Splitter Beam

[Farmall Guy]

I've been thinking about building a splitter to use on my skid steer for a while now. We've got 1 home made splitter already but it requires handling the wood several times before it gets stacked for winter, so my thoughts were to build one that I could run off the skid steer so I can pick up a round, hold it over a trailer and split it. That way I'd only have to lift it out of the trailer and stack it. I'll keep the big splitter for the tough stuff, but it sure would be nice to reduce the amount of handling involved.

Any way my question is has any one considered using a piece of rail road rail for the beam? I can get a piece from work for scrap price and looking at it it looks alot heavier than the 6" I beam on the other spliter but I thought I'd ask for some other oppinions before I drag another piece of scrap home. I'm planning on mounting the cyl on the bottom of the rail and leaving the narrow top (where the train wheels would roll) on the top, this way the wedge and cyl would hang down allowing me to pick up the round with out having to leave the seat. I'm not looking to build a huge spliter for the skid steer, I was thinking a 4" bore and 30" stroke would be about right.

So what do yall think, will this work alright or should I just keep my eye open for another piece of 6" I beam?

 

[eric_271]

There was a thread about this a while back. It can be done but I would not recomend it. I was a welder for 13 years on the SF RR and trust me there is a lot of differance between a rail and a mild steel beam and how they weld. The weld on the rail will be very brittle no matter what. You would have too put a lot more weld on and over more area and still the Idea of it scares me.

 

[leon]

Ive been working on the railroad

There was a thread about this a while back. It can be done but I would not recomend it. I was a welder for 13 years on the SF RR and trust me there is a lot of differance between a rail and a mild steel beam and how they weld. The weld on the rail will be very brittle no matter what. You would have too put a lot more weld on and over more area and still the Idea of it scares me.

Buying unauthorised railroad scrap will get you time in the pokey ,

Even 165 pound per foot railroad rail will misbehave too.

Thermite welds involve lots of prework and waiting/heat up a cold shrunken joint and add rail. Reducing a rail snake due to expansion is tricky too.

Anyone for railroad torpedos:^)

leon :jawdrop: opcorn:

 

[Crofter]

Here is the link to that thread. http://www.arboristsite.com/showthread.php?t=68524&highlight=rail

 

[Wood Doctor]

Buying unauthorised railroad scrap will get you time in the pokey ,
Even 165 pound per foot railroad rail will misbehave too. Thermite welds involve lots of prework and waiting/heat up a cold shrunken joint and add rail. Reducing a rail snake due to expansion is tricky too.

Anyone for railroad torpedos:^)

leon :jawdrop: opcorn:

+1! The weight of the rail would mean that Arnold Schwarzenegger would have to be brought in from California to transport it, even if you figured out how to weld a toe plate to it. I imagine that a big, commercial welding shop could do this for you at a price.

The typical I-beam generally never bends. The toe plate bends first. Nice idea, though, to try to salvage huge, heavy, steel stock. Imagine the enormous tonnage of that rail stock that is just slowly rusting away, unused. It kind of makes you want to

 

[Farmall Guy]

Buying unauthorised railroad scrap will get you time in the pokey ,

Even 165 pound per foot railroad rail will misbehave too.

Thermite welds involve lots of prework and waiting/heat up a cold shrunken joint and add rail. Reducing a rail snake due to expansion is tricky too.

Anyone for railroad torpedos:^)

leon :jawdrop: opcorn:

Thanks for the info guys, I kinda wondered about being able to weld it but I wasnt sure.

As for buyin rail scrap, this stuff isnt from a rail road it actully makes up the floor in the soaking pits at the alluminum mill that I work in. They place 30000 pound ingots of alluminum on these rails. the rails are spaced about 1 foot apart so the heat from the furnace can heat the metal evenly before rolling into coils. This stuff never sees a rail car and goes directly to the local scrap yard after a rebuild, most of its warped and twisted real bad from the weight and heat but there are some straight peices from time to time about 12 feet long or so.

Definatly sounds like a 6" I beam would be better, if the rail is going to twist too I might as well get somthing I can weld easily. Not to mention being able to move it with out hooking it up to the machine.

