Log Splitter

 About 3 years ago I decided to quit splitting small pieces of wood for the fire by hand. So I started looking around for a small log splitter.

I did a duckduckgo search and a few came up.  There was something called a Sun Joe hand operated manual log splitter that I liked the looks of. 

I continued looking and saw that Harbor Freight had an identical log splitter for about 25% less money, so I said Hallelleujah! That sucker is gonna be mine!

Went to harbor freight and got the thing, brought it home, and it was exactly what I was looking for. Want to split just one log? Easy peasy japanesy. Except. Little things started going wrong the first year, and then last year too. The slow speed piston quit pumping, so i used the high speed piston by itself and bent the pumping handle badly.  The metal around the front of the jackface bent terribly so that the ram wouldn't retract all the way, and the metal holding the log also bent.

I added some hydraulic oil to the jack and it started working better, but the slow speed piston started leaking oil, and i would have to fill it every 2 or 3 times of use. I can live with that, but this year it quit altogether, and after filling it was leaking a pencil size stream of oil.

Okay, i can fix that. Go online and found a list of products harbor freight has repair parts for, looked thru it but couldn't find my log splitter. Mine is a 10 ton model, they had a 5 ton model listed, but not my 10 ton. Well, crap.

So i looked for log splitters and found one at lowes online and one at home depot online, but nowhere else. Those had to be shipped, so i said screw it and went to harbor freight nov. 12 and bought another one of theirs. Today i went to use it, worked great for one little bitty piece of wood, then the low speed piston quit pumping, at all. So i added some oil to it, and now both low speed and high speed quit working.

Piss on this, loaded it up and back to harbor freight, didn't want an exchange just got my money back.

Went online to lowes and home depot and guess what? Not one dam log splitter is available.  Found one at amazon, but that one will cost me $200 including shipping.

So now my conundrum is, how much do i pay the kid next door to split up some kindling for me?