Posts Tagged ‘wood splitting’
Project Begins
I’m home from work today to guide tree trimming work on our property. It has been over a year since we wanted this to happen, so we are very pleased the project will finally be getting underway. On my drive home yesterday, I received a call from the arborist who quoted the job. I wasn’t surprised to hear that they are now unwilling to bring the bucket truck due to the melted ground from the warm temperatures lately.
They don’t want to risk getting stuck in mud, which is okay with me, because I don’t want to risk having the trails significantly messed up by a heavy truck. However, I am disappointed over the implications they won’t be able to trim as many trees as I had wanted.
The bright side of that is, it will create less work for me in the realm of chipping, cutting and splitting the branches that will be on the ground when they are done.
Part of me is lamenting the time and effort I spent a month ago plowing and shoveling to make sure the routes through the woods would be wide enough for their truck.
I didn’t know at the time that it would take them this long to fit us into their schedule, or that the weather would be so summer-like that snow wasn’t a problem by the time they arrived.
Our tree guy did mention that instead of the truck, they will bring a lift that will help to a lesser degree. The less time they spend climbing is the more time they can be cutting.
I expect most of my day will be spent standing around gawking, and getting very little else of value accomplished. I want to be present at all times to guide decisions and direct priorities, so the day won’t be conducive to my digging into any other chores.
I suppose I could dabble in some wood splitting when we are back by the shed. It would certainly be a complimentary task to the professional trimming going on overhead.
Guess I should dig out my helmet in preparation for the big day. I’m pretty sure I know what tomorrow’s blog topic is going to be…
We’ll be toiling away to make our trails safe again. It’ll be a win-win project, because in addition to safety from unexpected falling limbs, the trimming will make our trees more healthy and improve their odds of surviving wind and storm damage.
It’s expensive, but I think the investment will be money well spent.
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New Parts
I decided to practice a little preventative maintenance on my log splitter and ordered spare parts before they completely failed. I had noticed that the nylon impact bushing was beginning to deform and one of the washers on the bottom spacer had already fractured.
In a quick search, I found that both of these parts were readily available to extend the life of the product, so I made the buy. In this picture, I’ve already installed the new parts and bagged the old ones, which I’ll store in the off-hand chance of future unexpected failure.
I saw in the review comments for the parts that some folks had the impact bushing fracture. It has helped me to be more aware of how my use of the splitter stresses these parts. I am less driven to pound away on a log that is obviously not giving in to the idea of my wanting it to split.
The temperature was just about to climb above freezing when I started yesterday and the frozen wood was snapping apart with minimum effort. I was thinking I should get Cyndie to record a video to demonstrate how slick this tool is. I’m glad I didn’t, because no sooner than having that thought did my luck swing and the wood changed to stringier oak. I also came to a few Y-shaped pieces. These reveal the amazing strength at that junction which allows branches to support such incredible amounts of weight in big old trees.
You need to pick your angles carefully to convince the wood to separate at the junctions where branches Y off.
When a log is particularly resistant to the intrusion of the Smart Splitter wedge, I employ the added incentive of the orange twisting wedge and some pounding with the traditional splitting maul. It makes for a lot more effort, but I surprise myself by the eventual success I’ve been able to achieve in the face of some pieces that look like they would require the power of a machine.
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I had a nice session of progress, saving a couple of the bigger challenges for later, since my energy had declined as morning turned to afternoon and it was time for some lunch. Later, on my way to another task, I stopped to muscle the last two challenges.
I have incentive to get our current piles of wood split and stacked in the shed. This coming Thursday and Friday is our appointment for the tree trimmers to come cut high branches from our old trees. I’ve instructed them to focus solely on dropping branches that are out of my reach.
I will cut and split, or shred with the chipper, all the wood that comes to the ground so they don’t end up wasting any precious time (or our limited funds) on something I can do later. I think that cleanup project has the capacity to become an ongoing chore that will last me for the rest of the year.
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Precious Godsend
A few weeks ago, our neighbor stopped by to deliver some mail that had erroneously been left in their mailbox. He walked around to the back of the house to find Cyndie, and noticed my pile of logs awaiting the ax. He told her that he had a gas-engine splitter that wasn’t getting any use. He offered to come over and help me split firewood.
I had mixed feelings about it. I don’t like the noise the gas engine makes, but it would be a huge advantage for getting a lot of wood split all at one time. I loved that our neighbor wanted to help us, but he is 77-years-old and this was a task that seemed above and beyond the call of duty. Since his first offer, he’d mentioned it a couple of other times when I’d seen him, so I knew the offer was genuine. That made me really want to take him up on it, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it.
Yesterday he made it easy for me. He called and asked if I would be around in the afternoon, because he wanted to bring the splitter over and take care of my wood pile. Happily, I was just on my way home from picking up Delilah from her grooming appointment. How could I refuse?
I’m no longer worried about the effort being too much for him. I think he can out-work me. I wanted to stop when the sun set, but there was still some wood left in the row we were on. He told me I could go and he would finish those last few. I stayed, ultimately insisting he quit when it got too dark to work safely.
Obviously, the powered splitter made much quicker work of the logs than I could accomplish with my manual splitter, but more importantly, it is able to tackle the stringy-est wood that would defy my splitter entirely. I don’t know if it was ash or elm (he said it’s a hybrid of the two), but some of the largest logs were of that wood and I never would have gotten them split without the 22-ton force hydraulic ram-rod he volunteered to bring over.
I think splitting wood is something he sees as a pleasure to do, not a chore. I also think that I live a charmed life to have landed this paradise of a property with two of the most helpful neighbors on either side. As he prepared to depart for home on his 4-wheeler with the splitter hitched to the back, he very matter-of-factly stated that he would come back tomorrow to finish the remainder of the pile that needs splitting.
I didn’t try to refuse. I’m putting that energy into trying to figure out how I will ever be able to return the favor. My gushing thank-you’s don’t feel anywhere near adequate.
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Relative Something 