The missing link

If there’s one rule of thumb we have on our homestead, it’s to acquire, whenever possible, manual versions of tools that require fuel or electricity to operate – if for no other reason than to have a backup in case of power outages or fuel shortages.

This is our log splitter. We purchased it back in 2003.

When we first moved to Idaho in 2003, we already had several years of experience using a woodstove and were confident about what it took to gather our wood supply. Granted Idaho has much colder winters than the ones we got in southwestern Oregon, but after all a maul is a maul and we were both pretty good at hand-splitting oak, maple, or madrone.

But this part of Idaho doesn’t have hardwoods. We’re surrounded by conifers. And soft woods, we learned, behave much much differently than do hard woods when it comes to applying a maul.

The first few attempts to split some red fir were actually pretty funny. Remember those old Looney Tunes cartoons with Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner? Poor Wile E. – every time he tried to set a trap for the Roadrunner, it backfired. In one such cartoon he tried to chop something with an axe, and the axe bounced back and sent Wiley vibrating all over the landscape.

Well that’s what happened to us. Every time we tried to whack a piece of fir with a maul, the vibration from the blow reverberated up and sent us shaking like Wile E. The soft fir or tamarack absorbed the blow of the maul so much more than oak that it took many many more blows to split a piece of wood. Don and I looked at each other and knew we would never be able to split the many cords of wood we would need to keep warm over the winter.

So… enter the log splitter. It’s been a superb machine, effortlessly splitting endless cords of firewood over the years to keep us warm.

But in the back of our minds was the constant concern about being dependent on a gas-powered machine. However we were unable to find any alternative for ease of splitting wood – especially as we get older – beyond our trusty collection of mauls.

Until recently.

Here in our new home, the log splitter is in back, toward the barn. We just had a load of firewood delivered, in front of the house.

Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, especially since the wood is already split. However two problems have arisen: One, the split wood was split too large, so many of the pieces are so big they won’t even fit in the woodstove. This means we have to re-split much of the delivery.

And two, the log splitter has a flat tire. This means we can’t move it from the barn to the front of the house until it gets repaired.

So, faced with these issues, we fell back upon something we purchased last year and haven’t had much opportunity to use yet: our manual hydraulic log splitter.

A manual hydraulic splitter is – literally – just a bottle jack in a horizontal position, with two levers for applying the hydraulics.

This is what I mean about massive pieces of wood. Pieces this size won’t “catch” in a woodstove unless it’s already roaring hot, if they even fit in the door of the stove at all. They need to be split in half.

So I loaded the manual splitter onto a hand truck (it weighs about 80 lbs.) and trundled it from the barn to the front of the house where the woodpile is.

A manual hydraulic splitter works much the same was as a gas-powered splitter. The wood is placed in a cradle..

…then the handles are pumped to advance the ram and drive the wood into the wedge, splitting it. This is the ram.

The ram is released with a valve, which is then tightened when it’s time to advance the ram again.

When resetting the ram, I’ve found it’s helpful to place a small stick on the ground to let me know how far back to release it. This saves the ram going too far back or too far forward.

The levers are removable. The left lever advances the ram a bit faster, the right lever a bit slower. Like gears on a bicycle, the right lever is better for very stubborn pieces of wood. Most of the time we pump both levers at the same time (like the handles of a ski machine in a gym.), which is easier.

For all but the knottiest pieces, the wood will split after three or four pumps, though sometimes it’s best to continue advancing the ram farther so split the piece more completely.

It’s not an overly fast technique for wood splitting, but it’s effective. This much wood (which should last us about a week) took me an hour to split. Later I split some dryer wood, and it split more easily, taking me about 45 minutes for the same quantity.

Of course, this splitter has its limits. We have some exceptionally large rounds (18 to 24 inches across).

I tried splitting one of these using the manual splitter. No dice. This was as far as I got:

As Don put it, rounds this large will require a “sledge and wedge.”

The particular model of splitter we have is called a SunJoe, and it cost about $250. However there are many varieties on the market.

Altogether I couldn’t be more pleased with this unit. In fact, the more I use it, the more I like it. It’s truly the missing link between splitting by hand and using a gas-powered log splitter we were looking for.

As we get older, we’re always on the looking for ways to “work smarter, not harder,” and this unit allows us to do that without depending on a gas-powered splitter in case gas becomes unavailable.

The gas-powered log splitter is still a better choice for large quantities of wood and/or huge rounds; but having a manual hydraulic splitter is a superb backup, especially for those of us who depend on wood heat.

Source: http://www.rural-revolution.com/2025/01/the-missing-link.html