Gentlemen and Ladies of the board:
I'm a first time poster. Came here after googling for cedar kindling splitter. I have a ton or two of Western Red cedar from the neighbor's logging and I'm looking for some kind of machine that takes a small block of cedar and turns it into multiple pieces of kindling in one stroke. Objective is to sell it after it has dried over the summer. Hand splitting it is very low wage work. Anybody know of such a machine? I have a Yardman 25 Ton hydraulic log splitter (6 hp engine) which pretty well takes care of splitting the wood for the fireplace insert that heats the house. We use about four cords in a burning season. Maybe I have to find someone (inventive engineer) to create something that goes on the ram of the log splitter?
As for just missing the ankle, DBowling. For years I split by hand (maul and wedge) but my shoulders won't let me do that anymore, hence the splitter. However, I had a system that eliminated the picking up of the pieces. Read about it in the Seattle Times in an article about a guy who supplies all the alder for the restaurants that use that in their cooking.
You either build a very
skookum platform about one foot high or find a very large tree round and use that (that's what I used because I have BIG trees around here. Some are four-feet in diameter. Very old Douglas fir and hemlock.) Get yourself a used tire or two with as big an internal hole as you can find. Drill three or four holes in the sidewall and use 20 penny or larger nails to anchor it to the tree round or platform. If you use two tires, you'll need to bolt them together through the adjoining sidewalls. I've done both.
Then you place the piece(s) to be split in the center and walk around the tire with your maul or this 'Fiskers' thing, which I don't know what it is, whacking away and splitting the size wood that you want. If you have a bunch of smaller diameter wood, putting four or five pieces of the same length, more or less, keeps them upright as you break them up and you don't hit the handle on the middle pieces. Eliminates picking up the split pieces and makes it much easier and safer because swing-throughs are stopped cold by the tire in a nice, easy bounce. Never broken a handle, either.
So, that's my contribution to those who are still splitting by hand. If someone knows of a multi-splitter for cedar kindling, kindly reply to
[email protected].
Thank you,
The Discoverer
