A clever device to make manual wood splitting easier and safer. Some metal fabrication skills are needed, but it could be constructed with a bit of welding, using repurposed scrap metal.
Why would you want to bust wood that small? It takes more wood to heat and you would have to feed the fire every few minutes. It would be ok for a fire to look at but not one to heat by. It also looks to be more work for what you turn out.
Good idea for kindling and small wood. Heat with wood here in New Hampshire and last tank of heating oil, 225 gallons, lasted 7 years. I burn about 8 cord a winter for house and basement shop. Haven't bought wood in many years, have small tractor and clean up neighbors dead and blown down wood, commercial loggers pay for wood, cut almost all the trees and leave a mess. I was given about 20 cords of oak and maple by a tree service, 18 to 30 inch logs from house and road side that may have metal in them. Commercial firewood dealers will not take anything over about 16 inches, doesn't work in their processors, and saw mills won't mill anything that may have metal in it. I have a homemade 5 hp Honda powered hydraulic splitter with a very heavy duty cylinder. Slower but easy to use. Point being that until TSHF it is best to use what you can get and find a niche. Lots of dead trees here now from insects, cut them down, peal the bark and burn it, cut and split the wood, put on pallets, shrink wrap, cover with old metal roofing, and let set a year. Move with tractor and forks, put in greenhouse when not using it to grow, then move to wood shed second or third year. Getting old but used to give 20 or 30 cords a year away thru church to the elderly. Splitter cost me about $1,000 to make about 15 years ago and all I have done since is change fluids and keep under cover. Point I wish to make, get what you need before things go bad, get the bugs out of it, find a niche, hiway dept used to call me when a tree blew down, knew I would have it out of there in an hour most times. Even though the land owner had the right to the wood, they couldn't wait for a couple days until he got around to it. Made some good friends over the years bucking the wood up into 16 in rounds, load on tractor bucket, and drop off at land owners wood shed. All of that is changing, newest generation makes $75,000 a year working in city, buy a $300,000 house, $100,000 worth of cars, are a couple weeks away from losing it all and will not be bothered with the work and mess of burning wood. But they want to be paid for "their" firewood from the tree that blew down in the road. Like the idea Chellovick provides though, kind of like a hand grain grinder, simple, available now, and if taken care of could work for generations with no fuel or parts. A lot less dangerous than a splitting axe or maul, really would be of most use in those areas that have to heat or use cook stoves and only have small soft woods growing around them, lots of mountian states, west coast, and logged over areas of east. Pine, spruce, beach, birch, aspen, etc really do not store well, bugs and rot, unless split.
You evidently didn't listen to what the tutorial presenter was saying. That size splitter is fine for small stoves and starter wood for larger fire logs. If one doesn't have the physique (such as a slight woman or an elderly person) to swing a heavy maul, then using that set-up would suffice. Horses for courses my good man.
I have a wood stove similar to the first one he had shown made by Auto late 19th century. Used when I got it parts were missing and broken but I saw potential. I already had a log stove you could use good sized wood in and pack for the night and you could cook on it, but we had no oven. This little stove has an oven and we used it for many years and my daughter learned to cook and bake with this stove, today she is a professional baker and cake decorator. I brought the stove with me when my wife and daughter decided to move to Idaho, I moved down to live with dad and take care of him about a year or so before he passed. This area is rough on anything metal so that poor stove rusted out badly so I rebuilt it replacing the tin with boiler plating. It is what heats my 3 bedroom home, and yes it needs attention every hour or so but I don't pack it each time I only add two pieces of wood or so and I add a fan below it t push the cold against the bottom of the stove and it heats up the house very quickly. once the house is up to temperature I turn off the little fan and it stays pretty nice the rest of the night. It is a modular home with single ane windows and the temperatures out side get to freezing from time to time during the winter. One change I made is removing the grate the wood is usually set on to burn. and I burn the wood on the bottom shelf the ashes settle. By doing this the flame spends more time in the stove burning more efficiently. There is a diverter lever that stops the heat at the top and the heat is driven down under the oven box then up the other side and up to the stove pipe, 18" up I have a damper to control it a bit more, a double L configuration in the pipe to draw a little more heat off the escaping smoke. Having a wood-burning cook stove with an oven is a real joy. As for splitting wood I made a splitter using a 20-ton bottle jack and frame and wedge and I split wood in the house next to the stove, so I can make my kindling at random on-demand, which is kinda nice.
actually a better design & build from the commercially sold ones I've seen - worthwhile for the small time ops chopper .... I grew up making splinters with a hatchet - a parent would get arrested these days letting a 10 yr old do something like that ....
Most wood cook stoves have fairly small fireboxes, and you want fairly small wood to get a quick fire for cooking, but not to keep going for a long time. (something wrong with site, won't show photos now !) As for the guys metal invention, a couple of old car tires stacked on top each other does the same thing, and you have the added bonus of protecting the handle of your maul or ax behind the head if it hits the edge of the contraption...........
Variation on a theme: Something like this.... N.B. The tyre does not split the wood...the axe / maul does that....the tyre just reduces risk of damage to the splitting tool...there are still some safety risks inherent in axe / maul swinging. This system requires the use of an axe / maul....and some upper body strength....
Bustin wood is a passage of rights to teenagers and ill-tempered old men. Nothing clears the mind like sweat, splinters, blisters and a stuck ax.
Not a bad idea for softwoods...got some oak that would laugh at that, though....heck, it still smiles with a hydraulic 20T splitter.
I haven't split wood by hand since my 20's. Got back into burning/splitting in my 40's after living overseas. Most of what I did was for my father-in-law. He had an electric splitter at his cabin and a gas powered (but slow as molasses) one at his home. Couple of years ago I spit up a couple of hundred year old 4' diameter Maple tree he had dropped on his property. Took forever, mostly because my 60+ yr old body had trouble moving the 500# pieces he had the loggers leave. (Warped sense of humor, I guess). Funny thing was, less than a year after I stacked those 8+ cords of wood for him, he quit burning wood. "No sense in doing it." More like he couldn't haul it in when I wasn't there. I offered to get someone to do it, but he's decided no more. Eventually, I'll haul that wood up to his cabin.
