Riding Splitter Takes Him To The Wood Pile

Riding Splitter Takes Him To The Wood Pile WOODLOT EQUIPMENT Wood Splitters 30-2-44 Five years of dragging his heavy wood splitter around the farm was enough for Duane Nesselhauf. He decided to build a self-propelled unit that he could drive right out to the woods. "We burn wood, so I do a lot of splitting," says Nesselhauf. "I built the splitter using a 4-in. I-beam and a hydraulic cylinder with a 24-in. stroke. Nothing stops it. It goes right through knots and everything." Making it self-propelled was easy, he says. He welded a piece of channel iron to the side of the splitter I-beam. After cutting down the axle on an auto rear end, he welded a bracket to the differential and bolted the bottom end of the channel iron to it. Nesselhauf attached an old plow wheel under the wedge end of the splitter. The steering wheel, which is bracketed to the splitter cylinder and a steering gearbox mounted over the front wheel, came from an old Chevy pickup. "I put a hydraulic motor on the differential so I have variable speed in forward and reverse," says Nesselhauf. A 6-hp Briggs and Stratton with a hydraulic pump bolts to a bracket on the I-beam and powers both the differential and the splitter. The seat for the traveling splitter is an old steel tractor seat bolted to a piece of channel iron. The channel iron swivels on the splitter I-beam, making it easy to get on or off. "If I pull the valve on the differential back all the way, the splitter travels at about walking speed," he says. That, he adds, is fast enough around the wood pile. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Duane Nesselhauf, 7208 Worcester Rd., Palo, Iowa 52324 (ph 319 396-4578).

To read the rest of this story, download this issue below or click here to register with your account number.