After 36 years my old splitter finally needed a make over....

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olddude

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I built my old wood splitter after I got tired of busting it with a maul and ax. Back in the day a pickup load of nice oak firewood brought a hefty $22.50 delivered, to stack was an extra 5 bucks unless it had to be carried up three flights of stairs then they needed to find another woodman.LOL I don't sell wood anymore but I do burn a lot. The small wood burner in the house doesn't burn but 2 maybe 3 cords a season but that old boiler stove I built to heat my shop will go through how ever much you want to dump in it. I've done a lot of fine tuning on it over the past several years and I'm finally beginning to learn that you don't have to keep it packed to the max all the time to get what you want. But it still will go through 8 to 10 cords a year to keep my floor at a nice average temp of 70 degrees.

I don't know how many pieces of wood that old splitter busted up over the years all I can say that it was a bunch. It had a couple leaks I wanted to fix and I also wanted to add a 4 way wedge and a lift table would sure be nice. I had been saying for the past several years I was going to fix the old girl but you know how it is.....once the wood is split there is always next year. I was splitting wood out back and the small leak in the cylinder didn't stop this time like it has in the past and I added some fluid and it did slow up for a bit but never quit all the way so I knew this was the year I needed to tune the old girl up.

Once I got to looking at it and deciding on what to do, I finally decided to scrap that whole setup and start with a system new beam and all. I don't know how that small beam that was on the old one held up all these years because it was light weight. It was only 6" wide, 8" tall 3/8" on the flanges and 1/4" web. It did have a couple spots on the top where the push block was working on but it was still straight as an arrow. The push block didn't have enough area and allowed it to move around more than it should which caused it to bind every now and again but it never broke nothing. I don't know where they come up with all these figures like 1 gal of hydraulic tank capacity for each gal of flow because I only had a 4' piece of 4" box tube that I used for my axle and hydraulic tank combined. It surely didn't hold much but the 11 GPM harbor freight pump and Prince Valve never fussed a bit. The oil would get warm but never to hot to hold on to and they both lasted all this time. The old 4" X 24 " cylinder did start leaking several years ago but would stop after it warmed up a little. It only leaked when the cylinder was retracted and it hit the relief didn't leak at all on the out stroke.

Well enough about the old, let's bring in the new. I knew I wanted a multi wedge type and decided on the box type wedge system. I do have it fixed so that I can build another single, a 4 or maybe a 6 way wedge later on. I also knew I wanted a log lift table and maybe a wedge lift also. I pulled a old beam I had laying out back and cut off what I didn't need then the engineering came into play. I have to look and think about stuff for awhile before I start to get a picture of how to progress with the different parts that are involved. I even drew up some pictures and after a day or two It slowly started to come together as to what I need to do. My problem is I have to build stuff out of what I have on hand and that most of the time will cost you some extra time....let me add a LOT of time in most cases.But hopefully I have more time than money so that's how I do it. I also get in a hurry sometimes and weld on a part before it's completely done, like a part that has to have a few holes drilled in it before it gets welded. One case was the tow system, I spent almost 4 hours grinding the weld seam out of two pieces of 3" box tube so I could slide another smaller piece inside for a receiver hitch setup. I got it done and went to sit it on the front of the beam to see how it would look and before I knew it I had it welded in place only to discover I had not drilled a hitch pin hole in it. Sadly the way it was sitting it was almost impossible to get to and I broke up a half dozen drill bits a couple unibits and my drill motor before I got it done, not to mention the skin that got knocked off my hands in the process. I have to mention the poor drill was a victim of my rage after for some reason the trigger didn't shut the motor off when I let go and me, my arm got wrapped up in a ball by the cord thankfully it ran out of cord and pulled the plug out the wall before it broke my arm. Oh well that was a good ol drill but a man can only take so much and another body slam victim hits the floor.

Anyway this is getting too long so I'm going to put up a couple pics of my progress and be done for the day.
 

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Yesterday I had to run out and I left out a lot of stuff I wanted to put up. I also wanted to do this thread in a progressive form as the work progressed but as it turned out I've almost finished the dang thing beforehand. I also wanted to take more pictures of certain parts of the build but I just got going and forgot all about the camera. I'll post what I did take as time goes on and also I might ask if someone see's something that might not work or could have been done a better way please add your comments.

