Woodsplitters I Have Known

 

  My friend Jerry Solom called a log a cob. This must be a local usage. No other part of the world calls a log a cob. “To cob up some popple” means to cut popple (local term for aspen) trees into stove length pieces. 

   Once the trees were cobbed up, the cobs had to be split for drying. In our younger days Jerry and I split our cobs by hand, using a splitting maul. It was laborious. Jerry, who could make anything, proposed making a hydraulic log splitter. My contribution would be the front end of my brother’s abandoned 1965 VW Beetle which Bill said he was not returning from Maine to retrieve. Jerry would provide an old lawnmower engine and an I-beam and we’d split the cost of a used hydraulic ram. 

   A fast young person can split wood with a maul as quickly as a hydraulic log splitter which tends to be slow. But as the fast young person gets older, he or she will appreciate a hydraulic log splitter. 

   Jerry’s splitter was tricky to start. You had to remove the spark plug and pour a little gas into the engine. This might take a couple of tries. It was an art not a science. Once warmed up, the engine would restart just fine all day without the spark plug trick. 

   The only bad thing was that the splitter I-beam was close to the ground and handling the cobs and the split wood involved a lot of bending by the operators. This bending is nothing for a middle aged person, but with advancing years it gets old. Teresa, my splitter mate, suggested we buy a new splitter which would raise the splitting action closer to waist level. But new splitters are expensive. I procrastinated till I found a used splitter. This splitter would last till the time we had to buy split wood by the cord.

   Everything was going along splittingly until the other day when I was topping up the hydraulic oil reservoir. I realized I had poured in several ounces of old engine oil instead of hydraulic oil. Son of a biscuit! I had contaminated the hydraulic oil and would have to drain the reservoir and fill it with clean oil. I was disgusted with myself. The reservoir has no drain plug so I had to suck all the oil out with a suction pump. Two and a half gallons! Hydraulic oil is not cheap. As I refilled the reservoir, I noticed a little plaque covered in oil and wood chips. Once cleaned, it read "Change hydraulic oil after every 100 hours of use." I no longer felt disgusted with myself. My fiasco turned out to be required maintenance.

Teresa and Cindy: The Splitter Sisters