Split Your Wood, Not Your Skin With A Hydraulic Log Splitter

Most people (including me, until today) have little or no experience splitting firewood.  Many people (of those who’ve bothered to think about such things) see themselves using wood for heating and/or cooking in some types of emergencies.  This is not a great combo:  People with little experience taking lots of massive, powerful swings with axes or mauls; particularly when medical care would be hard to get.

Have you seen how some of those yahoos on YouTube show themselves splitting wood?  Honestly, some of them look like intros for How-To videos on controlling bleeding. My own small experience with splitting wood with an axe and maul taught me very quickly that the axe would love to deflect away to where it’s not wanted, and bits of wood tend to go cartwheeling off at high speed as well.

In normal times, an accident while splitting logs with a axe or maul is serious. If the Stuff Hits The Fan, it’s probably a death sentence. 

Salty and I have been considering this, as we set up The Place for both pleasant low-tech living and as a potential bugout location. We’ve been wanting to get a better firewood stock, but I’m the one who has the time to do it and I did not like the look of the usual approach.  So we went with Plan B: A hydraulic log-splitter.

The log splitter we ended up with, SunJoe 10 ton. Cheap and available at places like WalMart and Harbor Freight.

What we got was a SunJoe 10-ton model; primarily because we could get it cheap ($150ish) and this isn’t a project in which we wanted to invest a lot of our prep money.  At first use, it appears to be of perfectly acceptable quality.

It looked ridiculously easy to use — and it was.  Set the cut log (no more than 8 in diameter and 18 inches long for this model) in the log holder, stand behind the unit (hard hat with face screen recommended; it’s easy to see how splinters might pop off although it didn’t happen to me today), push forward first one handle then the other so the piston forces the log onto the splitting wedge.

One of my logs, ready to be split.

I was splitting well seasoned logs; only a couple of them required me to put my full force and body weight into it to get the split started.  Since we’re talking the full force and body weight of a 120 lb woman, that qualifies as pretty easy splitting.  Once the first split was started, everything was easy: keep cranking the handles to extend the split, then just crack the release dial to let the piston return to its start point and it’s done.  I did have to use a hatchet to get final separation occasionally, but mostly I could pry apart by hand what the splitter hadn’t finished.  

It was just half an hour’s work to split this, despite my total lack of experience.

I don’t know how long it would have taken a skilled person to do with axe or maul, but I got this load done in just about half an hour, first time out.  

The equipment requires very little maintenance (a little lubrication about once a year and don’t leave it out in the rain are all the manual asks) and doesn’t look prone to breakage.  A big strong guy might bend the handles, but those would be cake to replace if so.  One might want to attach it to a floor (it did shift around a bit when I heaved my weight into it), but if so there are bolt holes in the frame to allow that.

This method was far safer than other wood-splitting methods I’ve seen, and had practically no learning curve.  It was quiet and didn’t throw bits of wood around.  It needs no power beyond the operators and looks as if it will keep working with very little care for a long while. It looks like a great solution for those who, like us, want to be equipped to collect and prep firewood efficiently and quietly.