Well my electric 5 ton splitter that we'd been using for nearly 20 years started acting up and not splitting as well as it had before. I decided to get another splitter. Not wanting to drop several hundred on a gas powered beasty I decided to go manual .. and not with a maul nor wedges and sledges. I decided to get a hydraulic jack style. I'm going to say the 10 ton rating is a bit optimistic but it splits oak and mulberry pretty well. Box elder and poplar are super easy. It's 18 x 8 inch size rated but I'm splitting bigger hickory but having to nibble off slabs before it will be able to split in half. Maybe 11-12 inch max diameter with straight grained wood. It's definitely not fast. Took me nearly 2 hours to split a face cord of mixed wood (oak, mulberry, hickory and box elder). But didn't use any fuel / electricity. Fitbit said I burned 500 calories hauling and then splitting for 45 minutes of cardio.
I had looked at one of those, but found a 20 ton gas one on CL for a song...and it works hard on some of the oak around here. The electric one burned up trying to split 8" oak.
We had a DR electric splitter. Never had a problem unless the wood was still green. Once checked nicely just lined up the crack with the splitting head and away it went. Most of the wood I am splitting now has been in round form sitting in the barn for a year or two. Found that dropping the trees in early summer with leaf on and then bucking them into rounds after the leaves dried and dropped of the branches, and storing in barn for over a year worked pretty good. Hickory though, really needed 2 years before it was dry in the round.
What? You need a cup holder on that baby that can hold an adult beverage! Nah,Just kidding,Reckon that beats a maul anytime of the day for knotted up stuff !
Well, hm. Mauls seem to be evolving genetically and no longer fit my hands. Not even the old ones. Very strange.
I got lazy if it involved more than me turning a key, rolling logs on from the tractor bucket and pulling a lever......... It ain't going to get split here now days. The maul has a perm resting spot on the barn wall I had a electric one a few years back, the knotty oak smoked it pretty quick.
