4 & 6 way wedges

[milkie62]

I have a good home made splitter that is unstopable in just the 2 way split.I had a 4 way made up and the wings set back about 3" before the wood hits them.My relief pegs out at 2350 psi.Now some realy knotty stuff causes the splitter to peg out on the relief.My cylinder is a 4x24 and a 11 gpm pump.How the heck are some Timberwolfs running a 6 way ? I am going to jump up to a 5" cylinder and 22 gpm pump.Also my valve I think is a Prince but I cannot figure out how to bump up the pressure to 2500-2700 psi.My auto retract does not work anymore,and do not want to go to far as to clean it or whatever needs to be done to get the auto return to work again.Maybe I should just buy a new Prince valve.
Are any of the big splitters running closer to 2700 psi to get the power out of them ?

 

[muddstopper]

Since you know your relief is pegging at 2350 psi, I am going to assume you have a pressure gauge installed in the system. Every cylinder has a recommended safe working pressure and a built in margin of safety. I would think your 4in cylinder is probably rated at 2750psi, but it might not be. Before switching pumps and cylinders out, i think i would just bump the relief up to 2750psi and see how it works. If the cylinder is only rated for the 2350psi it is currently working at, the 2750psi would probably still be within the safety margin. If it blows the cylinder up, well you are planning on replacing it anyways. There may be another reason the relief is set at 2350psi. It could be that you motor isnt big enought to pull the pump at higher pressures. You will know if this is the case when you start raising your relief pressure. If the motor bogs down and dies at 2750psi, then you know you dont have the horse power to pull the pump.

If this is the case, most likely, you wont have enought hp to pull the 22gpm pump either. You can pump high pressure with low flow rates with a small hp motor. you can pump high flows and low pressure with a small motor, but you cant pump high pressure and high flow with to small a motor. Replacing the 4in cylinder with a 5 inch one will increase splitting force, but with you current pump and engine combination, the cycles time are going to be pretty slow. You can pull the 22gpm pump with your small motor and get really fast cycletimes with your 4in cylinder, but you would have to lower your relief setting even more to keep from killing the engine.

Add a bigger cylinder, pump and engine combination and now will your Hbeam and other components withstand the extra force. Is you Hydraulic tank big enough to keep the oil from overheating. Is your control valve and hydraulic hosesrated for the extra flow of oil.. More to it than simply throwing on bigger pumps and cylinders. A good wood splitter is a combination of of all the components and will produce 100% of of what it can deliver based on its design. poor design=poor performance.

 

[milkie62]

well I should rephrase what I said since I probably put too much info in.My question was do the Timber wolves tall out with a 6 way wedge like mine does or are they running max allowable pressure.I think I could split with my 4 way if I could figure out how to increase the pressure at the valve.The valve was a USA brand but have lost the label.I am planning a new build with all the goodies.I will keep my old one as an antique so to speak.It is pretty nice though but not worth going through all the modifications. Thanks muddstopper.

 

[Swamp Yankee]

Valve pic?

If you post a couple pics of the valve I'm more than certain we can give you directions on where the relief valve is and how to adjust.

Take Care

 

[muddstopper]

I cant say anything concerning the timberwolf. I have never seen one in person. As for your valve, Some of the cheap ones are preset and to change the relife pressure I think its all internal. A normal vlavle should have a cap screw on the back covered with a Nut. You simply remove the nut and use a allen wrench to turn the screw. dead head the cylinder all the way extended so the system wil build max pressure and then just trun the screw in until tt gets to the pressure setting you whis, or until it stalls the engine. If it stalls the engine before reaching desired pressure, back the screw back out a few turn until the engine doesnt stall.

. My old splitter had a 4way adjustable wedge and a 4in cylinder. It is 24in tall when fully extended. I use a blade instead of a wedge. I find the blade design will slice thru knots that will stall a wide wedge. A wide wedge will split a clean grained round faster than a blade, but i dont often see those perfect rounds. My cylinder was also a 4in bore and I had a 14gpm single stage pump. Only time i stalled this wedge was on a 28in dia whiteoak crotch with 4 big limb knots in it. Lowered the wedge and split the thing in half and then used the 4way to slice and dice the big halfs.

I upgraded this splitter to a 5in bore cylinder and a 28gpm pump. No more problems with stalling or getting a round stuck on the wedge, so i added another wing and made it a 6way. It pretty much goes thru anything, even with the 6way. I have stuck it a time or two and let me tell you when you stick a round using a 5in bore cylinder, you end up beating it off with a sledge hammer. LOL

Now the problem I have with multisplit wedges is the respits. Even with a 6way, you still endup resplitting a lot of rounds, especially if the rounds are large dia to start with. A 24 in round will yield six splits in one pass, but those splits are still 12inches wide, to big for a stove. To resplit, that 6way wedge becomes a handicap. You endup with a ton of splinters.

I split lots of 30+dia rounds, got a maple to saw up thats over 48 inches. Be intersting to see how that 6way holds up. I have a boom mounted on the splitter for lifting big rounds, I imagine the winch will get a workout on that one

 

[milkie62]

I am mostly using it for my OWB.So a 30" plus dia split 4 or 6 ways is not a problem.The smaller ones at the initial split go into the sell pile for wood stoves.

 

[Ed*L]

I don't know what the actual pressure is on my TW-5, for the most part it doesn't slow down when using the 4 way wedge.

At 2350 psi a 5" cylinder will give you 46142 lbs of force or 23 tons. Timberwolf lists the TW-5 pressure at 25 tons, that equals 2550 psi, so you'll be close.

Ed