On reason I kept putting off repairing my old one is that I had plans to build a firewood processor complete with a hydraulic saw, log deck, some type of a knuckle boom system to load the logs and a conveyor system to get the wood out of the way. I have been piecing together pieces and parts for that build for years and just could never get the time or the money to start the build. I've bought several old machines where I have stripped off anything hydraulic I could use. I scrapped a lot of it but saved a lot of the base metal that might be useful. I found a old log truck that had what I thought would make a fairly good swing log lifting boom type thing but once I got it apart I found it would take more to fix it than it would be worth so I scrapped that too. I also had a job clearing some land years ago and found an old CRT delimber that the loggers left after they finished cutting the timber next door. It had somehow caught on fire and they were supposed to come back to get it out but never did. I asked the land owner what he was going to with it and he said you get it out and we will split what ever you get for scrap out of it. The good thing about it was the back of the machine where the saw parts were didn't see much of the fire and was is really good shape. It took me a week to figure out how to get all that stuff apart but I finally got all of the parts out that I could use for my processor build. I cut up the rest of the machine and hauled it to the scrap yard. We didn't get much for it because scrap then was only about a penny a pound so I gave the land owner the scrap money and I kept the parts I could use and called it even. Now as I look at it what it cost me to cut that thing up and haul it off was a big waste of time because of the time, fuel and hauling involved. I could have bought a fairly good saw setup for a third of what it cost me to get it out. And now I've just about given up on that processor build because I really don't need something like that anymore. There was a time that I had access to all the wood I could ever process and sell but I don't have that access any longer and wood for me now is getting harder to find.

I still like to mess with wood though and they will have to pry my cold dead hands off a hydraulic lever somewhere when I'm gone because wood is something you never get out of your system once you do it for awhile. I plan on building one more splitter after this one and hopefully that one will be a beast. But for now I plan on getting this one going and using it for a year or so and then sell it to help finance the beast machine.

I ran into another problem I had a 12.5 hp briggs engine I wanted to use on this thing but it was a vertical shaft I made a bracket to hold the pump but I guess didn't get a set screw tight enough or it missed the keyway all together and when I started the engine things went ok for a minute then the coupling came apart and locked up everything and oil went everywhere. I don't know if it bent the pump shaft or what but that new seal I put in is dumping oil. I decided to scrap that vertical shaft motor for now and use my Honda GX390 that I had on the other splitter. I should have done that in the first place but that ol Briggs motor ran so good and I wanted to use the Honda on another machine. I ordered a new pump and it should be here in a day or two and we will see what happens. I bought a 16 GPM this time which should be fine for this machine but I did want to go with a 22 GPM but I was running short on cash......you know how that goes.

A few pics of my hydraulic tank build.
 

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I built my old wood splitter after I got tired of busting it with a maul and ax. Back in the day a pickup load of nice oak firewood brought a hefty $22.50 delivered, to stack was an extra 5 bucks unless it had to be carried up three flights of stairs then they needed to find another woodman.LOL I don't sell wood anymore but I do burn a lot. The small wood burner in the house doesn't burn but 2 maybe 3 cords a season but that old boiler stove I built to heat my shop will go through how ever much you want to dump in it. I've done a lot of fine tuning on it over the past several years and I'm finally beginning to learn that you don't have to keep it packed to the max all the time to get what you want. But it still will go through 8 to 10 cords a year to keep my floor at a nice average temp of 70 degrees.

I don't know how many pieces of wood that old splitter busted up over the years all I can say that it was a bunch. It had a couple leaks I wanted to fix and I also wanted to add a 4 way wedge and a lift table would sure be nice. I had been saying for the past several years I was going to fix the old girl but you know how it is.....once the wood is split there is always next year. I was splitting wood out back and the small leak in the cylinder didn't stop this time like it has in the past and I added some fluid and it did slow up for a bit but never quit all the way so I knew this was the year I needed to tune the old girl up.

Once I got to looking at it and deciding on what to do, I finally decided to scrap that whole setup and start with a system new beam and all. I don't know how that small beam that was on the old one held up all these years because it was light weight. It was only 6" wide, 8" tall 3/8" on the flanges and 1/4" web. It did have a couple spots on the top where the push block was working on but it was still straight as an arrow. The push block didn't have enough area and allowed it to move around more than it should which caused it to bind every now and again but it never broke nothing. I don't know where they come up with all these figures like 1 gal of hydraulic tank capacity for each gal of flow because I only had a 4' piece of 4" box tube that I used for my axle and hydraulic tank combined. It surely didn't hold much but the 11 GPM harbor freight pump and Prince Valve never fussed a bit. The oil would get warm but never to hot to hold on to and they both lasted all this time. The old 4" X 24 " cylinder did start leaking several years ago but would stop after it warmed up a little. It only leaked when the cylinder was retracted and it hit the relief didn't leak at all on the out stroke.

