Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Splitting Firewood

I'm using The Boss 7 ton splitter, I bought it at Home Depot. I'm very pleased with this little machine.




This is chestnut oak, great firewood, it has as many BTUs as white oak. This stuff is rather stringy and difficult to split. On the big pieces, I make a little chainsaw cut, 2 inches deep, and then the splitter cuts them right in half.



The woodshed is just about full. The dark wood, the top 2/3 of the stack, is what I put in today. Below that is ash, left over from last year, and a little black walnut in the corner.

I like ash and black walnut, but chestnut oak is much better, I don't mind that it is hard to split.

I finished up last week, using my Husky 35Ton:



Best thing I've come up with; IBC Tote cages, pallet forks on the tractor, and a IBC Tote dolly in the garage. Just drop a tote full of wood on the dolly and push it into position. I drop the empty totes where I'm cutting and splitting. It saves on moving it multiple times.

Wood shed is low I need to replenish

You tried that contraption on elm?

What is maintenance like on that rig?

Sharp thinking Chuck R as good as any I've seen. Mb

There's no maintenance on the splitter.

I have never tried to split elm, I've heard it is pretty bad.

I have 40 acres of Green Ash that needs cutting... c'mon over! Lol! Makes great firewood, but I'm a recreational fireplace burner so take a little at a time.

Harvesting cardboard from the TJMaxx dumpster?

😃

Ash is dead here a schit ton of it

I can't explain the physics behind it, but this is the best log splitter I've ever used.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Fiskars...k-absorbing-Handle-378841-1004/202681680

It just busts through wood better than anything I've ever tried. If that little 7 ton splitter will handle it, I can do it faster by hand with this tool.

I tend to pick up a little wood at a time year-round so I rarely have a big pile of wood that needs to be split all at once. But if that happens, I occasionally rent one. I've had 35 ton splitters straining to split some of what I burn.

Now go try their 8 lb maul for bigger stuff.
Much more momentum. I’m over 70. Need momentum

And who stacks their firewood in containers???? Why??
Get more containers and save time.

Never use a hydraulic splitter. Noodle a bit with the saw and split.
Don’t have to move the splitter and move the wood once. Into the 25 bushel bin.

It doesn't matter what method you use, it's still a lot of work and you get you hands on every piece 4-8 times to get it in the stove. At least I can fill a wheel barrow and wheel it in the basement up to the stove, and feed out of it. Otherwise, it's the usual cut/split/stack/remove from stack/haul to house........

That splitter is adorable.
🤣

I can't take credit, just google:

"Pallet forks on a tractor" and "uses for IBC Totes" there's some ingenious folks in this world!

I'm just a lazy guy that tries not to touch wood anymore times than is absolutely necessary. But it has speed up processing & storing dramatically.

It works pretty well. Real easy just to drop an empty tote wherever I'm working and it definitely cuts down on the loading and unloading. A 275 gallon tote cage holds about a face-cord worth of wood. When we get ready for fall I just pick up a few and move them under the overhang on my barn to keep dry, then into the garage as we need them.

I actually bought the pallet forks for dragging around a tote for watering trees using a PTO pump on my 3PT:



But I've been amazed at how useful they are. I can pretty much pick up medium sized brush piles and just dump them on the fire. The forks are the implement that stay on the tractor the majority of the time now.

I have 48 acres. I only had about 20 ash trees, and they all died 5 years ago. I have enjoyed burning the ash, it is easy to split and has a pretty good amount of BTUs. But, the ash in the forest is now all gone.

All killed by the emerald ash borer, which was introduced into the US in 2002, up in Minnesota. Some scientists say that every ash tree in North America will be killed by this green bug.

Our Son has a hydraulic splitter. At the cabin, a hand maul, a tire on the stump.

I’m too lazy.
Cut up the wood and split in place
Load in bins
From bins to stove.
Lift the wood twice

Not a bad splitter for light work !

When I built my house built a closet on the outside wall about 6' from the stove with a door inside and out fill the closet from the wood piled outside the door....holds around 5-6 days of wood....

Emerald Ash tree bore started up her in Michigan back around 1995....was cutting an Ash that blew down bark was loose could see that something was under the bark eating the tree....took it to a DNR Biologist he said don't worry its just a bug that killed that tree.....by 2005 most of the Ash trees in the woods were dead or dying....

These wood splitting threads make me glad I’ve moved south. I spent too much of my life turning trees into home fuel. I enjoyed it at the time but after the kids left home the fun dwindled I would still enjoy it, but in much smaller doses than I used to take.