Since all the young family members are residing out of state there is no one to split wood for my 87 year old mother. Up until this year I delivered rounds and she split them, with help from the family. This year she cracked a rib and wanted no part of the load of wood I had. We looked at rental costs locally for a splitter, and decided maybe we would be ahead to buy one. Back to her house with a 27 ton splitter. I start rolling out the 30" diameter rounds of Fir. We started just laughing as we pulled the lever, going we should have done this years ago. Her next strategy was for me to take it home, with the unsplit rounds though 3 cities and 2 counties unlicensed. Well I made it without trouble, and I'v given up my B'day and xmas present all for the privelidge of splitting wood. And yes I still have to keep her in wood, and it must be split. Hey its my mom I don't mind and splitting is a lot more fun now. What started this is my neighbor had a 3' doug fir come down this winter and took out his truck and car. He didn't want it. Now as I'm splitting it I'm see all of these clear boards coming up, and since I have a new 18" bandsaw pretty soon I'm using the splitter to quarter split the logs nice clear pieces of fir. LOL really cuts down on the firewood when you start grading the splits. Some of these boards have that wonderful redish color.
My real gloat is I picked up a used unisaw with a B50 fence, Bess overhead guard and dust romoval, woodhaven router insert in table, delta outfeed table, WWII blade, Delta tenoning jig, mobile base, and a large laguna sliding table.
Mike M