Hi all,
I thought I should post a hello to all. I found this forum recently while on a search for a splitter. Although I have a tractor, I wanted something that was manful enough for what I needed to do, but also "light" enough to move about on my own.
I spent ages reading the excellent posts here and it helped me to make up my mind.
I bought a RIKO Vario 9t splitter from a helpful chap named Jim at alpinetractors. Rather than getting a tractor mounted one, I went for the model with a Honda engine.
BTW - I don't work for alpinetractors - and I'm not in the industry - I work with computers - but I do like cutting wood
Most of the wood I get is Ash - fetched in from the field after boughs / trees have dropped in bad weather. Rings were up to about 20", and had a lot of twisty, knarly stuff that was always a hot heavy job to split by hand.
I was tempted by the 11t A11 Riko machine after many on here recommended it. It was much heavier though, and the Vario is about 130kg (ish) and while I can easily move it about on a hard flat surface, trying to drag it up the hillside (we live in Derbyshire!) on soft ground, I was glad to see it came with a lifting eye - well done chaps!
I used it for the first time this weekend and it hasn't missed a beat on anything I threw at it. I filled the log bunker in the pix below this saturday (me and the missus working for about five hours - including some sawing up of larger rings to a depth of about 10")
Ran all saturday and several hours on sunday on one tank of petrol (still hasn't run dry!).
You know, I hate to "buy cheap-buy twice" - and I have to say this machine is absolutely fantastic. I live out in the sticks, we have oil and two woodburners for heating but probably couldn't justify a splitter if I was brutally honest. I am a believer though in having the right tool to make a job easy so it frees my time up to do other jobs around the place, and this machine was well worth the money.
Top build quality and thoughtful design. I like the fact you can alter the machine from vertical to horizontal cutting and two points inbetween. I actually used all positions to try it out, but the horizontal is best for working IMHO. Stores well in the little shed too...
ONly slight annoyance was the vibrating of the actuation bar on the levers. It's a floating piece of metal designed to ensure you can only operate the machine with both hands on the two levers. Machine was running at low revs most of the time to stop this jiggling and driving me nuts. Not a major issue though really.
It's two-speed - and I was glad of it. After the initial wow factor disappeared and I got into production, getting the splitting ram to the wood needs to be quick, then it could be slowed for the more knarly / thicker bits.
What else can I say...I'm a happy chap.
Thanks again to all for posting their experiences with different machines. Hence why I thought I would add my experiences to the collective pool for the next guy who's looking.
Cheers and atb
Tony
