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log splitter accidents


wicklamulla
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As a farmer I have had it drilled into me all my life not to go anywhere near the pto on a tractor, they will grab you and rip you to bits in the blink of an eye.

It baffles me completely how jamming a log on a spike on the end of the pto shaft is ever going to be a good idea. I know they are praised by some people but I would never even entertain the idea of having one on the place.

Hydraulic splitters are not foolproof but if you let go of the lever they stop, there isn't even a stop fitted to a hycrack. 

 

50 second mark shows what a pto will do. I know it's running full speed but will be similar at tickover.

 

 

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2 hours ago, dig-dug-dan said:

Years ago, i had a pickpine boscalio splitter, basically a lawnflite one. Those days, 1990's it was a one handed operation, and i remember crushing my fingers under a log as it was splittin. Painful, but not as bad as my dad who rolled a huge great round onto it, and as he held the lever back to split, the log pinned his hand against said lever, so not only could he not free his hand, but it continued to move the wood and crush it further. As luck would have it, the lever snapped and he only suffered minor bruising.

The story above about losing an eye worries me though, as i have a hycrack that could possibly do the same thing?

Don't take your eye of a hycrack  or any screw splitter for one second. They can flip a wet heavy oak ring faster than you thing possible.

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8 hours ago, Peasgood said:

As a farmer I have had it drilled into me all my life not to go anywhere near the pto on a tractor, they will grab you and rip you to bits in the blink of an eye.

It baffles me completely how jamming a log on a spike on the end of the pto shaft is ever going to be a good idea. I know they are praised by some people but I would never even entertain the idea of having one on the place.

Hydraulic splitters are not foolproof but if you let go of the lever they stop, there isn't even a stop fitted to a hycrack. 

 

50 second mark shows what a pto will do. I know it's running full speed but will be similar at tickover.

 

 

As a fellow farmer the same thing was drilled into me regarding PTOs.   The guards must be fitted and in working order and fixed by a small chain to something static to stop them spinning.

I was an eighteen year old student on a dairy farm in the early 1970s and it was in my first week that I was put on the tractor/slurry tanker combination.  The pto had no guard and you had to lean over it to close a small rubber valve.

It was a big farm of several thousand acres and had two or three managers.  I complained to the dairy manager but he was a stroppy git and I could see that it was lump it or find another job elsewhere.

I always wore tight fitting overalls and made sure that there was nothing dangling and managed to survive the year.

 

The following year a cowman, not a student, was operating the same machine and it caught him and whipped him over the pto so quickly that it left both his boots behind and punctured his lung as well as nearly severing his arm with a tourniquet made from his jacket.  I would not entertain a screw spiltter.   I worked one for half a day and that was enough!

 

Since the bad old days when I used to cut wood with an old tractor driven sawbench  (hugely dangerous not only for cutting off hands and fingers, but also for splinters flying up at your face, or worse still the saw blade breaking up and bits flying at you)  Using an axe for splitting, also dangerous over time.

I am hugely grateful; that I managed to buy a Palax Combi off Jas Wilson in 1996 for £2500 second hand.

The circular saw is about as protected from the user as possible and out of line, but the splitter is also in a trough covered by a hinged shield and all the split pieces are taken up an elevator to either a crate or a trailer. No picking up and bending

This has to be not only the safest system (without being in a sealed cab and everything under remote control), but also one of the fastest.

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8 hours ago, richardwale said:

Don't take your eye of a hycrack  or any screw splitter for one second. They can flip a wet heavy oak ring faster than you thing possible.

I find the trick is to push the log on, and let go, wait for the log to split and stop, then remove it.

I am running their smaller  model on a 32hp compact, still dangerous. It has a shear bolt on it, but if it can split a knotty piece of oak ok, a shear bolt wont stop it ripping my arm off

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9 minutes ago, 33bk said:

Been on a hycrack all day .......... ummm I think I might need to re think 

Only piece of kit that has given me a proper scare. I just found myself getting sucked into dangerous practices with it and it had to go before I had a mishap.

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40 minutes ago, dig-dug-dan said:

I find the trick is to push the log on, and let go, wait for the log to split and stop, then remove it.

I am running their smaller  model on a 32hp compact, still dangerous. It has a shear bolt on it, but if it can split a knotty piece of oak ok, a shear bolt wont stop it ripping my arm off

True, it won't stop that but it will stop something bursting under colossal pressure and causing fatal or near fatal injuries.  Had ours been fitted with a shear bolt 21 yrs ago I'd still be shooting off my right shoulder and be able to shake someones hand without missing on the first attempt

 

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I had an old hycrack splitter that I used for a few years, had a few frights using it and my father in law told me the story of John losing his eye so it was retired! Better safe than sorry.

Edited by jmac
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I never liked using the hycrack,and stopped using it before I did myself any damage.
My modern 2 handed vertical splitter was normally safe, eye protection being compulsory, but every now and again, perhaps once or twice a day, a hard old lump of beech would go off like a hand grenade just as the blade started to bite. Jumped out of the way to avoid a smack in the face a few times, I guess it would have busted my cheekbones, sockets or jaw if any had got me.
My reflexes aren’t what they used to be, which is just as well, as I stopped doing logs a couple of years ago now.

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