[Closed] Hydraulic Log Splitters

I had a hydraulic log splitter in the price range you are considering. It was ok. The axe head snapped off, I welded it back on. Seals would leak frequently, it was stored in a lean to but covered so I think they deteriorate over time. They were easily replaced. Eventually the motor became intermittent. I think it was just done in a little over 4 years of if I'm honest splitting rounds far greater than it should have been. Overall I found it could be slow. I ended up replacing with a kinetic log splitter. Portek quick split. Seems a lot less to go wrong and oodles of power even on heavily knotted stuff. When this dies I'll replace with a petrol splitter. Should have done that initially as overall yes it costs more but I think more longevity and a better operator experience. With two stoves to feed you are maybe better off going straight there.

I just rent one when I need to fill up the log shed (space for about 18m of two wood burners).

You can have hours of fun watching videos of crazy log splitters on You tube. Some right classics on there 🙂

I took a leap of faith and built my own log splitter. It was a game changer. I was lucky to find a petrol powered hydraulic power pack and a used hydraulic ram. The steel I found in a scrap yard, the bits I needed for the wedge I got from my local blacksmith. All in I think I spent about £600.

I’ve split many tons of logs with it and couldn’t imagine doing it manually with an axe again.

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The only experience of these things is the one I bought and use myself. It's a 7 ton Titan Pro; sits on a stand that brings it up to waist height. 7 tons isn't a whole lot of pressure when it comes to hydraulics but this thing goes through most of the wood I've tried to split. It can be defeated though and hard knotty wood with forks in the grain sometimes has me resorting to the chainsaw.

No problems with reliability so far and it's six years old.

D.

Have a machine mart hand powered one - goes up to 10 tons supposedly - works very well but prefers longer logs - 400mm would be fine but much less than 300mm is a faff. Cheap though...

https://forest-master.com/downloads/electric-log-splitter-5-ton-duocut-blade-stand-detail

Got one of these and it seems to do the trick. Some knotty logs take a bit of work but get there in the end. I find having a table the same height helps as you have some where to put the the half logs when splitting. Takes a couple of hours to split a pickup load.

I've a half share in the same one as Davesport mentioned, it's spot on.

This is the one I bought a couple of years ago - it's a 22 ton Venom and is a great bit of kit. Somewhat more than your budget I'm afraid 🙁

It replaced the screw splitter in the background of the picture below as it was slightly scary and I could no longer justify running a tractor just to split logs when this one will run all day on a litre of petrol!

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Just added a table to one side and made it single lever operation which is way quicker.
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Thanks for all the posts so far, lots of good info cheers

Due to health and safety issues only one person can use our hydraulic splitter. It’s a ball ache and it’s quicker(and easier on my body) to use an axe/maul

We've just bought one of the 22t Venoms too, but again very slow compared to the kinetic version, so we cut the logs in 90cm lengths then use the bench saw to cut them into three, as the saw has much faster work rate.

Interesting PePPer.... That's what I'm planning to do. Cut with the chainsaw to about a meter, split and then stack - once dry I'll cut with the circular saw (I don't have yet) as its quicker and more accurate.
The splitter will go through pretty much anything, which is good as some of the wood I get is twisted and ugly.
I'm not sure how well the kinetic one would do with this stuff.

We have a little Oxdale for the stuff that won't go through the processor, you can get them with a pump engine if you don't have a tractor, but still probably breaks your budget.

If you already have a tractor, have a look for McConnell sawbenches, if you get lucky you might find one with a splitter. The deck tilts for cutting log lengths. Some mild peril involved, but good.

S****s at ‘mild peril’

Sharkbait - was the dual lever operation there as a safety feature (two hands on the controls means none in the way of the moving parts) ?.