Well enough about the old, let's bring in the new. I knew I wanted a multi wedge type and decided on the box type wedge system. I do have it fixed so that I can build another single, a 4 or maybe a 6 way wedge later on. I also knew I wanted a log lift table and maybe a wedge lift also. I pulled a old beam I had laying out back and cut off what I didn't need then the engineering came into play. I have to look and think about stuff for awhile before I start to get a picture of how to progress with the different parts that are involved. I even drew up some pictures and after a day or two It slowly started to come together as to what I need to do. My problem is I have to build stuff out of what I have on hand and that most of the time will cost you some extra time....let me add a LOT of time in most cases.But hopefully I have more time than money so that's how I do it. I also get in a hurry sometimes and weld on a part before it's completely done, like a part that has to have a few holes drilled in it before it gets welded. One case was the tow system, I spent almost 4 hours grinding the weld seam out of two pieces of 3" box tube so I could slide another smaller piece inside for a receiver hitch setup. I got it done and went to sit it on the front of the beam to see how it would look and before I knew it I had it welded in place only to discover I had not drilled a hitch pin hole in it. Sadly the way it was sitting it was almost impossible to get to and I broke up a half dozen drill bits a couple unibits and my drill motor before I got it done, not to mention the skin that got knocked off my hands in the process. I have to mention the poor drill was a victim of my rage after for some reason the trigger didn't shut the motor off when I let go and me, my arm got wrapped up in a ball by the cord thankfully it ran out of cord and pulled the plug out the wall before it broke my arm. Oh well that was a good ol drill but a man can only take so much and another body slam victim hits the floor.

Anyway this is getting too long so I'm going to put up a couple pics of my progress and be done for the day.
You went all out on the old girl. Mine was built in 1982 by my father and I. He has passed now but the old splitter lives on.I still use it and as yours has split many cords or wood.
 
I wish now I had just kept it alive cause at this point the only thing that I used was the axle and I have several others I could have used on the new one. here's what the old girl looked like.
 

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When I ordered this new pump I tried to order a pump motor bracket that I could use on that 12.5 hp Briggs engine. The lady that I talked to didn't have a clue what I was talking about so she had to send me to the technical dept. Now I have bought a few parts from these people before and got fairly decent service from them but the past couple orders I don't know. I know for a fact that you can mount a pump to a vertical shaft motor but the guy I talked to in the technology dept. said with out a doubt it could not be done. I didn't call them to argue with anyone I just wanted some parts but when I asked him how all those splitters I see at Lowes, Home Depot, Harbor Freight and other places that use this type system worked he couldn't come up with anything useful to say but, I already told you it wont work what else do I need to say. We don't have anything like that, will there be anything else. I had just bought over $500.00 worth of parts just a couple days before but I couldn't use most of the adapter fittings they sent because they pulled the wrong size fittings somehow, but they were so helpful as long as I had all the part numbers. If you don't have part numbers they don't seem to even want to talk to you anymore. When I asked the lady what good is giving you part numbers if when you pull them they get them out the wrong bin. I could tell she was getting a little flustered so I just let it go and said have a nice day and hung up.

Anyway, hopefully my pump will show up today and I can get it mounted and get this thing running. I spent yesterday putting together a leveling arm/ foot, for the machine to rest on the ground while splitting if it's not hooked up to my little tractor. Hopefully it wont get in the way when I'm working or when I go to put the wedge lift cylinder on.

That hydraulic tank should hold about 8 gals of oil when full. I was hoping I could have made the thing the full 4' which would have been a little over 10 gals but I didn't have room but for 42" so that cut it down a little. I put 5 gals in it which filled it enough for the pump to pick it up so hopefully I'll add another gal or two and that should do fine. If I find I need more I'll either add another smaller 6" tube beside that one or build a new one all together. Like I said I don't know what I'll find once I get it going.