Thanks again

 

[Crofter]

Not "I" beam; Wide flange or so called "H" beam and not the light one either with 1/4 thick web and flanges. Twist is an issue with tough wood and if you are thinking of sticking it on a skid steer it will get extra abuse. Wear from the slide becomes an issue too after a few seasons. The labor to fabricate is practically the same with a heavier beam so dont skimp here. Make your slide LONG! the longer it is, the less inclination to cock and bind with any load off center of the push rod. The slide can be as long or slightly longer than the piston stroke if it is a base mounted cylinder. With a trunnion mounted cylinder (seal end) it cannot though.

 

[Farmall Guy]

I tend to over build when I build, our currant spliter beam is 1/2" thick with a 5" X 48" stroke cyl that came off a 100 foot bucket truck. I'm going to build the one for the skid steer even heavier, with a smaller cyl to compensate for the higher level of wear and tear that it will see in that aplication. I'll have to watch the scap bins at work ocasionally they will scrap out some real heavy H beams with webs and flanges between 1/2 and 3/4" thick. I can get any of it for scrap price so its more a matter of waiting until I find what I want.

I'm goingto mount a 4 way wedge on the end of the beam guseted and braced well and my slide will be about 12" long or so. I'm thinking about buying some brass bearing strips that are used on fork truck masts to take the brunt of the wear. They are adjustable with shims and hold up well on a 15,000 pound capacity fork truck so they should do good on a spliter. With propor greasing they should last a while and will wear out before causing alot of damage to the beam. I'll mount them on the both sides of the slide with a wipper strip in front and back to keep the bulk of the dirt and grit from getting in to them.

As to the cyl I'm planning a 4" X 24-30" stroke, preferably with a 2.5" rod to improve strength and reduce cycle time on the retract side. The cyl will be mounted with the barrel end back at the coupler to attach to the machine with the rod and wedge out at the end so I can hold the block over a trailer and split it. Would be easier to build it and put it on my backhoe but I dont have auxilary hyd on the boom so it would be real expensive to make it work on that machine.

I'm looking forward to this project it will give me a chance to use my machine tools and its a good reason to put the skid steer back together.

 

[lewis d2]

skid steer splitter

BEEN THERE DID THAT Built one last winter for my GEHL 4835 IMO I would not go with anything as heavy as railroad iron I used 8" H Beam with 1/2 inch flange and it is plenty heavy. you have to consider that with a 30" cyl and a 30" + stroke you end up with about a 72" piece of beam> Not sure of type of skid steer you have or what type wood where you are but here in Missouri when you get a 28-32" round in that thing it gets pretty heavy I cut a lot in creek bottom and you can get a lot of ground disturbance with all that weight hanging out front. It sure is nice for sure as you can split and load completly from the loader seat. I use mine in an outside wood boiler and can just back the trailer up to the shed-boiler and only handle it once as it goes into the furnace from trailer. hope this helps good luck. OH yeah I built my wedge extremely agrassive and find it isnt necessary.just a thought you might try a single wedge first also the pressure from a skidsteer isnt the same as from a regular splitter pump so dont be disapointed rambled enough Thanks DRYWOOD

 

[Farmall Guy]

Most everything we cut is between 18 and 24" diameter, I've been thinking about building it with a single blade then building a 4 way to pin over the single that way I'll have the best of both worlds. I'm running a 1971 John Deere 170, not a real power house but at 500 bucks for the machine the price was right and it dose a decent job.

You guys have definatly convinced me to steer away from the rail, way to heavy and hard to weld, I'm going to keep my eye on the scrap bins for some H beam what will be a little more manigable. All our splitting is done on hard level ground so rutting things up shouldnt be a problem but I dont want to do a nose dive either

Right now we're running our spliter off the aux hyd on our 856 Farmall, it only needs to run about 1/2 throttel to split anything we come across. I'm not sure what kind of pressure its building but I'd imagine it would be close to what my skidsteer will put out at WOT. The 856 sounds nice running the splitter but a 100 horse farm tractor seems to be over kill to make fire wood.