Really, too many variables to give you a single answer for this question. Examples, I first built my splitter in '92. I copied a hydraulic splitter that a friends dad had. The things I changed for starters were, made it taller to fit me so I wouldn't have to bend over, made it horizontal and vertical for the larger pieces instead of a lifting platform(I thought the larger rounds would end up twisting my frame as I had seen that happen on some) and finally, I used an axle from an old hay wagon with large floatation tires to help traverse frozen farm fields and take some of the bounce out. Of course as time went on, I thought it was too slow(4" cylinder, 12 hp motor and 16 gpm pump), so I uped the pump to a 22gpm. Then I started getting larger wood and thought, hmmm, I need a bigger cylinder(8" from a D-8 cat), but then it was too slow again so a 28 gpm pump got installed, but of course motor was too small to run hydraulics, so then came a 20 hp Honda. So lessons learned, bigger is not always better, do more home work than I did so your build fits your needs. My do over would have been a supersplit, but we just didn't have information available at our finger tips the way we do today. If I could sell mine for just what a supersplit cost today(not what I have invested in it over the years), I would trade in a minute. I am getting too old to handle the 36-48" pieces that I never backed away from before. I'm also lucky enough to have several farmers that like me to go along there fence rows and thin them out, not cut them down, just thin them, so I get lots of cherry, and black locust in the 12-20 inch diameter and I just don't need a splitter the size I built for that. I think you need to make a list of the features you really want, i.e., speed, elec start, size of wood you handle, production. Then start making a list of parts you need, calculate your costs of purchases and time involved and see if you think it is going to be worth while. Don't get crazy like I did without the research! Don't let people goad you into it either, like what happened to me! Good luck in your journey!