If you’ve got a mountain of timber to break down, you want to get through it as quickly and easily as possible. The benefit of having a cone splitter mounted on your excavator, telehandler or crane is the ability to split more wood than ever before with speed, precision and ease. Here’s a look at a few of the tools currently available on the market.

APPROVED HYDRAULICS
AH630CS and AH800CS CONE SPLITTERS

Forestry Journal:

APPROVED Hydraulics has continually sought to keep up with market demands and several years ago the excavator market in forestry became more buoyant. With this emerging trend, new methods were employed in processing larger pieces of timber. This is where the cone splitter comes into its own and several companies on the Continent were manufacturing the cone splitters to be predominantly excavator-mounted. However, the price into the UK market was relatively high for many contractors.

Forestry Journal:

As an engineering company of 35 years, Approved Hydraulics decided it was able and willing to manufacture a fully UK-produced unit to ensure quality and keep the price to an acceptable level.
For the customer, the units needed to be robust, easy to maintain, efficient and cost effective. For Approved Hydraulics, the units had to be easy to manufacture, have minimal internal components, be simple to assemble, and be of a repeatable quality. This was achieved by forgetting what other manufacturers do and focussing on what was required to give the best result.

Forestry Journal:

Approved Hydraulics’ units are manufactured from one simple laser-cut and in-house welded housing, where the internal components are simply precision fit tolerances and then bolted together. The main body is extremely robust and 90 per cent of the components are shared between the 630 and 800 units.

The 630 and 800 also share the internal motor, mounting intermediate block and main drive shaft, which are manufactured on CNC machines from one single piece of high-grade steel to eradicate any welded weak points.

The main bearing housing assembly is also common to the units and carries two heavy-duty taper roller bearings, each capable of 19-tonne side load.

Forestry Journal:

The 630 model (rated for 3- to 7-tonne excavators) has a specially designed 200 mm diameter high-grade steel cone that is through-hardened to ensure a long life and has a replaceable tip of the same grade.

The more popular 800 model (rated for 8- to 16-tonne excavators) has the same grade cone but a maximum diameter of 250 mm, and again the replaceable tip is common to both units.
Over the years the units have evolved to be able to fit on not just excavators but also cranes, telehandlers and small utility vehicles.

As an extra to the unit, Approved Hydraulics can offer an auger drill and stump planer that can easily be interchanged with the cone.

These units have proved extremely popular over the past few years and have been supplied throughout the UK, Ireland and Europe.
Approved Hydraulics also produces some units bespoke for some major OEMs.

For more information, contact 0161 480 0869, email sales@approvedhydraulics.co.uk or visit www.approvedhydraulics.co.uk.

FUELWOOD
BLACK SPLITTER

Forestry Journal:

FUELWOOD is a dealer for Black’s range of cone splitters, but also works with other brands for bespoke customer installations. The Black’s range of German-manufactured splitters boasts a wide range of machines suitable for mounting on 1.5- to 15-tonne carriers.

Triple motors provide enormous torque for splitting through the toughest timber, and the pitch of the thread is far more aggressive than for many other brands, meaning the tip of the cone bites into the wood much quicker. These features mean that the Black’s splitters are very quick, and very accurate, meaning cleaner splits, less time spent on the job and much less waste.

There are also many attachments available for these splitters to help improve operations. Grapples incorporated onto the splitting head are a popular option, enabling splitting and handling of timber with one attachment.

Forestry Journal:

Augers, post-hole borers, yard brushes, screening baskets and concrete mixer attachments can all be purchased to run off the same Black’s drive motor, making this item much more than just a cone splitter and ensuring the transport of machinery to site is much easier.

Fuelwood offers a one-stop shop taking care of the mounting brackets required to install these machines, as well as the hydraulic connection, extra hydraulic services if required and control mountings in the cab, so that your purchase is effortless and simple.

Fuelwood can also offer bespoke mounting solutions enabled by its in-house design and fabrication departments. So if you want your attachment fitted onto your new chipper, this all comes ready as one complete package.

For more information on the solutions to all your forestry and firewood needs, call Fuelwood on 01926 484673 or visit www.fuelwood.co.uk.

HOME FORESTRY
RABAUD FRH CONE SPLITTER RANGE

Forestry Journal:

RABAUD produces a range of cone splitters suited for 1.8- to 8-tonne excavators and backhoe machines. The FRH cone splitter has a replaceable tip and cone.

To power the cone splitter, you require a double-acting hammer line and two hydraulic hoses (with no drain line required).

There is also an option for a log-handling grab to be added and this is also powered by the excavator’s double-acting hammer line. No electric supply is required.

Forestry Journal:

The handling grab is very useful for stacking long produce after splitting, ready to dry or be further processed. Working pressure requirements are around 200 bar and oil flow requirements range from 45-litre/min for the FRH 304 up to 150-litre/min for the FRH1012. As standard, the FRH cone splitters are supplied with a bolt-on plate for the operator to fabricate a bracket, or a purpose-built bracket can be supplied from the factory.

For more information, please contact Nathan Home of Home Forestry on 07966365157 or 01746718456, via email at nathan@homeforestry.co.uk or visit www.homeforestry.co.uk.

JAS P WILSON
THE YARD MASTER

Forestry Journal:

THE Yard Master is a new product designed and built by Jas P Wilson. This system provides a timber-grapple log-splitter combination. It utilises a Lasco cone splitter and a Botex grab and rotator at the same time.

The system is designed to make the splitting of oversized timber much easier and more productive and also allows easy loading of log decks, etc, without needing to change the attachment, or even leave the seat. The unit only requires one single-acting oil supply on the boom as the system has its own valve block.

Forestry Journal:

Jas P Wilson highlights the following key aspects to its design:

  • The ideal solution for firewood and biomass yards.
  • Instantly swap between splitting and lifting.
  • Deal with oversized timber as it arrives.
  • Split timber into lengths enabling fast processing/chipping.
  • Increased productivity by reducing handling requirements.
  • Only one single- or double-acting oil supply required.
  • Supplied with custom quick hitch to suit your machine.

The standard model uses a Lasco Roli 10 and Botex 0.2 grab and is suitable for excavators of between 5 to 9 tonnes. The Botex 0.2 grab opens to 1.1 m wide.

A larger model, the Yard Master XL, is also available for 13- to 20-tonne base machines using a Lasco M3 and Botex 0.26 grapple.

For further details please contact the Jas P Wilson sales team on 01556 612233 or visit www.jaspwilson.co.uk.