#232 Part #1 Speeding up my log splitter cycle time! Tractor supply log splitter
All right, well, welcome back, everybody.
And as you can see by the title,
this is not a clickbait video,
but I am not gonna modify my piece of equipment.
I'm not messing with hydraulics,
I'm not messing with the engine, nothing.
I don't wanna take away the reliability of this machine.
Now, you're probably looking at this big hunk of wood
here going, what the heck has this dude got going on?
I have been experimenting and playing
the last couple of days off camera,
and I have found out how to speed up my cycle time
by several seconds, which doesn't sound like a lot,
but I'll explain later, it is a lot,
especially with as much splitting
as I've been doing here lately.
Now, the time I've spent experimenting,
I have determined this quite isn't what I'm looking for.
I'm gonna build a new piece today and show y'all,
but I wanted to start this video out
with this block of wood right here
to show y'all that you can actually run the machine
this way, because it should really be easy to do at home,
say, if you just have a drill and a block of wood.
I'm gonna do something on metal that you may not have
that's gonna require, you know,
just a tiny little bit more fabrication,
but like I said, the block of wood does work,
but I'll explain why I'm not gonna use this.
All right, so why does this work,
but why am I not gonna use it?
It's because between the edge of the splitting maul
and the bottom of the plate,
there's about 16 1 1⁄4 to 16 1⁄2 inches,
so that's as large of a piece of wood as you can put in here.
I've been cutting mine 16 or less here lately,
so this does work, but I'm finding
if I don't throw the wood in perfectly,
it can get wedged up here,
and there's always that occasional piece
that's a little longer than 16 inches.
I'm about to explain what we're manipulating
or tricking here and how this is speeding up the time.
Let me get this block of wood off.
All right, so a common problem that I'm having
with this splitter is whenever, say,
I split a piece of wood and then I go to the rack
or to the IBC tote to put my wood in,
this has an automatic return feature,
but a lot of times I am noticing
that I'm technically outrunning the splitter,
and what I mean is by the time I get to the wood pile
and come back, this thing is already done retracted,
kicked completely out, and it's several seconds away
from getting back to the piece of wood.
I would like for it to stop shorter and be waiting on me
instead of me waiting on it to come back
to where I'm splitting that.
Now, this will not apply to anybody
that's splitting large pieces of wood.
For example, from here to here at the catches,
the largest piece of wood you can split on this splitter,
it's about 25 and a half inches,
so if you're splitting big boulder wood,
there's no need to want to shorten up the stroke
or the cycle time because you're already splitting big wood,
but I'd venture to say the majority of people
are splitting 16 to 18 inches,
16 being the most common size wood.
That's where this is really, really gonna speed up
your time if you're out doing a lot of production.
If not, this may not apply to you at all,
and I will say, this is a disclaimer,
if you're gonna modify this machine the way I'm showing you,
you're actually going from two pinch points right here
if your hands were to get caught
on the way the machine normally comes
to a single pinch point right here,
so is that any better?
Is it any worse?
I don't know, but you are moving the position
of the pinch point, so if you modify this,
modify at your own risk.
I'm just showing you what I've done.
All right, so again, what I'm trying to accomplish is
I wanna shorten the stroke up,
and I was out there the other day,
you know, running it back and forth,
and I noticed something kicks out the auto-return,
and it looks like it's just whenever the cylinder
actually bottoms out on the inside.
There's a little bit of pressure
that kicks the hydraulics out
and kicks the little notch or indentation out on the handle,
so I was like, dang, I wonder if there's something
I could put up here to save all that extra
several inches of retracting in and coming back out
that it has to do.
Turns out you can.
Let me fire this up, let it warm up for a minute,
and I'll show you with that same block of wood.
All right, so as you can see,
a block of wood will absolutely kick out the auto-return.
All it's doing is looking for a pressure spike increase.
It's just enough to override
whatever that indentation is that's holding it in.
So there are some concerns there.
Now you're putting pressure on these
instead of it bottoming out in the cylinder.
However, these are specifically designed
to catch a piece of wood that this may be wedged into,
so they're designed to take some sort of pressure.
I've been watching it.
I don't see any crazy bending or anything going on,
but that's something to watch
with your rails or these pieces,
since it's gonna bottom out here instead of in the cylinder.
But as you've just seen, over two, what was that?
Almost two and a half seconds saved per cycle, per stroke,
if you let this bottom out
by putting a piece of wood right there.
Now it's gonna be slightly less than that
because I'm about to put a two-by-two piece of steel
to open up my opening down here a little larger
so I can fit bigger pieces of wood.
But I wanted to show you all that
in case you want to use a piece of wood.
Actually, a landscape timber, I think, would be perfect.
It'd shave another three-quarters of an inch, probably,
in width off from that four-by-four,
and that would allow you to get
up to a 17-inch piece of wood in.
