Bustergasket

We are looking at chemical castration so it’s an injection into the nuts that can last 6-18 months so you can see the effect before deciding, i have seen a few dogs go more aggressive after chop, depends on why they are been aggressive i guess

This is the new boy, settling in slowly, he is super round the farm, but i think he is finding the local pub a bit too much, he is 14 months old and had zero socialisation until the last 12weeks with us, not bothered by shotgun noise, great with other dogs, good with females, great round machines, wary around men and has kicked off big time at a few blokes, we have sorted his dominant and continued challenge for top spot behaviour round the farm, and he is becoming reasonably affectionate with us, completely different with others though, and his unpredictable tendencies are keeping me on my toes, he has so much to learn, iam really hoping he will chill over the next year, fingers crossed

i heard of a bloke who had a similar situation someone kept nicking his chopped logs so he somehow drilled a hole inserted a crow scarer and plugged it, he did a few of these and left them in a prominent position, they disappeared and funnily enough he had no more logs go missing!

Have to be honest Matty, i did not price a lasco, i think both bits of kit will do the job, and it’s surprising how fast they bust stuff up, as is seen by Stephen’s reply earlier in the thread, i think that’s on a bigger machine, but from what i see i think the small versions are just as impressive, prob just don’t have the reach and are very slightly slower, you just let the cone bite and it takes the timber, no pressure needed other than to stop it rotating the timber, i can see corrosion to the cone could be an issue as it will increase the friction, working on a silicone boot packed with grease, does anyone else do anything when not in use ?

Well i have been mulling over the perceived pros and cons of using a cone splitter for a while, this is the S2X800 model, picked it up yesterday from Fuelwood and managed to split some of the larger diameter lengths last night, it was a doddle to get the hang of even in the dark with only the digger lights on, iam running it on a 4ton machine, plenty of power, i had the 245mm cone, probably should have gone for the 300mm option, but like all these bits of kit until you have used them you just don’t know, i cannot see any downside to using the biggest cone possible (maybe wrong) i would estimate i split 10 ton in two hours, now originally i was going to reduce the larger dia 500mm stuff so it would go through a processor, however i was surprised to see the timber was 20-25%, so decided to bust it smaller and used for boiler fuel (running a bit low) i plan on grading the straight stuff to the processor and the gnarley stuff for boiler, i think iam going to get on well with it for producing boiler fuel and getting some of the nicer stuff through the processor, it splits huge volumes very quickly and the slivers are welcome boiler fuel, i will put done more viewpoints up when i have had time to use it s bit more, here is some pics

Well we managed to get an hour on the machines on sunday, we fed through all the bits which it refused a few weeks ago those two simple mods now mean the woodcutta will reliably cut 430mm diameter and the splitta will also just take that, there is still scope to go bigger with woodcutta but realistically as the splitta would need serious modifications and then it would not be a standard machine, so it’s probably best to leave it where it is and look for a splitta 400, pretty sure they will do nearly 500mm, the difference in volume is huge, when going from 360 upto 430 there is almost 50% more volume going through the machine, we really were struggling to keep it fed and get the bags away, the new single entry gate needs to be fixed to stop it sliding from side to side as that did jam under the ear which was left from moving the backstop roller closer to the chainsaw sprocket but that’s simple, the cleaner and conveyor are also working well and have to say we are ending up with very clean bags i have been thinking about moving the fingers on the cleaner just a little bit wider but fear it might take out too much of the smaller stuff which people seem to like, i guess best option would be to make them adjustable or make it so you can swap the whole set of bars as a complete unit [emoji848]

How did you get on ? did you manage to keep up with it ? [emoji106]

Sounds like a tidy machine, what timber do you plan on running through first ?

I have the logs set to 10 inch, from what i see you will get 20% more volume through the machine in the same time and have less rings to cut, i can still put 8 inch through but sometimes we adjust the feed up a bit so they are a bit chunkier if shorter, if that makes sense ? what conveyor did you manage to buy Rob ? you will be rigging up a cleaner next [emoji106]

I would give Fuelwood a call, i know when they added it to one of mine they worked me out a deal, there is some fabrication and some hydraulic mods so it’s easier to do while the machine is there, they definitely feed better with the conveyor especially odd shaped split rings [emoji106]

Good stuff, i have been running splitta 360 for about 5 years now, for us it works great, it’s a very versatile machine, it’s the one that sees the most use and produces very high quality product which is very regular, and it’s built like a tank, what form is your 200 tonnes ? you will like it at fuelwood, did you buy the one with infeed conveyor ?

I find cherry gives up the moisture pretty quick, oak is slow, turkey oak even slower [emoji106]

Good stuff [emoji106] when you get it up and running happy to give you some pointers of the things i have found to get the most out of the machine, once you have spent some time with it be good to know how you get on [emoji106]

Cheers, iam no expert welder but i do enjoy it, almost as much as chopping firewood, there’s so many things to sort out when processing wood it gives the old grey matter a bit to think on [emoji106]

Well it’s been a while but i finally managed to get some time to modify the infeed timber guides and rollers, the first mod was simple it just required two new holes and we have been able to move the inward roller guide an inch closer to the chainsaw sprocket, it will still clear the gripping dogs so essentially should give another inch in that direction the second mods took a more figuring the woodcutta used to have two swinging roller plates that used to ride up on the top of the timber, the first one was short and used to swing into the second, i saw on the newer machines it’s modded so just one is present, the issue i was seeing was sometimes timber could jam as it transitioned from one to the other, so cutting old brackets off and mounting the pivot height has given us two inches in height, we just had to weld a closure plate on the second now only remaining swinging roller, i ran out of time to prove out the mods but i cannot see how it can fail to work better, (famous last words), other than that i can say the machine is running really well and we have also done some more welding and cutting to get the conveyor and log cleaner up and working, we ran off a quick 6 cube on sat and the comments were that the bags looked really clean and the timber size was the best it been, customers are also liking the squares more than the triangles but it’s more of a size thing, those big triangles that don’t get resplit can be too big for some, realistically these won’t go out till later this year i have put castors on the conveyor now so it’s mobile, just wish i had a bigger barn ! i have some more mods to do and will post up some more pictures when i get a chance, a few people were asking about stringy timber, we get very few that stay together, i delivered 3 loads at the weekend and we had 3 pairs that were still together, they were 1.5 cube loads so no worries [emoji106] keep on chopping