logsplitter plans

[YamahaYFZ450]

does anyone know of any good sites about building a hydraulic log splitter(heavy duty)?? or has anyone ever built one? thanks



mike

[planewelder]

My logsplitter

Here's the splitter I built. It uses an 8 HP Briggs vertical shaft engine, an 8 GPM 2 stage pump, has a 5 gal reservoir. The spindles are from a 1964 Rambler, bolted to 3" square tube. 15" wheels and tires, pulls like a dream at 70 mph all day if you need. I split 3 truckloads of Cherry last sat. in about 2 hrs.

[wayne21]

lincoln has some good project books they are about $10 each off of there web site and they have some log splitter plans with blueprints

[SkidSteerSteve]

I've never built one myself, but one thing I have noticed on factory built ones is that they use a large piece of heavy walled rectangle tubing for the main crossmember. This doubles as the hydraulic tank. Cap the ends and weld in some fittings for your suction/return lines and a filler/breather cap. A friend of mine built one out of a section of 10 inch I beam with a 4 inch cylinder (can we say overkill?? but he had it, so the price was right). If you can get a two stage pump it will worth it because the cycle time will be much greater. They are internally loaded so that when pressure builds in the system it drops from high volume, low pressure to low volume, high pressure. As soon as the pressure drops, they reset. Just out of curiosity are you wanting it to be stand alone, or run off of the aux hydraulics of a machine. Only reason I ask is because when I get around to building myself one, it will just use tractor hydraulics. Thats one less engine to have to keep up in the off season. SSS

[MadReferee]

How-To-Plans has several for sale. These are nicely done plans with detailed instructions and well worth the few bucks they cost.

How-To-Plans.com

[planewelder]

Well the Lincoln book has several plans as does the How-to plans mentioned but both sources are sort of dated. One of the Lincoln book plans uses a V4 Wisconsin engine from a hay baler.... try to find one of those ! Both plans are horizontal only by the way. One feature you definitely is vertical / horizontal configuration. This allows you to roll those huge diameter blocks over to the splitter and just flip them over on the foot and split them..... no lifting at all except to load the split wood on your truck. My I-beam is 8.5 X 5.5 X 3/8 and I don't think it's an overkill. You will be amazed at the amount of force required to split the really nasty knotty stuff. That's one reason I built my splitter, because people that know you have a splitter offer you the wood they can't / won't split for free! I've seen tree's laying in yards that people didn't want to pay to get hauled off, and offer to remove them "free", usually they are jumping for joy ! And I leave 1/2 hr later with a truck load of wood ! I should CAD PLAN the machine I built and sell plans cause there really isn't any modern plans out there that I have found. I looked at lots of commercial machines and took the best ideas of all of them and built mine. I had an engineer run all the stress calculations and I had to beef up one area from my original plan.(the anchor point the cylinder pushes against needed more weld area so I had to add a pad).