Living on a parcel of woodland, trees keep me pretty busy. Limbs and trees fall under the weight of winter snow and ice storms, and need to be cleared, cut up or chipped. Additionally, my home is in the center of a circular half acre clearing with soft and hardwood trees and dense brush at the periphery. Unfortunately, even small trees extend branches out into the clearing to catch necessary sun light. Left unattended, branches would keep reaching toward the open sky of the clearing until they met in the middle and formed a canopy.
My theory was that each tree would grow to a height of seventy five feet, then attract carpenter ants. The carpenter ants would then attract giant pileated woodpeckers. The two would combine eating and dietary habits to bring these trees down to stump level. Well, that didn’t happen, but then it wasn’t much of a theory.
The only trees the woodpeckers went after were those that were close to the house, creating a vertical dead tree situation. Their hollow presence keeps me praying with each storm, but does offers serious social media potential for a viral cliche “Tree falls on a house” headline.
Like the trees, I am old and slow, and will progressively move in that general direction. Still, I can chainsaw, polesaw, and deadfall the problem trees to the ground. I can cut them up, haul them to the tree/brush pile with the grapple on the tractor, but then I have to dispose of the bodies. I rent a chipper when the pile gets too high, and start the chips onto a compost pile. Anything over five inches in diameter, however, must be cut and split into fire wood. And therein lies the problem.
Not long ago… OK, long ago, swinging an eight pound splitting maul into a twenty inch in diameter log was doable. I just had to pace myself. Unfortunately, now, with a mandatory nap between each log split, it was taking forever. Yes, that is an exaggeration, but not by much. So I purchased a log splitter.
I began researching the benefits of a 45 ton, $15,000 firewood processor and settled on a $300 6.5 ton electric log splitter. It proved to be a relatively easy decision. The firewood processor had power, portability, completeness of process, and a high degree of automation. The electric log splitter had my bank account balance weighing in on its behalf. Like the old Everly Brother’s song “Dre-e-e-e-m dream, dream, dream, dream…”. My kids’ inheritance? My convenience?
WEN in need of a log splitting solution…
I may live in the forest with the acorns and squirrels, but I am still a homeowner with no commercial forestry inclinations. Subsequently, I only take responsibility for thirty feet into the tree line. The label “Lumberjack” on a 6.5 ton log splinter shows that WEN has a sense of humor. One that made me think about the old Monty Python lumberjack skit, until I remembered how the skit ended and quickly moved on.
I ordered it with the optional stand, which took an hour to assemble, but only because the actual splitter weighs one hundred pounds, the stand weighs twenty five pounds, and… See previously mentioned relic status. I ended up suspending the splitter with a nylon tow line strapped to the bucket on the tractor. Assembled, the unit passed all preflight checks, powered right up cycled with great confidence.
Ten minutes later…
The WEN splitter did a good job making this little pile out of some very green birch. The splitter did not stall, the splits were pretty clean and cycling was fast enough. There is some maple and oak to split, so I will know more about the little splitter’s performance at that time.