Lord of the tree rings: Log splitter to help Taranaki farmers

Joe Goodin and The Lord of the Tree Rings wood splitter. Photo/ Supplied

Backyard tinker Joe Goodin has turned a former fertiliser truck into a massive mobile log splitter to help Taranaki farmers turn felled trees into winter fuel in record time.

Local engineer Marc Bessling designed the splitter with Joe and used computer modelling that ran a stress analysis through 70 million cycles up and down splitting wood with a 70-tonne push.

The splitter was then professionally built by local company PACE engineering using several sections of a 30mm thick steel plate. Powered by a custom-built hydraulic power pack of 200lpm at 206bar, local company Hydraulic Solutions came on board to plumb up the extensive hydraulic system.

Weighing in at around two-tonne, the truck is a very significant machine that will go practically anywhere and pull out logs from tricky places.

Complete with a nice stereo and sunshade umbrellas to keep a long day of honest graft as comfy as can be, the truck has earned the nickname "Lord of the tree rings".

This is Joe's second custom-built log splitter. Joe built one about 12 years ago out of scrap metal and that cut many thousands of tonnes of wood. The business started simply by word of mouth with the machine at one farm, neighbours driving by seeing such a huge splitter then asking to stop in at their place and so on it would go.

During summer Joe used to travel around the mountain cutting the wood for farmers.

Built on the same safety principles as his last splitter, there are no automatic hydraulic operations so as to keep the operator as safe and protected as possible.

Joe's last splitter would cut more than 50 cubic metres of wood in eight hours. This new machine has a 70-ton push with a larger six-way splitting head that can smash two stacked rings into 12 pieces at once and has so much power it can cut rings standing on their edge. Joe estimates the new splitter will split closer to 60 cubic metres of woodcut in eight hours.

Joe usually asks the farmers to supply a tractor and driver to keep pushing up rings to the cutting table to process as much wood as possible.

The lifting table allows rings four feet or more in diameter to easily be lifted up to the cutting table where the buournellie principle of 70-tonne hydraulic pressure works its magic then the conveyor tips the wood straight into a waiting trailer.

Built for fun as a side-line project from Joe's international job designing subsea tools for the oil, gas and renewable energy sector, this is a standalone operation that will travel around the mountain with an operator to process massive amounts of firewood and free up weeks' worth of work for farmers and lifestyle block owners so they can spend time doing what they want to do.