Firewood Processor

[f350ca]

I heat my house and shop with a wood fired boiler, burn about 20 face cord a year. I buy a load of logs and cut them up by hand, this year my son helped and we were done in 5 days,so not a huge task, but why do it by hand when i could build a machine to do all the grunt work, and Im not getting any younger.
Here's about 2 1/2 years worth of heat.


.
The basic design will handle 8 to 12 foot logs up to say 20 inch in dia. I'll load the logs onto a deck with the tractor, it will feed them one at a time to a chain that will move them in front of a mechanically driven chain saw bar which will cut them to length. Im thinking a mechanical drive over the more common very inefficient hydraulic drive used in the commercial units. The biggest chain saw you can buy might be 8 hp, a wood splitter with an 8 hp engine will split any wood you through at it, so where do the commercial units use up the 40 to 60 hp diesels they run. They may be quicker than mine but mine will be more efficient (think green). Once the block is cut a tilting table will roll it forward to the operator to position it for the best splitting. The commercial units split the block however it falls and produce an abundance of slivers. once split the wood will move to a short conveyor to load it onto a trailer for stacking.
Sounds easy, now we'll see if I can build it.
This project may take a while, I'll update as I go.
Greg

 

[f350ca]

I rebuilt this old Wisconsin a year or so back with plans of running the processor with it.





It produces 16 god fearing horse power at 26
00 rpm with a 100% duty cycle.
It had seen a hard life on a NewHolland bailer. There was about 20 thou taper in the cylinders, decided to try boring it out on the lathe.

Worked like a charm, couldn't detect any taper or out of round with my dial bore gauge, a final honing brought it into spec for a 30 thou over set of pistons and rings.
The crank runs on tapered roller bearings, the end play on them was still in spec as were the babbit rod bearings. Yes rabbit rod bearings as in Model T Ford, this engine has been around a while.
It needed valve guides which are still available from Wisconsin. The valves and seats were ground and lapped in. The throttle shaft in the carb was badly worn as was the body, it was reamed out oversized and a new throttle plate shaft fabricated.
Runs like new now, waiting for a load.
Interesting point with these engines, both pistons go up and down at the same time to give a power stroke every turn, to do this they have massive counterweights on the crank, and a flywheel that must weigh 30 or 40 pounds. As a result, when you rev it up the twist in the plane of the flywheel is incredible. I had it bolted down to two 4x4s on the shop floor, with the bucket of the tractor holding them down. It would sit there and idle no problem, till you changed the speed, as it revved up it would twist the timbers from under the bucket, then sit there at the new speed. Had to put a rubber mat under the wood to give some friction on the concrete.

Greg

- - - Updated - - -

Built a CNC plasma table last winter and haven't had much chance to play with it. Today decided to learn how to nest parts, while making a sprocket for what I think is called Link Belt Chain. I have the chain from an old sawmill but no mating sprockets.



Parts for a sprocket in kit form.



This will probably be for the conveyor to move the split wood to the trailer.



Greg

 

[Rbeckett]

I'm all the way impressed. If you use a very large and heavy flywheel on the splitter and a rod with teeth to drive it into the wood at speed it will split a 20 inch log 4 ways in one whack. If you are interested in something like that look up the old lickety split log splitters and ramp your size up accordingly. It would cut your work time to about as fast as you could reload the ram and hit it again. Just watch out for your fingers and other parts of your body because it isn't going to stop if it hits bone... That old Wisconsin even has the Fairbanks Morse spring loaded ignition system. Oh those were the days when Gravely tractors used them too. I could time one in no time flat after a while, but it took a lot of patience at first. Keep us abreast of the build as it progresses.

Bob

 

[xalky]

I love these types of projects. A flywheel sounds like the way to go to store up energy.

 

[f350ca]

Plan on using this feed chain off an old sand truck to advance the log as its cut into blocks. The links are frozen with rust.



Used a couple of bars and a lot of hammering to fold it up, now its time to let some molasses do its magic.



I'll be back in a couple of weeks with an update.

Greg

 

[Bill Gruby]

This is amazing.

"Billy G"

 

[toolman_ar]

Please do a google search for Bob Cat Wood Splitter.

Reading about your project prompted me to watch this once more.

Picks the log, cuts, then splits.

Great project!

toolman_ar

 

[12bolts]

I There was about 20 thou taper in the cylinders, decided to try boring it out on the lathe.
View attachment 83295

I hope you didnt switch the lathe on while you were setting up for this shot. That could get real messy, real fast

Cheers Phil

 

[GarageGuy]

Awesome project! I can't wait to see the build progress. Keep us updated!

GG

 

[f350ca]

The cabinets I've been building are just about done so time to get back at this project.
The log being cut will be indexed on a conveyer. Decided to go with #80 roller chain to move it along. This is way heavier than needed but the dimensions are nice to work with 1 inch pitch and the deciding factor 5/16 pins. I'll need bars to grab the log, these parts will replace the side plates at 2 foot intervals. Then crossers can be welded to these. The corners needed to be rounded to clear the next link as it rolls around the sprockets. Set up this jig on the rotary table, it has a shoulder to align the link and a hole for a bolt through one of the holes to locate it.