So if you cut your somewhere around 16-plus,
landscape timber may work.
I don't know that a two-by-four would work here
because there's enough pressure when this comes back,
it may split the two-by-four,
but that is always an option to try.
So I'm gonna bolt this piece of metal up here.
I'm gonna go down and run it with and without it
and show you that two-and-a-half seconds
doesn't sound a lot, like a lot, but it really is.
Now, this does not increase my time.
When I'm up here running this, splitting a piece of wood,
rolling a piece over, running back and forth,
it's not really gonna help me out there.
Where it's helping me out is splitting,
walking away for a minute, stacking a couple pieces,
and this center gun is done running
all the way back to here and bottom now.
So by the time I come back,
instead of it waiting on me right here,
ready to get into another piece of wood,
speeding up my production,
I have an additional two-and-a-half seconds to wait.
Now, if you'll watch one of my videos
and look at how many times I go back and forth
to a wood rack or an IBC tote,
two-and-a-half seconds does add up.
Now, imagine an entire day of splitting.
There's literally hundreds of trips that I make
back and forth to a wood rack or IBC tote stacking.
Hundreds of trips times two-and-a-half seconds.
It doesn't take long before, hey,
I can get an additional rack in in a day
or an additional IBC tote before long.
So it really does add up.
Then let's look at that over multiple days.
The other thing I've noticed that this makes me do
since I've been running this off-camera like this,
it makes me speed up personally,
knowing that this thing's right here just ready to split.
I mean, I'm reaching for wood quicker.
Some people may say it's dangerous, I'm rushing,
but it just overall feels like
it speeds up production dramatically to me.
This may not be for you.
You may think it's the dumbest idea ever.
That's fine.
But whenever I show you how it runs in a minute,
you may change your mind.
You may not.
Let's get the piece of metal on.
All right, now I'm using some three-inch long,
quarter-inch diameter bolts.
All right, I don't see anything bending, buckling.
The only thing that I might have to keep an eye on
because I'm putting pressure up here now,
it's causing a slight little bit of pivot right here.
Could that wear out the connection
between the bolt and shaft?
I don't know.
I'll use this several times to watch it.
And if it looks like it is putting extra strain
or inducing extra wear on it,
I'll pull this off and it is what it is.
But I don't see anything in the rails bending.
I don't see this bending.
I don't see nothing binding real bad.
So let's carry it down to the wood rack and try it out.
All right, so I'm gonna run it without the piece of metal
for the first little bit and kind of show you.
Again, you're not gonna see an improvement
when I'm just splitting and rolling a piece off the side
where you're gonna see the improvement
is whenever I have to grab some of those pieces,
start stacking, every time I come back,
it's all the way back up here
and I've lost about two and a half seconds.
No, I'm not set up properly for this rack.
I was planning on putting all this in IBC totes,
but I'm just down here to demonstrate this to you.
So you're gonna be seeing me be pretty inefficient
walking back and forth and grabbing wood.
All right, so as you could see,
every single time I went to the wood rack,
this thing has run back
and now I'm waiting on it to come back forward.
So we're gonna put the bar in
and I'll show you the difference that it'll make.
It'll have it to where this is pretty much
always waiting on me and again, I'm not waiting on it,
which is the way I want it to be.
All right, hopefully you can see how much quicker that was.
Now imagine that over a period of hours and hours splitting.
It makes a difference.
Again, if you're just coming down here to split
for an hour or so for a little bit of wood for your house,
this probably isn't worth doing,
but I'm gonna be splitting days and days,
weeks and weeks on through the next several months.
It'll make a difference.
Now, one issue I can already see,
I should have known,
I went with the thinnest wall tubing pipe that I had.
It's starting to crush it a little.
So I've got some thick wall, two by two tubing up there.
I'm actually gonna go back and use that.
And what's funny is the four by four that I had in here
that I've used the last couple of days,
didn't hardly crush in at all.
That just shows how weak this real thin wall tubing is.
So that's the only upgrade I can see.
I've got plenty of that up there.
I'll just cut another piece, bolt it in,
just like you see right here,
and just do something a little thicker
that won't crush on me.
One thing I did wanna check,
if you wanna see the length of opening
with a two by two piece of tubing,
let me back this up and get you a quick measurement.
All right, so with two by two steel tubing,
it looks like you can get a 17
and three quarter inch piece of wood in there.
That shouldn't be a problem for me
since I've started measuring mine out 16 inches now.
A lot of mine are actually like 15 and three quarters,
15 and a half.
Then you have the occasional 16 and a quarter
or maybe 16 and a half.
So that still leaves me plenty of room
to kind of drop a piece in there,
but keep the wedge close enough
to kind of pick up that speed and cycle time
that I was looking for.
So hopefully you enjoyed this.
You may find it stupid and not worth your while.