One iffy' thing I did with this one is with the push plate slider hold down that guides the pusher down the beam. I didn't use the bolt down way of doing it. I did make it longer than my old one to give it more area of support but rather than bolts I just used a piece of heavy angle for the underside and stitch welded it to the side of another piece of angle that's welded to the top slide plate. I will keep an eye on it for awhile to see if it's not acting right and if it doesn't It will be easy enough to grind the welds off and go another route. But with over 35 years on that other beam there was hardly any wear on the beam where it slide up and down the beam so I'm thinking if I add a little grease to the underside every now and again it should be no problem. It's kind of hard to tell exactly by the pics I took but hopefully you can see what I did. Tomorrow I'll post some pics of how I put the wedge parts together.
 

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Ok, looks like I have a few more minutes so let me tell you about how I did the blade backstop system. I see where a lot of guys cut out the top section of the beam and leave just the bottom flange then notch out the part where the blade slides up and down. I didn't go that route. I used two pieces of 2" heavy walled sq tube to run the length of where the pusher will slide and welded it on either side of the web to the bottom flange. But first I had to shim out enough on the web so that I would be able to get enough width between the two pieces of box tube for the blade to be able to slide through. It needed to be 3/4" + wide and the web was only 1/2". I used two pieces of 1/8" plate for shims. I drilled a bunch of half inch holes in these plates and then clamped them to the web and welded these light plates to the web using the holes I drilled. I just filled the holes I drilled with weld and ground it down flat. I figured if I just welded around the outside of the these light plates the center could possibly flex under stress even though it was going to be a piece of 1/2" plate over the top for overall support. Welding these holes in the center will hold the shim tight to the web so that they can't move.

Once these shim pieces were in place I welded the box tube to the bottom flange and added a piece of 1/2" plate to fill in to the top flange. I then cut off the tube sticking out to length and then could weld in the back plate leaving a 3/4" slot for the wedge to slid through. It was still a little tight but with a little filing I finally got a good fit for the blade to slide into and it was a very good fit. I then cut two more pieces of 1/2" plate for the space between the beam end plate to the back of the stop block and welded it all solid to the top of the sq tube from the end plate to the back of the stop block. I can't imagine that ever going anywhere.
 

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Huston....We have a problem......I finally got my pump and I made another bracket so I could couple it to the engine. Got it all mounted then hooked up the pressure line and went to hook up the suction line and that dang new suction fitting is 1" and I had it plumbed for 3/4". I looked all over and couldn't find anything I could use so I was on the hunt the next day for some 1" suction line. I went to several different places and no body had any. Finally went to a place all the way across town and they had some but they wanted $28.00 a foot for it. After I got to where I could talk again I politely told the guy thanks but no thanks. I stopped by another shop on the way home and the guy there didn't have any but he gave me a short piece of some kind of 1" industrial hose and sold me a 1" hose barb and a 1" to 3/4" reducer so I could neck it down at the pump to get me by until I can do something else.

Anyway, that got me going and could finally fire it up. I had to add a couple more gallons of hydraulic fluid to get all the air out of the lines and also had to tighten up a couple hoses that I must have missed. I pulled it outside and let everything warm up some and then went around back and found a 16" piece of white oak that had a pretty good knot in it. Threw it on my new log lift and wow that worked sweet. Finally the moment of truth and right away I found out I had forgot to bump the pressure up. Got that adjusted and flipped the lever and it split it without breaking a sweat.

I took it out back to the wood pile and split a few pieces and everything was going good until I got to this great big ol knotty hickory block. I started not to load it up because I had planed on busting those really knotty pieces in half with my sons single wedge splitter we built awhile back. But no, before I knew it I had it on the log lift and raised it up to the cradle.....did I mention how good that part worked, man that thing is nice. I gave it a look over to see where the best spot would be that might be the easiest to split but there were none. I have to admit I could hear the little man in the back of my head saying don't do it. I flicked him off a yanked on the lever at first I thought everything was going to be ok then the pump clicked in to the second stage and started slicing through one big knot and was making these awful clicking, popping sounds and I thought it was going to get through it when it finally got to another knot on the other side and everything stopped. That's as far as she would go. I backed off and tried it again a couple more times but she was done. This is the time I wished I had went ahead and put that wedge lift cylinder on and about a half hour later I finally got that dang hunk of wood out. When I finally got it out I could see what had happened. When it first started to bind up I could see that the whole wedge had a slight twist to the right as it was cutting through the first knot and all I can figure is with that little bit of angle as the second knot was pushed into the blade it went in at an angle to the second vertical cutter blade where it just pushed it over and everything went downhill from there. It was dark by then and I didn't see what had happened until I got it back into the shop. When I got it int the light I could see that the main 3/4" vertical cutting knife was twisted pretty bad and also where that 1/2" secondary cutter was bent over.

