Swinging an axe to split firewood is great exercise and a wonderful way to blow off steam. However, if you’re not a muscled-up Hollywood character that needs to do some emotional processing, it can get pretty dull. Building a powered log splitter could make the work less strenuous, as [Made in Poland] demonstrates. (Video, embedded below.)
The build relies on a big electric motor, which is connected to a set of gears via a big belt drive. Those gears subsequently drive a rack forward when engaged via a lever, which pushes a log towards a splitter blade. The blade itself is a beautifully simple thing, being made out of a flat piece of steel bar carved up with a saw to form a pointy wedge.
The machine is remarkably effective, and greatly reduces the effort required to split even large 30 and 45 cm logs, as demonstrated in the video. We’ve featured a rundown on a few different designs before, too. Video after the break.
Nope.
The work required to get wood up onto this contraption is greater than that required to put wood onto a low stump and swing a splitting maul.
A Polish labor saving device indeed.
But a good addition for those practicing cardiovascular Russian roulette. America’s favorite extreme sport.
For lifting maybe, but you’re going to get tired swinging that maul if you’re trying to beat it on speed.
Says the guy who has never had to deal with knotty wood. I have a gas every time I see videos of Americans cutting wood because it’s always straight straight with a straight grain.
My father has a 12t splitter that bogs down and refuses to split logs.
Would be easy enough to shorten the legs on this to basically nothing and extend the lever. Then I could keep up with my cardiovascular russian roulette and split a bunch of wood!
norm macdonald always hated polish jokes… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_0q_CXl41s
The way those legs are hinged, it looks like it can sit much lower if needed.
Didn’t anyone watch to the end of the video? He demos how it can be lowered to work closer to the ground.
What wood do you guys use for fire wood it looks very soft.
The stuff I have is like splitting rocks
Looks like beech to me. Usually has a nice straight grain that’s easy to split, but it’s slow-growing. I wonder how this would fare with something harder to split, like wind-twisted sweetgum.
Clean build!
Or you could buy…
Never mind!
B^)
Where’s the fun in that?!
+1
Also, you learn more, by working out how to make it yourself.
What’s the benefit of pushing the log into the blade instead of pushing the blade into the log? Seems like it would be nice to have the log staying mostly still while splitting. At the very least, it’d require less repositioning after each split.
on the hydraulic ram based splitters, you would eventually score the chrome by putting the blade on the ram. most splitters tend to get stuck in the block occasionally, so having it get stuck at the end allows several blows to be made.
Did you see the “Made in Poland” branding?
It’s called RPS, reverse polish splitting
That comment deserves an upvote
I feel like the fixed blade and moving ram could theoretically be more safe than the blade moving…but probably not in practice.
It could also have something to do with overall performance, but that’s purely speculation.
It’s mostly so that if it fails to split, the ram is free to retract and have another go.
I’m not an engineer, but force is force, and the vector is the same….. so as you said, it is a question of which parts you want moving I think. Overall it seems to be a really great first build and I would love to see the Ver. 2 of it with all the tiny details fixed.
I have no idea why he measured the diameter of the round. Long rounds are harder to split that short ones, diameter doesn’t matter so much.
“Kinetic” I expected something with a clutch that spins up real good then WHAM! Hmmmm…..
Me too. Still better than Horror Fright Fools version. Safety comes when hands are off the wood regardless how it works, but if it was truly kinetic absolutely. Chop!
This is a kinetic splitter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz7FdvuVjB8
Holly SH*T! No risk, no fun. Eh?
If it doesn’t scare you when you first turn it on, your project isn’t crazy enough.
Love the safety Crocs-Slippers, exactly the kind of shoes i imagined he would wear for this work.
YES. This fits the bill. Who comes up with these ledes? Lately they are full of inaccurate, tortured English.
how does this man still have hands?!? lol
That’s what I had, working all summer splitting wood for all winter, as a 10y old.
Still safer then the conical screw splitter that tryed to eat your hands every chance you gave it
We also had a kinetic vesion that threw out the splitted wood with the power of a grenade launcher
30ft away they still made a hole in the tarp I hung to catch them
Fun times, safety was not even an option on those contraptions
” it can get pretty dull”… then sharpen it!
Would be more impressed if someone could show me a non kinetic log splitter.
This video suffers from the same problem a good portion of maker’s videos do these days. No discussion of the principle, design, design intent or of any choices made in the construction or assembly of the thing.
They’re nice to have on in the background, but that is almost the only value they have.
Great work on the engineering – but I don’t think it’s a good end result.
The speed with which the ram runs is dangerously fast – if you mishandle the log by the time you realise what’s going on it’s taken a finger or worse.
Please don’t anyone build one of these.
I kinda feel that Windy Hill Foundry’s disk brake splitter fits better in the “hacks” category:
https://youtu.be/acoQcomgfY8
Interesting. If this is a kinetic log splitter, what is a non-kinetic log splitter?