About time we had a Firewood thread

[matt walker]

Dang man, time for some shin guards too! That thing surprised me, that's a pretty good sized round you've got there. Cool to see it in action, is the control down under it or on a cable or what? It looked a bit awkward, but I assume you just set it up for the shot and that's not how you'd go about doing a long splitting session.

[DrewInToledo]

Funny, huh? The manual says it's good to 10" logs. I have a solar setup out in my shed so if I split on a sunny day, I do it for free. Well, sort of..

Yes sir, the controls are to the left. A button AND a lever. The button is near the bottom that needs to be held in and fires up the motor/hydraulic pump. Then, there's a lever on the left. When pushed down, the piston moves. I think they tried to make it "dummy-proof" so both hands are needed to operate and therefore out of the way to prevent losing a finger or hand.

I'll be modifying the lever to engage the motor for one-handed operation. I intend to convert it to a foot control, actually.

[pa_friendly_guy]

Many tools are set up to be ideate proof. I hate to say it but there is a reason for that, we have a lot of ideates to deal with today. My neighbor needed to borrow my old mower, He had been using a new John Deere that had broken down. I told him not to get off the mower unless he had turned off the blades. His new John Deere did that for him, it shut off when you got off the seat. He was using the leaf vac system and it got plugged up for him. He did not think first, got off the mower, took off the guard, started to pull out the leaves, went back for another handful, and the blades hit the tips of his fingers. He was not hurt, the blades did not cut his fingers off, he did not lose a hand, he was lucky, not smart, just lucky. We have dumbed down everything to the lowest common denominator that ne one has to think any more, so we don't. That electric splitter looks like a very good little unit. What sort of price range are you looking at for one.

[DrewInToledo]

Hi pa guy. I know what you mean man... Everything needs to be thought out for an individual these days... I dislike that. Hey, like the beginning of the video shows, i paid like $220. Well.. I think it was $230 but who's counting?
So far, outside of a couple of crotches and joints, everything is splitting nicely. I find that the smaller logs need a slight ramp to split. I would recommend this little dude. For the price, i am very happy.

[pa_friendly_guy]

That is cheap for a slipper. And well worth the money if only to save the stress on your back. We are all getting older and let me tell you, saving your body is a big deal at this point in my life.

[TruGrit]

.. thought y'all might get a kick outta this post on CL .. I sent a reply, but have not heard back yet ..

..

[matt walker]

OMG! I sure hope that comes through for you Tru, what an amazing windfall that would be.

[DrewInToledo]

Got me some wood! Truck is new to me.. I just wonder if i coulda pulled the whole darn thing out instead of chooping off a bit and yanking...

[matt walker]

Dude! You got a one ton Duramax? Awesome! Look at you, from a hooptie to a saw and truck combo in no time. We are all real proud of you Drew!

Seriously though, that's an awesome rig. It's a pretty fun past time, isn't it? It will be time for some pics of your wood stacks soon.

[mannytheseacow]

Last week I started having some issues with smokeback up from the feed again. It was really frustrating. It was about the same time that Freedom_Lives posted about his plug. I pulled the exhaust out expecting to find a pile of black dustbunnies.... nothing. So I started trouble shooting the system.

Luckily, I have a direct vent to the chimney which bypasses the bench so I started there. Open the port: no smoke. Close the port: smoke. Must be in the bench, Right? I pulled out all the cleanouts, checked the plenum, just a little fly ash hanging out in there. I knew there was no problem with the core or the riser because the port was working. The other diagnostic was that my barrel was running super hot... like 800* and giving off a ton of heat. Hmmm..... what changed?

So I started running through what was happening. The only thing that really changed was that I had gotten into a section of slippery elm in my wood pile.

A while back Matt posted a link to a firewood page that listed all the different species and their corresponding BTUs. This was awesome, Matt, by the way. I frequently reference this page. But silly me, I have been treating all these BTUs the same.

So, over the last several days or week I have been playing with different wood species. Slippery elm, as it turns out, is kind of lower on the BTU scale for what I have in my wood pile. Much lower than red elm. One load of slippery elm in my feed will burn up in about 20-22 minutes. But in that time, it will pump out a tremendous amount of heat, getting my lower living space up in excess of 80*+ (with an outside temp of 25-30*F). Now, take a load of black walnut- it will burn for about 70-80 minutes, and run my barrel at about 400-450*. Black cherry will burn a little hotter, 450-500* range with a shorter burn time of around 40-50 minutes. Good old red oak, hickory, and red elm all perform similarly, with 500-600* barrel temps and a full feed generating about a 60-80 minute burn schedule (though the red elm will burn slightly hotter and shorter, but the difference in loads of the same species varies about as much as different species depending on the size of the wood being loaded).

Anyway, what's my point? BTUs aren't just BTUs. This is good info if you have a lot of different wood to pick from. When I'm going to be gone for a long day I'll run black walnut; slow and low. When I come home to a cold house or need heat quick, or for an easy starting fire on a damp morning, load some slippery elm. Mix and match what you need for the conditions.