Backhoe log splitter attachment-re-engineered

I bought an online backhoe log splitter attachement from a company back in March. Unfortunatly, I believe the company is more suited to building these for mini excavators, however they said they could build one for my backhoe. When it came it, it looked very light weight and althought I had provided very detailed measurements, the pusher would not fit the dimensions of my quick attach. Thank goodness I had a plasma cutter and a welder or this would have not worked out at all. After modifying the pusher to fit. I had to get a longer bucket pin made. The company said they would reimburse me for the pin, but they never had/have. I need to call the owner back and remind him of this. He seemed like a nice guy and worked with me on some additional metal parts, but the whole thing was way under built. I wound up robbing some heavy steel bar from an old plow I had laying around and beefed it up. I had to use the backhoe this summer so modifying this log splitter to make it work was put on the back shelf until this last month when I hit it hard. Lots of cutting and welding to beef up the original design, -it aint pretty but it works!! It is a bit overkill for splitting smaller pieces that would be best suited for a traditional log splitter, but it works good on those huge back breaking rounds that Im getting to old to wrestle under the splitter. It takes some getting used to in order to operate it, but overall I am pleased. The splitting wedge could be a bit longer, but maybe that will be an add on down the road? Here are some before and after pictures.. First attempt at splitting a log bent the entire set up.

The arms were 2" square tubing which bent like butter.

I beefed it up by adding 1" and 1-1/4" x 3 " bar to the arms, and wedge plate, plus added a forward and rear support to counter act the bucket curling.

Overall it works good for the big huge rounds you dont want to mess with by hand. Small stuff is too small and inefficient to mess with, perhaps in the future I will mess with it some more, but for now at least it will split wood and not crumple up with the force of the curling action of the backhoe.

Looks like you'da been ahead starting from scratch.
Joe H

That's got to bring some joy to splitting wood.

Glad you got it working in time for winter. They need to go back to the drawing board. Looks like you almost reinforced every part of it. I hope they took notes. Maybe you could go in business of selling them for backhoes. You could charge extra for features like that carabiner hook. A place to hang your backback while you're in the woods splitting.

joe--h said:

Looks like you'da been ahead starting from scratch.
Joe H

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I totally agree! It was a "live and learn" moment. I paid way to much for this to have to do this amount of work. I was very dissapointed but had to do something or I had a pile of steel that was usless. If I were to have started from scratch I would have made the splitter attachment 2 or more pieces and had it operate off the turnbuckle of the stick/bucket end instead of having the piece attach to the thumb. If this eventually breaks apart, I will do a custom one that way next time.

colson04 said:

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Yeah that is a much better design. I would do that one over the one I have. <sigh>