I probably had over two days of machine work and welding in that part and now that is scrap. This is another good example of how using only what you have on hand may not be the best course of action some times. I'll have to admit that I really didn't have much faith that those pieces of 1/2" that I used for those smaller vertical cutters would last too long but hey, it was worth a try. It probably would have been better if my welds had failed rather than holding and letting all that stuff twist up like that. Anyway looks like I'm back to the drawing board.
 

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Trial and error.... sometimes that's how it goes. I busted my wedge off my splitter a few times till I realized I needed to reinforce behind it. Bent up the end of my beam pretty good too.
 
Yeah, I really didn't expect to have a clean blast off and I figured I would have some issues with that box type wedge. Also the main vertical cutter probably should have been made out of 1" rather than the 3/4" I used. Although I do think it would be strong enough if I could figure out a way to better hold it straight and not let it move from side to side at the top like it was doing. It was tight in the slide and you couldn't move it by hand but when you throw 15 or 20 tons of force at it the thing just went the way it wanted.

I also noticed a couple places it was binding the wood and I need to fix that. the way I tied in the end of the beam with log cradle will probably need to be cut back a little and angled downward at the end. It won't be a problem on one side but the other side anchors one of the pivot bushings for the log lift but I think I can work that out without redesigning the whole lift table.

I cut a point on another piece of that 3/4" plate I had laying around and am thinking I'll make a 4 way setup to get me by for the time being hopefully that holds up.
 
Well after a few mods I finally split some wood. I put together a 4 way wedge that worked pretty good. There are a couple more things I have to do to get it like I want it and will probably work them out today. I wanted a little more support up top from the blade stop block so I made a removable bracket that I could mount to it when I'm using the 4 way and soon maybe to be 6 way. A pic or two would probably explain better that I could of the what's and why's of this mod. This bracket overlaps the 3/4" vertical blade in the back with hopes of keeping it straight when the blade is working on knotty or twisted wood. I think that is what happened to the box wedge. There was nothing at all from keeping the blade from turning to one side when it hit a knot except where it slides up and down in the holder. That would hold it at the bottom but not at the top and once it turned a little to far then it would put sideways force on the blades on the other side then catastrophic failure.

I haven't given up on the box wedge setup and I have thoughts of trying to salvage some of that box and making it so that it will work some day but for now this setup will do. Right now the wedge sets a little lower than I want so I need to drill a couple more 3/4" holes in the side of the blade so as to get a little more adjustment. Right now where I put the other adjustment holes it's either too high or to low. I also cut out some of that plate at the end of the beam to remove some of the pinch points and that worked pretty good but I still have to figure out what to do with the table pivot points. I may have to completely redo that one side but I think it doable. even after I cut a lot of it out it still wants to hang up on really big rounds.

I pulled it out back to give it another test run and I split a pretty fair amount in a short time. That 4 way once tuned in is going to be really nice it is hands down better that that single wedge I have been using. Does make a little more trash though but hopefully once I get it raised up a little it will cut some of that out.
 

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Well done, I admit I'm a tad envious of your wedge and table set up! It's so much better then my current set up. I also really like how your extra brace bolts up to support the wedge when it's out farther. One question on the brace, why didnt you weld it on? I would think it would help out keeping a big one way more stable as well.
 
Well as I said I haven't given up on the box wedge yet and I didn't want that to get in the way if I did. One thing I didn't do when I had that box on there was have it set up where the stop block would slip into a hole cut into the top wood resting plate of the box. I should have cut a slot so that the top of the back rest would have flushed out even with the rest of top of that plate. If I had done that then I don't think it would have failed so quickly because that would have helped to keep the wedge from twisting. My stop block ended up not being tall enough to pull that off and I got in a hurry and just forgot about it. Oh well live and learn. Hopefully you can figure out what the heck I just said there. LOL

That's the bad thing about this type design once you build it you are pretty much stuck with it or redesign the whole thing.
 
Looks like you got your four way working. Watch those pieces that broke your box wedge those kind are hard on four way wedges also. You may want to make it hyd adjustable so when a tough piece is coming up you can lower or raise the four way out of the way and just single split it first.
 
