Splitting wood

Im darn near in love LOL. Bought one of Harbor Freight,s little manual hydraulic log splitters. Works awesome for splitting rocket stove size pieces fairly fast and very accurately. I do admit Ive already taken 1 back for leaking a little after the first week and the second 1 started leaking after about a weak too. But all in all it doesnt leak much and if I have to buy a couple quarts of power steering fluid and maybe even a new splitter per year to me its worth it. If it starts leaking worse I may try to take it apart and put oversize o-rings in it Ill keep you all posted on how it continues to work out.

Too bad the power thing isn't going well, leaks and such. If starting with smallish pieces, I may have something to offer as a working alternative, inspired (sort of) by this http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1f1_1388333487

I'm still getting the first real working stove together (working as in made outa refractory, metal can't take the heat). I've found that splitting the wood down to small enough pieces seems to be incredibly time consuming. If only I had a way to hold the axe, and make it hit the same point every swing...

Here's what I assembled outa scrap, a tie strap and a cheap axe from Harbor Freight (see, they can be helpful). The vertical stop helps hold the piece whilst keeping fingers away from harm, flat piece stops the blade if it gets that far.

I cut up a skid's worth of flats in about ten minutes; hit it in the right place and the nails just fall away. Swat it with the small sledge if the piece is too thick. Works fairly well, but then again, I don't have much frame of reference; I'm just getting started with all this. Slide hammer thing works well, especially with that big sledge head http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3s5vLJ5IDU but it's slow because you have to reposition it after every slice


Turtle

Even though I saw a video of this 2 years ago it was only this season that Big Al posted a clip from youtube to remind me... (old age) For splitting wood down to cook stove (rmh) size this is the cats meow! Mount any size tire on your chopping block with lag bolts & 4x4"s , fill with standing wood ...and chop away ! No holding wood ! No bending over & picking up wood ! Much safer swinging an axe , less chance of sinking it into your shin or foot! And its FAST!

This thing works well for reducing wood to rocket fuel, real good control of the size you end up with. Made from a 4" brick chisel (from Harbor freight of course). Use a hammer, much safer than the axe on a pivot