar amount of force required, but a much longer stroke (obviously).

That means more volume, and much more power needed to flow and pressurize all that extra fluid.

My boiler will handle a 48 inch piece. But My body can't. I even tried bringing limb wood home in the 36-48 inch range.. pain in the arse. I cut it 18-20 inches long and load it east to west filling the back half of the stove only on the coldest of nights.
Normally I just load it north to south just inside the door.It will make it through most nights using red oak, hickory and beech.

As ericjeeper said it's a pain to handle when 48 inches plus on my stove you'd be beyond the ceiling baffle and loose alot of your heat transfer. Feeding a big 48 incher in the stove is like holding a sledgehammer on the end of the handle staright out. You end up sticking your head in there to move it around if needed. You'd pay BIG $ for a ram with that much stroke too.

I cut everything right at 24 inches. Easy to handle and puts 4 ricks on the truck withthe tailgate up and 5 with it down. When splitting for the boiler I just split it to what I can carry without a hernia Less handling and saves you time. Both of our current splitters have 4 inchers. Yes they stall out sometimes but you can normally get enough off of a piece to get it where you can just throw it in the boiler. Just keep a seperate pile for what we call junk wood.

In other words, your current splitter is fine. If something stalls on it you can always saw it part way through to finish splitting it. No one will ever know once it ashes.