 Great for resplitting but very slow |
| Review Date: July 28, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Stephen Roberts, Sudbury, VT United States |
I got this machine from DR when the previous "5 ton" electric died after re-splitting about 5 cords. Since there were no parts available to fix it, they replaced it with this machine.
First of all, these are fair weather splitters. Try to use it below 40degF and they bog down...even if you change the hydraulic fluid out (which I did). So if you think you're going to use it in the dead of winter...forget it.
Secondly, the operating system is very slow. If your wood is very straight and devoid of a lot of knots, the process will go quickly because the wood will split at the very beginning of the stroke. Otherwise the wood must pass through the complete stroke which is slow. To top that off, the push block stops about 4" from the wedge, so if you have a stringy piece of wood, it's not uncommon to have to finish the process with a small axe. Not a biggie for me because it doesn't happen very often (maybe 1 out of twenty?). I don't see any way to adjust the travel of the wedge.
Power. I am happy with its power. There are very few logs that it won't tackle with ease. I split mostly Maple, Ash, Oak and Cherry. No issues there. I've often been surprised at some of the logs it split. If you line up your log with knots it will have no problem splitting them right down the middle. Speaking of power. Make sure you use a 12ga extension cord not longer than 25'. It makes a tremendous difference in power. Also, if possible use a dedicated 15A circuit or you'll be tripping your circuit breakers every 10 minutes. For those of you that don't have a clue about this sort of thing, you don't want other electrical stuff running on the same circuit when you're operating the splitter. The splitter needs almost all of the power available from a standard 15amp circuit.
Safety: Like most CE certified splitters coming from China and Taiwan, this unit has a momentary switch that you must physically hold down while actuating the lever that controls the splitting cycle. This is a major pain in the neck and is the primary feature that would stop me from recommending this splitter. Instead of having the machine running all the time, you have to place a log, then stand behind the machine, press and hold a start button on the right of the machine, then as you're holding that button down push a lever on the left side of the machine. This makes the splitting process about 3X longer than if you had the machine constantly running.
Conclusion: If you use under a cord of wood every year and just want to re-split into small pieces than this machine would be fine...slow and annoying but fine. Other than that, I would say look for something that doesn't use a momentary switch. |
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