It's been about a week and about 10 cords of split wood since I got my DR Rapid Fire splitter. I think we've filled the half-gallon tank three times while the Iron and Oak 30-ton has split about a cord and used almost two gallons.
My biggest concern was its ability to split logs that aren't cut perfect, but my experience is that as long as there is one flat cut, it's not really a problem.
Another concern was the speed of the splitter; while the ram is definitely faster than a hydraulic unit, it's not so fast that its too fast. When needed, I can hold a log in place and safely remove my hand when the ram makes contact with the it. And it doesn't just collide uncontrollably into the wood.
The unit does struggle with larger, wet logs as noted on the other DR thread. The wedge isn't so much as a wedge as a knife so it just gets bound up in bigger stuff as it can't spread open the wood like a wider wedge would do.
Otherwise, this machine (as well as the Supersplit I'm sure), splits wood about as fast as you can feed it and it's just damn fun to operate. Gonna be a said day at our wood lot when we run out of wood to split this winter.
My biggest concern was its ability to split logs that aren't cut perfect, but my experience is that as long as there is one flat cut, it's not really a problem.
Another concern was the speed of the splitter; while the ram is definitely faster than a hydraulic unit, it's not so fast that its too fast. When needed, I can hold a log in place and safely remove my hand when the ram makes contact with the it. And it doesn't just collide uncontrollably into the wood.
The unit does struggle with larger, wet logs as noted on the other DR thread. The wedge isn't so much as a wedge as a knife so it just gets bound up in bigger stuff as it can't spread open the wood like a wider wedge would do.
Otherwise, this machine (as well as the Supersplit I'm sure), splits wood about as fast as you can feed it and it's just damn fun to operate. Gonna be a said day at our wood lot when we run out of wood to split this winter.