Unicorn splitter (was Re: [Farmall] Some ads from the 9/23 Lancaster Farming

[Greg Hass]

The way he described it to me, he had sideways stabilizer bars on and would 
lower the spinning shaft to about 6" off the ground.  Then he would roll 
the logs into the spinning cone. As has been suggested, the ground is what 
kept them from spinning.  Because the Oliver 3-pt had down-pressure, the 
Unicorn could not lift up.  However, when he used it on his JD (without any 
down-pressure) and hit a knot in a log, the log on the ground just lifted 
the splitter and 3-pt in the air and started flipping the log around.  Thus 
the demise of the log-splitter.  Hope this clears up any confusion.

Greg Hass





At 05:25 PM 9/25/2006 -0400, you wrote:
>I cannot imagine how the Unicorn would work properly without the stop bar, 
>nor with the stabilizer bars I use to keep the machine straight away from 
>the PTO shaft. Some years back, someone brought out a similar device that 
>one attached in place of one of the driving tires of a car/truck with the 
>axle jacked up and the wheels chocked. I don't know how one kept the log 
>from spinning - maybe it just hit the ground?. I think it was called the 
>"Stickler" or something like that. Another competitor to the Unicorn was 
>called the "Bark Buster", but I have never seen one.
>
>The Unicorn I have was very well constructed, and the only part that you 
>could damage was a standard hardware store roll pin that acted as a shear 
>pin for the steel part of the big screw. I never broke a pin, but I loaned 
>it to my neighbor, and she managed to break one almost immediately. I 
>think that was the last time I loaned out any of my stuff. :-)
>
>Mike