Brutus: It lives!!!

[Mike mandry]

WOW,

Thats awesome.

Who cares what it cost. I think you did good for the money.
Looks like it will be a blast to use as well.

 

[tomdcoker]

That's to pretty to use to split wood. Tom

 

[WetBehindtheEar]

Those wheels aren't tricked out enough... You need to put 22's with spinners on

What are those tires anyway? They look pretty aggressive... Z rated with 1.2 lateral g capability?

 

[teacherman]

Very nice!!

 

[Bowtie]

I thin we have seen the first "Custom styled" log splitter. I personally love it.

Good work! I absolutely LOVE that! Hell with the money part and time. That is all about the love of building it, and making it right and a work of art, that works! Rep coming!

 

[parrisw]

I've got lots of big pictures, but maybe I'm reading the posting limits too conservatively. I see lots of other pictures posted that are larger.
I'll see what I can do.

WOW, nice work man.

About the pics, you should be able to get them to 800x600 and still fit on here. If ya want email them to me I'll re size them up for ya.

 

[K9-Handler]

Great work, could you post how you have made your crane pivot smoothly under load? I have the equipment and want to add a similar crane lift to mine.

That was the subject of a couple of the laying-in-bed-thinking episodes.

I'd thought about dropping an old tractor wheel bearing down into the bottom of the welded-on upright that the vertical crane shaft fits into. But somehow during the build I lost the bearing race (look at the background of my workshop in the "before" picture and you'll understand! ).
So I just greased up the bottom of the hole and greased up the shaft, and one pipe just turns inside the other. It turns surprisingly freely. I think we're all programmed to think of using bushings or bearings on shafts, but when you think of it, a crane like this would turn at -- what? -- maybe 0.5 RPM for half a circle at a time? My neighbor has a similar setup, but uses two horizontal discs, one welded to the bottom pipe, one welded to the vertical crane pipe, and the two greased discs just rub against each other. In his case, the weight is taken up by the discs; in my case the weight it taken up by the vertical pipe sitting on the same top plate that the splitting log sits on. His plates have no noticeable wear after a decade of use, and he heats with wood AND runs a commercial maple sugar house that uses wood to burn off the water in the sap! His woodpile fills an old hayloft of a nearby barn just for the syrup production. I can't imagine how many hundreds of cords of wood has gone through that splitter and crane.
Good luck!

 

[brncreeper]

Got any more pictures of Brutus for us to drool over? Try to resize the big pictures down to 800x600 in a JPEG format.
Here's your 16hp engine pictured in a 310 Bobcat, 29 years old and still running strong!

 

[polexie]

Great job! Admire the effort!