What I'm not doing now

Scuttlebutt
#1

Last summer I spend a lot of time not working on the porch screens

I did get that job finished and now I’m not splitting wood. A few years ago we used to cut all our own firewood but now we mostly buy it from one of the neighbors. Still cut a little around the old hay fields.

Used to use a hydraulic wood splitter run off a tractor PTO but now using this.

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So this little thing is electric over hydraulic. It usually lives in the basement and I’ve never used it before on anything this big but the mall just bounces off the apple wood so I gave it a try.

@Klaveness it does have feature that it takes two hands to operate, one on the green button to run the motor and the second on the lever to engage the hydraulics.
Bit of a pain to use sometimes on small pieces.

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#2

Those pesky safety mechanisms are most useful when they’re at their most annoying.

What I have been doing for quite some time now instead of re-doing the upstairs shower drain: Searching for a response video for posting under the heading “Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum”. Years ago, I saw footage of a spectacularly dangerous wood splitter somewhere online. Essentially, it was an axe head welded to a truck rim installed on the truck’s rear axle. First gear, add a bit of PTO throttle, ain’t nothin gonna stop that one.

So literally hours of searching later, I can conclude that there is a plethora of dangerous wood splitter videos online, but nothing quite like the original. It was titled “In Soviet Russia OHSA hide from you!” or some other unsearchable term, but I should have turned it up by now if it was anywhere close to the surface. It probably got buried when YT went full Fahrenheit 451, back when kids started vaping tide pods. This one is a decent substitute, though:

There’s a home made screw type splitter in my dad’s shed. Grandpa put it together back in the day, by installing a hand turned conical screw onto an enormous 2-pole 3 phase motor, and bolting the thing to a work table. It works scary quick, and will dim the neighborhood lights before throwing in the towel, but it still can’t do what’s possible with a wedge and a sledge hammer. The real knotted lengths of 16" birch are still done the old fashioned way.

Doing it manually is so much more satisfying anyway. When you get all the details right, perfect the process and get a rhythm going, it’s positively cathartic. I wish I had a pile of firewood to deal with. It could keep me away from that plumbing for ages.

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#3

Yes, the quickest way to split kindling with this thing is to push the button with one hand and press down on the hydraulic lever with your foot. While in that contorted position It’s hard to forget the reason for the discomfort is to by-pass the safety measures designed to keep your hand from getting crushed.

I feel that I need to point out that this splitter was purchased by my wife to make kindling when I was at sea. I refused to use it for a while because of this:

“two of our crew, who were Kennebec men and could handle an axe like a plaything” - Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

I have somewhat gotten over that conceit so now I use the splitter almost exclusively instead of the axe for kindling.

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#4

Type “dangerous wood splitting” on youtube and spend the rest of the day thinking jaysus effing keerice.

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#5

The last few hurricanes took care of my wood source. Peach tree is last one standing,

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