A big part of our life every summer and/or fall is splitting wood for the winter. If we’re ahead of the game, it gets done in the summer. If not, we’re scrambling to get it done in September and October. This past fall, in 2014, we were delayed because we had ordered a new logsplitter from the DR people, which was an electric, Rapid-Fire, kinetic logsplitter. So it has a flywheel that propels a ram against a wedge and is supposed to equal a 22-ton hydraulic splitter. Uh-huh. Let me just say that our 10-year-old 4-ton hydraulic splitter does a better job than this new-fangled kinetic one. It just can’t handle splitting a log in one pass.

Steve had to make several, sometimes as many as six, hits with the ram to split a dry log that was less than 10 inches in diameter. I couldn’t even use the splitter because I don’t have enough strength in my shoulder to whack the ram arm that many times in a row. This is a far cry from their advertising claims. We love the DR products, don’t get me wrong. We have a Powerwagon that we bought in 2000 and it’s still going strong in 2015. Our first brush mower lasted 11 years with heavy usage. And as I mentioned we have one of their 4-ton hydraulic splitters. I just think they missed the boat with this Rapid-Fire kinetic splitter. You’re better off going with a gas-powered splitter or an electric hydraulic splitter. It’s useless to us if I can’t even use it as I’m supposed to be the one doing the bulk of the splitting. Steve cuts and moves the wood, I split and stack.

Steve and I are not newbies to splitting wood, needless to say, and we know what works. We need a machine that’s going to perform whether we are splitting a 12-inch round that has been sitting around for two years, or a 14-inch green round from a tree that blew down a few weeks ago. It’s no fun to split green wood but sometimes we have no choice.

Maybe someday we’ll decide that cutting and splitting our own wood is just too much trouble. I hope that day never comes since it will mean that I’ve gotten OLD.