Looks like you got your four way working. Watch those pieces that broke your box wedge those kind are hard on four way wedges also. You may want to make it hyd adjustable so when a tough piece is coming up you can lower or raise the four way out of the way and just single split it first.
Yes I can see how they might be a problem, I split some pretty nasty maple pieces yesterday and I could see how they were trying to twist the main cutter but they seemed to slide on through the horizontal knifes pretty easy. I have them tilted up and outward about 15 degrees and also they are also cut on an angle where they are not as wide on the outside as they are on the inside. I noticed a couple pieces that had bad knots in them and as they would hit the blade and slide outward. sometimes they would split and sometimes they would just slide out of the way. I would rather have them slide off than having them hang up and bending something. All I have to do is grab it and send it through a second time right through the middle and it slices right on through them. The knives are pretty sharp, probably a little too sharp I found out real quick gloves are a must because I have already lost a little skin in a couple spots.LOL

I had to adjust the pressures on the valve again yesterday. The spring center detent wasn't working at all and I adjusted it a little lower and now that works like it should. I also bumped up the main pressure to 2850 psi from around 2700 I had it set to before. I was going to run it all the way to 3000 psi but think I'll leave it where it is for awhile until I get used to how it does. Where it's at now seems to work just fine and it splits what I put in there and so far hasn't broken anything. I know I have pieces of wood out there that are going to give me trouble but I'll just deal with them when I get there.

Oh, and I do plan on making it all hydraulic I just need to get another cylinder because the one I was going to use was a little too long and fat. I'll probably use that cylinder on my conveyor when I get around to that build. I already have figured out that you can have the fastest splitter in the world but it's no good to you if you have to stop splitting every 15 minutes and spend 30 minutes moving the splits out the way so you can split more.

Just a note to anyone wanting to build one like this. My log cradle is a little too flat. It should be a little higher and also angled upward a quite a bit more than the way I have mine, probably not a full 45 degrees but 35 degrees would have been better. Mine are so flat because I was going to use a different type pusher hold down setup and later abandoned that plan and I just never got around to changing it like it should be. Changing that would do two things, it would help center the wood a little better and it would also help to keep the logs from wanting to roll off the other side when you roll them on to the beam. I have a plan to make those changes later on after I get caught up on my wood I have laying around now. This build was a fresher course for the one I really want to build down the road and it's good to find this kind of stuff out now rather that later like I'm doing now.
 
She's still going I split a couple of cords yesterday and everything went well. As I said before the main problem now is keeping the wood out of the way. I still need to do some adjusting on this valve. The log lift works good but the split side seems like it hesitates for a second or two when it changes from hi to low or when it first enters the log like it waits for pressure to build up or something. Something happened to my pressure gauge the dial face with the numbers on it spins around so I can't really tell what's going on. I have another one and I'm going to change it out so I can get a better feel for what's going on. On my old 3000 series valve that was on the other machine the pressure would be there as soon as I hit the lever but not this 5200 valve. I'm sure it has something to do with the main pressure detent or the relief spring to center detent adjustment I just have to play with it to get it right. Hopefully this is not just the way this valve works.
 
We had rain on and off this weekend and I dragged the splitter into the shop Sunday morning to fix a couple things. I had to take out a little side to side motion on the pusher block and I got that taken care of. I had noticed that some of the wood would slide sideways when it hit the horizontal knife and either get stuck or just slide out the way. I added a small winglet to the ends of those blades to see if that might help. It did help but some pieces still want to slide sideways just not as bad. I probably should not have angled those cutters back as far as I did and I'll have to remember that in the future. I do think that angle helps with some of the force that get's put on that blade though.

The sun came out about the middle of the day so I had to get back at it. I split a pretty good pile that was in my way and thought about just calling it a day. There was several big knotty pieces that I had left to the side to split later with the other machine but it won't dark yet so I said what the heck I might as well give them a try. Without that log lift I never would have thought about it because they were all heavy. I've done those heavy pieces before and they never were easy to get up on the beam and these pieces would be a good stress test for my new lift. I wanted to shoot a movie of this attempt for either bragging rights or to hang up on my wall of shame but I never could figure out how to hold the phone and fight this wood at the same time so I just took some after pics of the progress. I didn't really think I would be able to get these pieces split but they all got busted up. They were not pretty but they are on the wood pile. A couple put up a pretty good fight but they all came around......here's where I pat myself on the back and think back of all the problems I had along the way and grin.
 

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