No Lift Log Splitter

[willie in mn]

Thread below about having youngsters help split wood reminds me of a nifty one-man, no-lift setup I saw at a tractor show a few years ago.
Guy started with an old garden tractor. Used the tractor engine to drive the pump. Moved seat & driving controls to one side, mounted the splitter beam down the middle. Had catch tables on both sides at the business end, & a lift arm for big stuff. Lift arm was simple & cheap. A piece of cable to activate the arm, a pulley, & a hook on the plunger. Extending the plunger pulled the cable & lifted the big log. Roll the log onto table without hand lifting. Retracting plunger lowers the arm for next log. Tables keep split chunk from dropping, & hold the big chunk for second cut. When working small stuff just unhooked cable & let arm rest on ground. After finishing a pile, jump on seat & drive to next pile.
p.s. I don't burn wood, use pellets with nat gas for supplement in severe weather.
Willie
 

[Russ from MN]

I built a splitter for the 3-point of our JD4600. When we have really big wood I put it on our flatbed trailer with the fel, sometimes I even cut it up on the trailer. Then I can put the splitter beam on the trailer bed and just roll the wood onto it. A couple of years ago we cut a huge dead spruce(30") in the cemetery and I cut it into 6-8' lengths and put it on the trailer with the fel. The splitter beam is an old piece of bridge crane rail so it is not very tall.
 

[gtractorfan]

Sometimes I've used a pulley at the front of my trailer, then ran a rope through it. Tied a "lasso" around big pieces and pull them up onto the trailer with ramp boards hooked on the back. It's funny to drive away and see a big section of log pass you going the other way and right up onto the trailer! When they're on the trailer they're the right height to roll onto the splitter.