Yep, two levers separated by a divider plate that was screwed on to stop using one 'forearm' to operate both levers. This plate came off pretty quickly but it was still awkward to operate so I chucked together a single replacement lever that operates both valves - much quicker now.
You'd have to be pretty stupid to get your own hand in the way of a fairly slow moving ram - but it would be easier to do with two operators though.

Hence why we’ve got ‘health and safety issues’ 😣

How you finding the Rock kit? Ours is a bit rattly, needs regular tightening of all nuts and bolts

Fair enough but this kit is for my own personal use..... no employees - no H+S. I could have kept the screw splitter but I may have lost an arm by now! Even though I had the utmost respect for it - if your hand's in the wrong place when a log spins you could easily get it crushed!

I've found the splitter to be really solid and not required any attention yet. That said it's only about two years old and is just used for my own consumption plus a little lending out to mates, so it's not under a lot of stress.
Don't know if you had to assemble your yourself but mine came fully built - maybe that's a difference?

We’ve got the 12 ton v-series. It gets/got a lot of use by some unsympathetic users. It came built up, it does get towed around the site off-road behind a gator.
Sadly we had a crush injury last year due to operator error, hence now we can only use it one person at a time. Shame as with two clued up people working it you can shift through a fair amount

We've got a 14t venom tractor mounted. It's great.

Sharkbait the saw bench we use us like this.

https://www.mdlpowerup.com/product/petrol-log-saw-15hp-engine/

Its a monster, far quicker than a chainsaw and more importantly, has far less wastage. Probably a third of chippings compared to chainsaw.

Very noisy but so so efficient.

Man this thread is making me queasy!😂

I bought a Ryobi electric log splitter probably 10 years ago, and it has been absolutely superb. We have three stoves in the house at the mo, and it has fed all of these without a second's maintenance in that time - not even changing the oil. We mostly split Ash (very easy when green), oak and beech, depending on what has come down in our permissive woods. Some really gnarled stuff will cause it to stall, but you can usually find a way to snip bits off even the worst logs. Any terrible bits I tend to leave in the woods. Our splitter lives outside under a tarp, and sits on a DIY bench to lift it to a comfortable height. I've almost been willing it to die, as I'd love an excuse to buy a hydraulic splitter for our little Kubota tractor, but the old Ryobi keeps on going!

I did modify mine slightly, with a spring and a bit of cord to hold the ram release lever in the 'closed' position. This prevents the ram from travelling all the way back to the start on its own every time, and saves quite a bit of time per cycle.

That's pretty sweet PePPer - I can certainly see the advantages in speed and less wastage. I certainly couldn't justify that much expenditure for my usage so I'm hoping to pick up a reasonable 240v version - not quite a quick and powerful but would still [hopefully] do the job for me.

I’d love an excuse to buy a hydraulic splitter for our little Kubota tractor

You may want to think twice about that Si. Check that your Kubota has the hydraulic flow/pressure to run a splitter at a decent speed (my JD doesn't) and secondly I've found that having my little John Deere, and loader, available for moving big bits of wood around while splitting has been invaluable.

This prevents the ram from travelling all the way back to the start on its own every time, and saves quite a bit of time per cycle.

Absolutely. The Venom splitter have that built in.... you can stop the ram going back at any point, very handy.

You may want to think twice about that Si. Check that your Kubota has the hydraulic flow/pressure to run a splitter at a decent speed (my JD doesn’t) and secondly I’ve found that having my little John Deere, and loader, available for moving big bits of wood around while splitting has been invaluable.

Good call Sharkbait - thinking about it, having to unhitch the splitter from the linkage and hitch up the forks to move a cage of logs every time would be a pain.

Our old McConnell bench had a sticky valve in the block that meant you could get the splitter to continuously cycle.

Health and safety chat with that was the saw will take your fingers off fast and messy, the splitter will take them off cleanly but slowly. Keep yourself out the way.

Can't say that I've seen any small splitter that isn't a quick mod from single handed use. They have to sell them as dual handed, but know that 95% of buyers want something single handed.