Props to Evan

[oldsaw]

He is a good man and you are too apparently Brad!

hey by the way I need a 346 outside dawg know where I can get one....


Kansas

I'm stopping by our local metal shop today and buying a couple of sheets of 16ga steel. I traced out the dawgs on my 372, then scaled the attachments to fit on graph paper. Been watching ebay for used ones, and new one is too much money. So I should have one-off 372 dawgs on a 261 for about a buck and a half and whatever time for sawing a shaping. Buying two in case I screw up.

 

[blsnelling]

I haven't had a chance to use it much yet. I did take a few swings with it, but that was after spending the day working on that huge Oak. I was too tired to really mess with it.

 

[Evan]

check this out, i did the same thing with my 084. it didnt have the outer dawg when i bought. i cut this one out of sheet of 1/8"

 

[Streblerm]

Nice to see good people in the world

Brad, you are going to love that super splitter. There is a little learning curve with it and it's short handle.

I'm 6'4" and with my normal splitting stance (feet shoulder width apart) i did come a little close to my toes a few times.

So I changed to a very wide stance (feet more than shoulder width apart) with bent Knees. This keeps the toes safe, but it felt like I lost some power.

Finally I have settled on a staggered stance where the left foot is in front of my right. I swing slightly toward the right and transfer weight from the right foot to the left while swinging. It feels good, and the power is there.

Someone else mentioned to always swing for the far side of the round. That is good advice too.

Happy splitting. I like mine so much that I just bought one for my dad for christmas.

 

[blsnelling]

I did notice something that concerned me. The piece I took a swing at didn't want to split and was bouncing the axe back at me. The short handle made it feel like it was coming right back at my face. Kind of disconcerting.

 

[Streblerm]

Hope I'm not trying to teach grandma to suck eggs

I did notice something that concerned me. The piece I took a swing at didn't want to split and was bouncing the axe back at me. The short handle made it feel like it was coming right back at my face. Kind of disconcerting.

If you were trying to blow the round in half, monster maul style, i could see this happening. Sometimes you can, with a very straight grained piece. But I find the fiskars works better if you work around the edges, more like with an axe, rather than swinging for the middle like a big maul

Bigger rounds I'll noodle in half or sledge and wedge. Then the fiskars will really show its colors.

On another topic... I found this great working twisted wedge at Harbor Freight. It has a sharp edge and a gradual taper to the wedge. It goes in easy. The thing was made in Germany. HF is really a multinatiional company. Not all their "junk" is chicom.

 

[blsnelling]

If you were trying to blow the round in half, monster maul style, i could see this happening. Sometimes you can, with a very straight grained piece. But I find the fiskars works better if you work around the edges, more like with an axe, rather than swinging for the middle like a big maul.

I wasn't trying to say that the axe wasn't capable of splitting it. It was a twisty piece of wood. I was only commenting on the bouncing back towards my face part.

 

[toddstreeservic]

Awesome. That is why I love this site and the chainsaw community in general.

As far as the fiskars having a short handle I found that if I used a taller splitting block than before it works better. I have also used mine to chop blowdown doing trail maintenance and it worked ok as well. Works good for freeing a pinched saw too (not that that ever happens to me :monkey. An excellent tool for sure.

 

[stihl025]

Be careful.

I was one of the statistics that put that axe through the top of my foot. Not paying attention to the placement of my feet when I took a second swing through a partially split piece of wood caused me an unnecessary trip to the hospital. It blew through that piece with such speed that it ended up in my right foot before I could say, Oh Sh!t!!! Here's the scoop:

I was splitting cherry on top of a block. The piece that I was trying to split had a knot near the bottom. The first whack cracked it pretty good, you know the kind that just needed a little nudge to break it apart. I had to pull the head back out of the wood and reset it, all the while changing my stance from wide open to right foot front and center. The next whack resulted in a successful split of the wood and my foot. Love that axe, but the handle is just a little too short IMO. My neighbor, who drove me to the hospital, decided to tell me that he wrote the company a month earlier and complained about how dangerously short the handle was (he apparently had almost hit his own foot, too). They pretty much told him thanks for the input, but we don't care.

I guess the real problem too is the fact that it splits wood so well (and fast) that you can get complacent because of the speed in which you are processing wood. So, Brad (and others), just be very careful when swinging the beast.

 

[Haywire Haywood]

I've been thinking about picking one of those up myself. I have my firewood split a little big for starting fires and end up halving them for small splits. The full length 6lb maul is a bit of overkill for that.
A shorter lighter splitter might be just the ticket.

Ian

 

[jockeydeuce]

Two good guys getting the good stuff back!! Kudos to both of you!!