That's okay.
Some of y'all may be like,
man, that's just what I needed
because these residential splitters can be kind of slow.
Although I'll admit I have watched this one
compared to a lot of other residential splitters.
This one's one of the faster ones, believe it or not.
Now it's a whole different ball game
once you get up in the commercial splitters.
They can fly through like the Easton made Ultra.
I'm thinking of, for example,
I think it's got like a four second cycle time.
It's just crazy fast.
Or those kinetic log splitters, man,
they're just dangerously fast.
It looks like you take your hand off.
So hopefully you enjoyed it.
If you did, you know, give a little thumbs up down there.
Don't forget to subscribe to the channel.
And while I have this down here,
I'm gonna go ahead and finish off this rack of cherry.
By far my favorite wood.
And this will probably be my personal rack for next year.
We'll catch you on the next video.
I know I said goodbye a minute ago,
but if you stuck around, you're getting some bonus footage.
So hopefully you just seen me run through that.
I went back and got a much thicker piece of steel.
This is quarter inch wall, two inch square tube.
I mean, it's just,
this is probably gonna break before it ever bend it.
It's been kicking out, working great.
I've been keeping a real good eye on everything.
I don't see nothing bending or getting out of shape.
But I will caution y'all, if you're gonna do this,
why don't you let me be the guinea pig for a while?
I'd hate for you to tear up your piece of equipment
on a modification that hasn't really been tested
more than two days.
But I'm gonna keep a real close eye on everything.
Like I said, the quickest part I could see wearing out
is maybe the bolt that goes through from the cylinder.
I'll really, really watch that.
And if I start seeing anything wearing out
that I don't like, this piece is coming off.
So if you see me right there then,
even though it was running a hundred miles an hour
toward the end of my rack,
I always love splitting small pieces
and wedging them in here.
Because even though I have these racks on landscape timbers,
sometimes the wind will blow them or they can shift
and I've actually had them fall down before.
I have found when I wedge a thin piece of wood like that
in between these top supports, this rack ain't going nowhere.
It really kind of keeps it from going back and forth.
One other thing I wanna show y'all.
Chris at In The Woodyard showed this off the other day
and really good point.
I've seen this before.
So I'm splitting this piece of wood right here
and I'm noticing that's some funky looking colors
right there, right?
Already kind of have a good idea what this is
after years of cutting.
When you start seeing that discoloration right there,
that means you have a piece of metal in your tree.
When you see that with a chainsaw,
you need to really pay attention.
A lot of these trees I cut around here are on fence lines
and I hate it, but a lot of people back in the day
and some people still used to nail staples and fence
right into these trees.
However, today was a little different.
Once I split this open and I started kind of looking
right there, I knew something wasn't right immediately.
Last thing I wanna do is go push into a big old stake
or something or a bolt and bend my wedge all up.
You know, it's already got some small chips in it,
but I didn't really wanna mess it up.
This isn't made for cutting through metal.
Well, here's the other half of that.
This stuff's hard to see sometimes.
So the other half, yeah,
it's got some crazy discoloration too.
That's exactly what metal does.
I noticed right in there, it looked like something.
Then I made it to the outside.
Didn't even see that.
That's a thick piece of metal
that probably would have damaged my splitter
or took a big chunk out of the old splitting head there
if it had actually come down in it.
So pay attention to discoloration when you see it
because that usually means
there's some metal hiding somewhere.
Now, a lot of times it's just old fence wire
that's usually rusted away at that point
or that you can hardly see and it's harmless.
But every now and then you'll see gigantic stakes, bolts,
fence and nails and staples.
That's pretty common too.
So I'm liking my little modification.
Keep in mind, new pinch point up top,
but you kind of eliminated two of the pinch points.
So you give and take there.
I'll watch and see how it treats my splitter.
The last thing I want to do
is wear something out prematurely or tear it up.
And I will absolutely let y'all know on the channel
in case you decide that you want to do
this little speed up modification right here.
But overall, I can tell it's pushing me to split faster
and it is splitting faster.
No doubt about that.
And very, very simple to do.
So hopefully you enjoyed things like that.
As I come up with things on the channel,
I'll definitely let you know about it.
I'm all about production here lately.
This firewoods kind of went from an enjoyable hobby
that I've done for many, many years to now.
I'm going to try to make a little bit of money at it.
And since I've crunched some numbers,
kind of know where I'm at.
Anytime I can speed up, that's more money in my pocket.
So this little thing right here
is just one of the many things I'll do
to kind of help increase my bottom line.
I live in the middle of nowhere.
It seems like every time I record and talk,
loud trucks or semis, they just come out of nowhere.
I don't hear them all day.
But anyways, thank y'all so much for watching.
We'll catch you on the next video.
Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe.
It really does help get the channel exposure
through YouTube.
Catch you on the next one.