02-03-2015, 07:48 PM
Dave and Dallen, thanks for those videos! I didn't realize that type was so common or that they used flywheels and rack and pinion.
The first video was ash up until the last piece which was red maple, I believe. The other video was splitting hemlock. None of the above are usually difficult woods to split. Around here yellow birch, hard maple, and elm (if you have any, nowadays) and beech can be tougher to split.
I wonder if a spring is enough to retract out of a bad jam?
I also wonder about what happens if you get what I call a popper. They usually hit you just below the belt! And a high speed ram seems like it would make for more poppers.
I wonder if the wedge at the end is better in that regard than wedge on the ram. Seems like it would be.
I have a wedge on the ram, and generally avoid poppers by keeping a hand on this side of the log. Keeps en from launching. I realize that's considered unsafe by some, but with a slow hydraulic, like mine, and care to keep off the split line, it works for me.
I definitely would like one of those rack and pinion jobs, now that I see them in action, and would like the added speed. To me it's just as tiring to stand stooped over the bed with 10 cords of wood to split waiting for the hydraulics to cycle as it is to be lifting them aboard more quickly. I'd just as soon be done in half the time, which looks do-able. Besids you can always slow down if you want.
One other thought about wedge on ram vs wedge on bed -- I've lifted some pretty big maple butt sections onto the bed -- I'm wondering if these impulse splitters with wedge on the bed can bog down then, because the ram has to move the log, as well as split it, while with a wedge on a ram, the log is stationary and all the impulse goes into splitting.
Just a bunch of thoughts about this stuff -- it's always intersting to think about how things work....
The first video was ash up until the last piece which was red maple, I believe. The other video was splitting hemlock. None of the above are usually difficult woods to split. Around here yellow birch, hard maple, and elm (if you have any, nowadays) and beech can be tougher to split.
I wonder if a spring is enough to retract out of a bad jam?
I also wonder about what happens if you get what I call a popper. They usually hit you just below the belt! And a high speed ram seems like it would make for more poppers.
I wonder if the wedge at the end is better in that regard than wedge on the ram. Seems like it would be.
I have a wedge on the ram, and generally avoid poppers by keeping a hand on this side of the log. Keeps en from launching. I realize that's considered unsafe by some, but with a slow hydraulic, like mine, and care to keep off the split line, it works for me.
I definitely would like one of those rack and pinion jobs, now that I see them in action, and would like the added speed. To me it's just as tiring to stand stooped over the bed with 10 cords of wood to split waiting for the hydraulics to cycle as it is to be lifting them aboard more quickly. I'd just as soon be done in half the time, which looks do-able. Besids you can always slow down if you want.
One other thought about wedge on ram vs wedge on bed -- I've lifted some pretty big maple butt sections onto the bed -- I'm wondering if these impulse splitters with wedge on the bed can bog down then, because the ram has to move the log, as well as split it, while with a wedge on a ram, the log is stationary and all the impulse goes into splitting.
Just a bunch of thoughts about this stuff -- it's always intersting to think about how things work....