I haven’t tried this idea but I have cut cookies on my sawmill and the hardest part was clamping the log upright solid enough. Cutting them went pretty fast.
I wanted the cookies whole so never tried splitting any of them.
I run my gasifier on charcoal so haven’t needed chunks of wood.
That video was his first try if I understood it right so he still had bugs to work out like the chunks jamming up in the blade.
Splitting the cookies with a hatchet probably is easy but still going to take some time especially if you want all of them about 3/4 inch squares.
I might be figuring wrong but a 12 inch square (to make it easier to calculate) divided by 0.75 gives 16. Multiply that by 16 gives 256 little blocks from every slice and say you get 2 or 3 slices before needing to use the circular saw again. That should be up to 768 little blocks. That’s a lot of chopping and a lot of picking up the pieces to chop them smaller.
As the video showed, it didn’t look fast but I think it would go a lot faster once he gets the bugs worked out. I just can’t imagine a hatchet would be faster if you needed mostly uniform 3/4 inch squares. If you can get away with bigger blocks, this method just wouldn’t need as many cuts.
It obviously isn’t for everyone. Depends on the wood you wanted to start with and of course the tools you have available.
The question I have is why would you want such small same-size chunks unless you are building a raw wood truly micro-gasifier, Dutch John style?
I mean it’s not like you are dicing onions for soup…
It isnt the most efficient way and fairly costly because of the energy input and the cost of blades. However, he has 700 subscribers and needs 1000 to start getting paid for videos. So he probably can make a few on slabbing boards with the mill, a few making chunks, and he will probably automate it given one of his subscribers has a handle with ‘cnc’ in it.
I’d say any woodgasser is welcome to come help me clean up and you can bring home as much gasifier fuel you can fit on your trailer - as long as you do your own chunking and drying
I am not familiar with the Flash-ifier but if it requires fuel that labor intensive it would not be for me. That being said, I’d be willing to bet I could out produce the video guy by using a saw mill, a table saw and chop saw.
The one originally made by Flash001USA on YouTube designed it to run on fallen tree limbs and sticks, the way he processes his is with a pair of limb loppers strapped to a sawhorse and a catch bucket.
That is slow way to make fuel, cutting dead wood branches but if you have a lot time on our hands and want to TRY to keeping up with the gasifiers consumption of fuel, you will be kepted very busy for sure.
To me if I can not make a days worth of continuing gasification fuel consumption in a hour, it is to slow.
Letting a fire do it, like making Charcoal, it is not to labor intensive because I am sitting with friends enjoying the fire letting the fire do all the work. I just add water to it at the end of the evening to put the fires work to rest and go to bed.
My wood chunker is a little more labor intensive but is a lot of fun feeding the wood in the chunker and watching all that the wood pile up in a hour worth of work. DOW.
I have noticed “Flash” and his channel are getting harder to find. He is not silent about his beliefs. He is the inventor of the “Flashifier” design. At first, I wanted to dismiss his efforts, but over time I have gained respect for his work. His system is more for small engine running. This is the YouTube channel home page.
Yeah. I agree with Cody that cutting 3/4 slabs would be faster. I even would cut 3/4 stickers with the mill and use a chop saw to make chunks. That labour intensive is like what Matt says that it would discourage you from using it long term on a regular basis.