My dad has one of these 40 years ago! He put it on his daily driver pickup parked in the woods. More than once the wood became a wheel and the truck was off and running. Good times, good times…

Dad still has fond memories of that thing, and I still think of it as about the unsafest tool I have ever been around. It does work but it has some safety issues.Looks scary, works well.

I wonder if building a “loading ramp” down to the point of the auger point wouldn’t be a little safer and a little easier on the back? Could gravity feed with a slight angle and be large enough to load several logs at once, using the logs behind the log being split as the weight to apply the pressure. Clever use of an old car.

Growing up in Iowa, I saw old farmers do a lot scarier shit than this on a daily basis.the knee jerk reaction I think would be to say this is super dangerous, but really, I think, as you said the only dangers are loose clothing and falling into it. the way you designed the shut off switch is pretty good too.

so if you consider the dangers of cutting down trees and chainsaws and other types of wood splitters this isn’t that bad. but God it looks scary.He seems to be in one piece at the end and knows the boundaries of splitting wood with an old beat up imported car.

The clothing to rotating tool part proved it and the kill switch showed redundancy. Bet he keeps his family nice and toasty throughout winter.This is a pretty clever setup. I lived out near New York when I was younger and can vouch for how bad cars can get in that part of the country. Anything with threads gets frozen insanely quickly out there, and good luck with that if it gets rusted.