Woodcutter with your own hands — drawings, diagrams, dimensions. 120 photos of homemade woodcutters

Residents of Russian villages deprived of the usual amenities for citizens? They are unable to take advantage of central heating, so they are forced to heat their homes with traditional Russian wood-burning stoves.

Firewood is why they are called firewood, because, in essence, they are wood products. That is, in order for them to be able to "feed" the oven, long logs first need to be sawn into chunks, after which the chunks split into logs.

Summary of the article:

The most time-consuming of these processes is the splitting of chocks into logs. The only tool that allows you to chop firewood is a woodcutter. Since ancient times in Russia, a woodcutter was a young man who independently chopped firewood for his stove with an axe or a cleaver.

When a man is twenty, thirty or even forty years old, he easily copes with this task. Swing your arm, open your shoulder. By the age of fifty, even for a person involved in physical labor, it becomes too hard to swing a cleaver, and he begins to wonder: how to make a woodcutter and make your work easier, create a special device for chopping firewood, appointing it a woodcutter instead of yourself? Read also: how to install gutters with your own hands.

It is not difficult to get a woodcutter today. I took it and bought it, since they are produced by large companies that guarantee the elegant functionality of these machines. However, a rural resident of our Homeland does not have sufficient funds to purchase it.

Our man is "Kulibin" from birth – he just needs to look at a photo of a woodcutter made by someone else with his own hands to catch fire with this idea himself and make this most useful device on his own.

There are several types of mechanical woodcutters: manual, cone, spring. All of them to a greater or lesser extent facilitate the process of splitting firewood.

Two rings, two ends, and a blade in the middle

The simplest manual woodcutter is designed not so much to facilitate labor as to somehow secure this labor. It is done quite simply: a round iron frame with a diameter of about 25 centimeters or a little more is welded.

A metal base is made at the bottom, in which holes are drilled for mounting. An iron ring with a diameter of 25 cm is installed on top . An upward-pointing blade is fixed between the supports and welded to the base.

Numerous photos of homemade woodcutters of this type are found everywhere on the web and does not cause much inspiration from our homemade Process of splitting firewood in such a woodcutter resembles splitting firewood with an axe or a cleaver.

A chock is inserted into the ring and mounted on the blade. In order to split it, you just need to hit it from above with a sledgehammer. Of course, there is no saving of physical effort in this case, but since you have to swing not with a sharpened axe blade or a cleaver cone, but with an ordinary sledgehammer, work becomes much safer.

Woodcutter with spring mechanism

Other simplest mechanical woodcutters have a slightly more perfect spring design, they provide not only the safety of the user, but also greatly facilitates his work.

A spring-loaded woodcutter is made from waste materials, its manufacture is within the power of almost any man whose hands grow from where they need to. The woodcutter mechanism consists of movable and fixed parts.

Fixed part of the mechanism

Its fixed part is a base made of a steel channel, a fixed metal support is welded to it vertically at an angle of 90 degrees – the same channel.

To give the structure greater strength at the bottom, the support on both sides is also reinforced with a steel corner in the form of struts.

After that, a platform with a pipe cut welded to it is welded to the lower part of the support at the level of fixing the corners so that the angle between the platform and the base is 90 degrees.

Movable part

Next comes the construction of the movable part of the woodcutter. A movable steel beam is attached to the base on a hinge from above. At one end of the beam, a pipe trim is also welded at the bottom. Pipe cuts on the platform at the bottom of the support and the bottom of the beam at the top of the support should be exactly opposite each other.

A car spring is installed between them, which is held in the desired position by pipe trimmings located on top and bottom opposite each other.

At the other end of the beam, a sharp metal wedge is welded, directed vertically downwards and a horizontally directed handle. A weighting is welded on top of the wedge, as which you can use anything, for example, a piece of rusty rail.

Principle of operation

The principle of operation of this mechanism is simple. The car spring holds the woodcutter beam in its original position. A chock is installed under the wedge of the woodcutter, which needs to be split. The "operator" of the woodcutter abruptly presses the handle, moving it down. Under the influence of human muscular strength multiplied by the weight of the weighting agent, the wedge splits the chock in half. After that, the handle is released, the beam returns to its original position under the action of the spring.

Simple woodcutters with a manual drive of one human power are much more efficient than a conventional axe or even a cleaver, but still not productive enough.

Log splitter type "carrot"

Another thing is a woodcutter equipped with an electric drive or an internal combustion engine. A variety of such units are cone-shaped woodcutters, which are now put into mass production at many enterprises.

Nevertheless, it is hardly worth spending money on what you can do with your own hands from improvised materials. To do this, you only need a pair of ball bearings, a pair of cardan shaft supports, the cardan shaft itself and a pulley.

Making carrots

Almost everyone can easily find any of these parts in their garage. Another thing is a cone or a so-called carrot, its manufacture requires the qualification of a turner and high-quality steel. The cylindrical blank must have a length of at least 15-20 cm. and the diameter is 5-6 cm . The cone should have an angle of 30 degrees. A thread with a depth of 2 mm is applied to the cone. and in 7 mm increments .

In the inner part of the cone, it is necessary to carve a sufficiently deep cavity and drill two or three holes on the part of the workpiece where there is no thread, with an internal thread applied to them.

Assembling a woodcutter

After that, you can start assembling the "carrot" woodcutter. The bearings are installed in the gimbal supports and welded to them. The cardan shaft is inserted into the bearing of one of the supports, then a sleeve is put on it, which should play the role of protecting the shaft from debris, then a second support with a ball bearing is put on the shaft, all the way into the sleeve.

Then a cone is put on one of the ends of the driveshaft and bolted onto it. The other end of the shaft is tightly mounted on the pulley, which is fixed to the driveshaft with a nut.

The ball bearing supports are attached to the frame, under which an electric motor is installed, connected to the woodcutter by means of a belt drive. To reduce the number of revolutions of the "carrot", it is recommended to use a gearbox.

This model of a woodcutter is quite effective and has only one significant drawback: when splitting birch chocks, it does not cope well with birch bark. His shortcomings have to be corrected with an ordinary axe or a cleaver.