Hydraulic Log Splitter
Keep your woodbox full without back-breaking effort by building this ingenious device, including diagrams and instructions.
November/December 1981
By John Gasper
Upstate New York's long cold winters force just about everyone who heats a home with wood to spend a lot of time wielding a chain saw and swinging a maul . . . and lots of folks build their own splitting machines to ease the workload. Now many of the homemade rigs can sever dang near anything (including, in some cases, rock!) ... but I've never seen an other splitter that's as easy to use as my own hydraulic machine.
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I've always found that the most tiring part of chopping wood with a standard hydraulic splitter is simply lifting the heavy rounds into position. So, I designed a different sort of wood chopper ... one in which the cylinder moves vertically, to slice through logs that are just placed on a ground—level platform underneath the machine's cutting edge.
Whenever I'm ready to process a load of firewood, I merely roll the chunks up to the machine and—one by one—ease them onto the low base plate, where they can be knocked apart. Then, once they're halved, I simply move each hunk back under the wedge for further division.
My log splitter's foot pedal assembly, which allows me to operate the machine and have both hands free for positioning the wood or throwing the split lengths in to a near by pile contributes still further to the machine 's ease of operation. The pedal is attached to a strong spring that pulls the control lever into its "up" position when I take my foot off the control. That way, I can walk away from the splitter-or roll the next to-be-chopped log into place -while the 27-inch-long cylinder continues to rise, since it will shut off automatically when the stop attached to the wedge hits the end of the valve and moves it back into the neutral position. (You can see how that process works in the accompanying diagrams.) And although I've adapted my pedal-and-valve operation to a vertical setup, at could just as easily be used to control a horizontal machine.
In order to be able to transport my log topper into the woods, I mounted the whole hydraulic system on an old automobile axle which is towed by way of a V-shaped framework (see the accompanying photo). The 5" X 10" steel I-beam (which is attached to the cylinder and wedge) is then fastened to a bracket mounted on the axle, so that it can be pivoted downward to ride on top of the middle bar of the towing apparatus.
