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woodsplitter speed

Started by r.man, February 09, 2013, 09:42:00 PM

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r.man

I think I am going to try to rent out my woodsplitter. My preferred market would be for people making a video showing how fast their splitter is compared to another machine. Originally I thought that my splitter would be a good choice to make another machine look fast but I am now of the opinion that I greatly underestimated it's ability to make another machine shine. Today I used it in the cold, in the shade and to say it was slow is not doing it justice. I think glacial fits. So if anyone wants to rent a splitter to either use in a video or just to prolong your firewood processing to avoid the honeydo list, pm me.
Life is too short or my list is too long, not sure which. Dec 2014

Al_Smith

 :D What are you using for hydraulic fluid ,gear oil ? Bite the bullit and let that stuff gurgle out into a bucket and refill it with dextron II and the problem will go away .

jdtuttle

Have a great day

Al_Smith

In real life it's a pain in the buttocks .Rambling on a couple of examples .

First was a splitter I made for my brother in laws father about 25-30 years ago .The cheap miser filled it with used crankcase oil .In cold weather it was slow as a snail .

I worked for an electrical contractor who was so cheap he squeecked .Blew a line on a line truck that had a 36 gallon per minute Commercial Shearing hydraulic pump .Blew 50 gallons of hydraulic fluid out in about a minute .It was type A fluid ,which is auto tranny fluid .

That tight wad had it filled with SAE 10wt and it took an hour before it would raise the boom in Jan .Well tight wad or no he soon figured out what he had saved in lower priced fluid was being gobbled up paying two journey man and a groundie an hour a day drinking coffee waiting for the system to warm up .

muddstopper

At work, we used to run rando68 hydraulic fluid in everything. Wintertime operation was slow as molassas until the oil warmed up. Several years ago, we swapped everything over to Dextron3. This greatly improved warmup times in cold weather. One drawback was that if something would leak, the dextron would find it and ooze out. Another thing we noticed is we had less hydraulic failures. Pumps seem to last longer and  we have less sticking valve problems. I now use dextron in every one of my hydraulic projects whether its a splitter or a dump trailer.

r.man

Today it was close to freezing which is as cold as I want to use the machine and it was back to its normal slow speed.
Life is too short or my list is too long, not sure which. Dec 2014

Al_Smith

 :D Well I doubt it would speed up any up yonder in the land of ice and snow .About the only way to pep it up other than change the oil would be to put a kerosine salamander heater on the oil tank about an hour before you fire it up .

Well I suppose if you ever get it warmed up enough to gurgle out of the tank drain you could take the oil in the house to keep it warm .I'd imagine to the Mrs. that that would go over about as popular as a turd in a punch bowl .7 gallons of oil smelling up the house like it were a diesel repair bay in a truck stop .Not good .

r.man

Al, read your post to my wife and she said that is exactly how popular that would be.
Life is too short or my list is too long, not sure which. Dec 2014

justallan1

My ranch truck has a hydrabed bale feeder on it and we use dextron 3, plus if it's going to be real cold or if it has to stay outside in the wind for some reason I put a magnetic Kats heater on the res.
Allan

tyb525

What's your ram cycle speed? Mine seems too slow, it can't keep up with me so I end up having to wait for it. I don't have anything to compare it to though.
LT10G10, Stihl 038 Magnum, many woodworking tools. Currently a farm service applicator, trying to find time to saw!

Al_Smith

Quote from: r.man on February 10, 2013, 07:11:59 PM
Al, read your post to my wife and she said that is exactly how popular that would be.
Oh yeah I know exactly how that would go over .As much as I would like to haul a smelly old chainsaw into the house to tinker with  in this cold weather my better senses cause me to refrain from such foolishness .Oh the repercussions would be unthinkable . :D

r.man

I will time it by steamboats Tyb but I may have to wait for warmer weather because having both hands available may not do it. The good thing is that with the fairly wide wedge I very often only have to run the block about 4 inches in and it will pull apart easily.
Life is too short or my list is too long, not sure which. Dec 2014

r.man

Married life Al. I saw a motorcycle in a living room two weeks ago. The fellow lives in his own apartment in his widowed mothers house and probably does his carburetor work on his kitchen table. Single.
Life is too short or my list is too long, not sure which. Dec 2014

Al_Smith

About that oil in the house .Now this is no kidding in 1963 it got to around 30 below for around 10 days two weeks which is as cold as I ever remember in the buckeye state for an extended period of time .

My dad had a1938  Allis Chalmers model B that would start in any weather you could crank it over in .Key word crank no self commenser .

We would gurgle the aprox. 3 gallon of straight 30WT oil into a bucket which took about an hour and put it in the basement next to the coal furnace .The oil didn't smell any worse than oil treated stocker coal .

The old tractor would fire right up .Never ran anti freeze ,tarped off the radiator and never froze it up .--trivia from the "good old" days  in the big corn field --


Logging logginglogging

In real cold weather they usta run Kareosean as coolant in the old tractors. The kareosean would eventially rot the rubber coolant lines so a lot of times they would replace them with metal tubing. Never froze up that way.

thecfarm

I can remember my Father talking about kerosene in the old cars.He did not get a tractor on the farm until 1950.
I have a factory one that I brought. Just like many others out there. I do have to wait for it at times. But I don't mind the waiting. My speed record days are long over.  :D
Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

r.man

Cfarm, it didn't say this to Tyb but you will understand. Standing waiting for the block to split is both annoying and relaxing. It's a little rest before I have to pick up the next block. When the blocks are medium, say 50 pounds, it's mostly annoying but when I am doing the 120s it is a nice short breather.
Life is too short or my list is too long, not sure which. Dec 2014

Al_Smith

Much ado about splitter cycle time .My homebuilt which does have dextron for fluid is not set up with the engine speed at max .It runs perhaps slightly slower at that engine speed than my bud's 4 inch cylinder ,mine is a 5 inch .Splitting out of a pile of 50 pounders once the cylinder returns via a detent valve I've got the next piece ready to go .So why run the dickens out of the engine then you can't keep up with it anyway .Oh sure a 21 year old could --for a while .

muddstopper

Warmed my splitter up this past wkend splittng a trailer load of apple and pecan. Kept 2 busy feeding and 2 busy stacking while I just pulled the lever. We had about a cord split and stacked in about 30 min. I run at half throttle to, if they had been able to keep up, I would have liked to rev'ed it up just to of seen them sweat.

tyb525

Man I wish mine went that fast
LT10G10, Stihl 038 Magnum, many woodworking tools. Currently a farm service applicator, trying to find time to saw!

Al_Smith

It was maybe 5 hours more or less 5 of us did 8 cord .4 on the 2 splitters one guy running an 044 cutting long stuff to length .Tree trimmers like to cut stuff about 36 inchs for some reason .

Then shove it around with  a skid loader to get it good and muddy so they get practice filing chains when they do get around to cutting it down to firewood size .Geeze ! :D

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