Software 995

When I fired up my first propane forge three years ago in a one-car garage workshop, I made every mistake in the book. I bought a cheap single burner with no insulation, lost half my heat out the back, and burned through a 20-pound tank in a single afternoon. After three years of testing forges, … Read more

I bought my first anvil in 2019 and quickly learned what every blacksmith eventually figures out: the wrong anvil makes your work harder, louder, and slower. After testing eight popular models over six weeks of forging knives, hooks, and decorative pieces, I put together this guide to the best anvils for blacksmithing. An anvil isn’t … Read more

After spending three months testing log arches and skidding attachments across five woodlots, I can tell you that the right tool makes the difference between a sore back and a productive afternoon. The best log arches for skidding cut your workload in half while protecting your ATV transmission from the constant strain of dragging full-weight … Read more

I still remember the first time my arm gave out mid-forge. I was three hours into a Damascus billet, swinging a four-pound cross peen by hand, and the heat shimmer had turned my shoulders into wet concrete. That night I ordered my first pneumatic hammer, and my output doubled within a week. Choosing the best … Read more

If you have ever spent a long afternoon watching a hydraulic log splitter chug through pile after pile, you know the feeling. You load a log, wait for the ram, hear the groan, watch the log pop, and then wait again. I tested my first kinetic log splitter two winters ago and immediately understood why … Read more

When our team took on the task of finding the best commercial wood chippers for farms, we knew we had to test gear that could actually survive a real working operation. We spent six weeks running brush, branches, and orchard prunings through eight different machines across a 40-acre mixed farm in upstate New York. Our … Read more

I remember the first weekend I tried to clear brush off my five-acre property with just a bucket. Half the material fell out before I made it ten feet, and the rest came out in three passes. That frustration sent me down the skid steer grapple rabbit hole, and our team has been testing these … Read more

Your tractor is already a $20,000 engine sitting in the barn, so why buy a second engine just to make electricity? A power take-off generator bolts to your three-point hitch, hooks onto the PTO shaft, and turns the tractor you already own into a backup power plant. After comparing eight of the most popular PTO … Read more

I have spent more hours feeding branches into chippers than I care to admit. Last fall alone, our team put six PTO wood chippers through storm cleanup on a 40-acre property, and the difference between a good unit and a frustrating one comes down to three things: matching the chipper to your tractor’s PTO horsepower, … Read more

If you have ever tried to dig 30 post holes by hand for a new fence line on a 40-acre property, you already understand why the best skid steer auger attachments sit at the top of every contractor and farmer’s wish list. I spent the last 90 days testing 8 different auger drives and bit … Read more