I quickly browse through the topics in here and without reading every single one I didn’t see what I needed.
Has anybody designed a machine that will take say a standard 18 inch long 8 inch round piece of wood and split it and chunk it to the size we need?
Well I guess no one knows of one. So I quickly designed one.
Obviously not to scale.
As the ram pushes the log through the wedge it automatically gets pushed into the chunker wheel.
2 birds, 1 Stone as they say.
I would love your input @Wayne
Just like building a bridge across the Grand Canyon . Enough time , money and engineering one can build almost anything .
For me the amount of benefit would never match the cost.
A little friendly advice. Start building the gasifer and figuring out what fuel works best for your setup before putting much effort into a wood processor. You can easily enough work up some fuel by hand to figure out what size you really need. This thread feels like putting the cart before the horse as my grandfather liked to say.
Well that might be but the horse isn’t much good without the cart.
The gasifier will burn what I have available to burn or I’ll change it to do it
You do you boo. I find it is easier to make my wood fit the method of burning it I have but to each their own.
Did you never hear of “riding” the horse. Worked for a lot of people for years without carts. TomC Plus what DanNH said about making the wood fit the gasifier.
I don’t believe you ever tried roping a bovine off a cart😉
Just saying
Lol…
I guess my point is being missed. There’s no point in building a gasifier if:
So saying I’m putting the cart before the horse is like playing chess and not thinking 3 moves ahead.
You’ll lose everytime.
Cheers Barry
I can’t say I’ve ever tried roping anyting. My luck I’d end up getting the Rope around my neck and be drug behind the horse or the cart lol
What is your source of wood? What you have for a wood supply is actually a determining factor on what type of gasifier you should probably build, and how you should process the wood.
I know! That’s why saying I’m putting the cart before the horse is ridiculous.
You need to know what you have and how your going to process it.
Okay Barry, I will help you on this. First do you know people who do tree trimming or removal service. Do you have fruit orchards by you, that’s what I use hard cherry wood. How about a saw mill, or palet making business close by. Furniture making business in your area. Heck there are old free pleats available just waiting to be pick up. Everything I have mentioned can be cut up and used in a WK Gasifier, I know this because my gasifier has put my truck down the road on it all. It takes time to make your fuel. Tools needed for my wood fuel preparation, a hand hatchet, Gas/Electric chain saws, table saw, band saw. I also built a wood chunker from a free square bailer, it still looks like a bailer. I got tried of swing the hatchet, do you know people who sale fire wood, around here if the wood sits around for a couple years and starts to turn gray they will practically give the fruit wood away $10.00 to $15.00 a cord. That is driving for pennies compared to gasoline fuel.
Just start looking and asking around. Hope this helps you.
Bob
Thanks Robert.
Still seems to be some confusion.
I have a wood lot. I have all the wood I need.
That’s why I brought up building a splitter/chunker combo because I know most of my wood is going to be bigger diameter than what the WK gasifier will accept.
I also don’t have the time to cut down a tree that is 8 inches in diameter, cut it up into 18" pieces, then split each piece 4 or 5 times to get it down to 3 or 4 inches wide and then finally chunk it into usable pieces.
So when I suggested building a machine that would split and chunk at the same time, I was told I should build my gasifier first and not put the cart before the horse. (Dont worry about a chunker until I have my gasifier built)
Which in reality I wasnt going to build the chunker first. I just wanted to know if anybody had a machine that would split and chunk at the same time.
Anyway…this thread should just be deleted.
Sorry to have wasted everyone’s time.
Cheers
I don’t think anyone on this site has built one… this is about what you want. Just set the depth of the cut to 3" for the first chainsaw cut. 
Holy…that’s quite the machine!
I like the infeed rollers on that wood processor the design is very cool. I think rolling the logs into the machine is probably the trickiest part of those systems. But all the wood processors like that are crazy expensive.
To be honest a saw mill for lumber and scraps with a chunker like Wayne or others have built would make the most since no point wasting valuable lumber on fuel. Even the center rot maple I use for fire would could be sawed on my bandsaw mill and then run through Wayne’s chunker.
I sure wish I had a bandsaw mill. I had thought about building one, but in all reality I probably don’t need to cut that much Lumber.
I know I certainly can’t afford to buy one of those firewood processors.
Barry, I’ll throw in a couple things. I’ve worked in and around wood for a long time, and I can tell you some of what works and what doesn’t.
I’ve tried splitting rounds and cutting up chunks. It’s time consuming for what you get. Yes a machine could be built, for a lot of money/time invested. But usually this same firewood is much more valuable to someone heating with wood. Why take a high value fuel and chop it into tiny bits? Start with a feedstock that’s closer to what you need. Every woodgas driver here uses waste wood scrap, not full size rounds.
Idea 1:
Anyone processing trees into firewood generates an equal volume of brush, usually discarded. This is where you come in. All the wood from 3" down to 1" diameter is gold to you and your gasifier. They don’t want or use it, so you can get it for free in full lengths, ready for chunking. You’ll want a small chainsaw and a good pruner/lopper to clean up the bits you want. Leave the smallest bits for the brush pile, or use a chipper/shredder to mulch it. I did this myself for several years living in town without a steady wood supply of my own - just followed the tree trimming folks around and skimmed what I wanted.
Idea 2:
Get a small sawmill going. They can be build relatively cheaply. You’ll have a dependable income stream, if you can handle the work. The slabs (waste wood from making a round thing square) will be simple to chunk - Wayne does this almost exclusively, and heats his house with them too.
Idea 3:
Coppicing. Small saplings come up very quickly and are nearly the perfect size for your chunker, long and straight with few branches. In Europe this is a primary source of fuel wood. In those rebak-style chunkers you see on Youtube, the feedstock is mostly these type of saplings. If you have a woodlot you can manage, this is dead simple. You can also feed prunings into there. If there’s an orchard nearby, they will have piles of prunings about the right size.
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Lastly, I’ll clarify the sentiment in the first part of the thread. Part of our job on this site is to get folks off their rear and into building a working gasifier. So expect some pressure in this direction. It’s all good natured of course.
You (like me) are prone to research everything in depth and make detailed plans before you start building anything. The danger is, you can spend your entire life designing and refining an idea that may never get built. We see it all the time. The more cool and technical sounding their posts online, the less seat time they’ve probably had (there are exceptions of course). You can join the crowd of thinkers. Or you can build something that works.
Better to build a boring, normal gasifier first, than try to build your ultimate setup right out of the gate. Nobody does that. Wayne has built over a dozen trucks. Every experienced woodgasser here is on their second or third build (at least).
