Firewood

[jfkbengals]

(11-19-2019, 05:06 PM)fredtoast Wrote: That is what we have.  But at times I was working with pieces of hickory more than 24 inches across and 20 inches long.  They had to weigh over 80 lbs.  So even rolling and twisting them onto a vertical splitter was a lot of work.

Gotta be creative.

I put a 48" OD by 3 foot long piece of oak on mine by digging a small rut in the ground at the end of the log where I wanted it to be stood up, then set up the splitter 4 feet from there.  I choked a 30 foot chain around the other end of the log, running it past the splitter to the back of the truck.  I slowly drove forward to make the chain taught.  After verifying the chain was clear of the splitter, I dropped into low gear and inched forward.  The log was dragged backwards and dropped into the rut, which basically chocked the bottom so it slowly stood up as I continued to inch forward.  Once it was close to the point of tipping the remainder of the way, I parked the truck and verified the splitter was in proper position for the log to land on its bottom pad.  After finishing that line up, I just needed to put a little bit of pressure on the chain to pull the log up the pad.  I started the splitter first, so that I could extend the ram to the log as soon as I pulled on the chain.  That held it in position so I could back up the truck to slacken the chain and remove it before proceeding with splitting it (talk about a loud crack!).  I repeated the same process with the split pieces and the remaining logs of the tree until the pieces could easily be moved manually.  I wish the ability to take good time lapse video that is easily available today was available back then, as I would love to watch the whole process and show others how I pulled it off.