Axe Men is back I got a question

[millbilly]

Just happened to catch last weeks episode tonight, In this episode it has a father and his sons cutting some kind of dead pine. The father keeps yelling this is a $3000 dollar log standing next to a $2000 dollar log and they have hundreds of them to fall.

So my question is; why does this show blatantly lie about the value of the log? I doubt if they get 30 cents a board foot or around $160 and thats high.

 

[Spotted Owl]

Never seen 1 min of that show. BUT. It's a show. Must have something to do with ratings or keeping people interested somehow. From what I have heard and read here, not the axe man board, but, here. It's a wonder why that show is even still in existence.



Owl

 

[chucker]

more then likely to do with the great number of beetle kill pine in the north western plains.... stateing a higher price on a "well liked", "true show" as "axe men" can only drive up the real low ball price that most of this timber is really worth!!! as everyone knows what happens/said on axe men is true!! if your a fool!!!!!! or maybe just don't know better?.

 

[slowp]

I just tried to watch it. I lasted a half a minute. Looked like firewood cutters trying to get beetle killed culls on the ground? I couldn't stand it.

 

[Gologit]

I just tried to watch it. I lasted a half a minute. Looked like firewood cutters trying to get beetle killed culls on the ground? I couldn't stand it.

Same here. Idiots with saws.

 

[HuskStihl]

I thought they were awesome cutters, but I couldn't understand why a field of dead snags would be worth anything. There was some nice looking scenery, and my younger kids liked the cool machines.
My neighbor has a bunch of dead pine snags......maybe I'll head over with some wedges and a claw hammer and see how the hinge holds up....

 

[chucker]

I thought they were awesome cutters, but I couldn't understand why a field of dead snags would be worth anything. There was some nice looking scenery, and my younger kids liked the cool machines.
My neighbor has a bunch of dead pine snags......maybe I'll head over with some wedges and a claw hammer and see how the hinge holds up....

!! don't forget your bag of tricks, I mean ropes.....

 

[slowp]

They were running around in circles yelling LOOKOUT in the 30 seconds I saw. Make sure your vocal cords can do that.

 

[northmanlogging]

just one reason why anyone would think a snag is worth $3000

 

[Gologit]

I now know for sure that they're not real loggers. They had a throw-line, it was neatly coiled in a bag, and they obviously knew how to use it. Like maybe they'd had a lot of practice? I'm thinking arborists, not loggers.

I've always thought the other outfits on the show were hamming it up but these boys are downright whoring for the camera. They can't be as unskilled and ignorant as they appear. I could be wrong.

By the way, anybody know who's paying 3000 bucks...per log... for dead lodgepole? I'd like to tap into that market.

 

[chucker]

?? almost makes me wanna re-locate to their fine well run neighborhood! work like hell and die a rich man hey? lol

 

[rwoods]

Okay, I almost watched the entire show. If they are arborists then they really hamming it. I don't know any pro arborist who positions his groundies in the line of fall with a rope shorter than the tree. The teaser clip for next week's show has two near misses with two cutters on top of each other. I think I am done with the show as so much seems staged. Even the new father & sons crew in Canada seemed a little staged while pulling the truck up the road with the skidder - surely they know that the higher the attachment point the more likely the skidder will rear up. Maybe they had no choice but it looked like they did. They did say that their big off-road truck load was a $5000 load which I assume to be close to the truth. Ron

 

[Gologit]

Okay, I almost watched the entire show. If they are arborists then they really hamming it. I don't know any pro arborist who positions his groundies in the line of fall with a rope shorter than the tree. The teaser clip for next week's show has two near misses with two cutters on top of each other. I think I am done with the show as so much seems staged. Even the new father & sons crew in Canada seemed a little staged while pulling the truck up the road with the skidder - surely they know that the higher the attachment point the more likely the skidder will rear up. Maybe they had no choice but it looked like they did. They did say that their big off-road truck load was a $5000 load which I assume to be close to the truth. Ron

I've been on both ends of that "towing with a grapple skidder" routine. Like you said Ron, hook up low and pull smooth. The skidder operator usually drops his grapples to where the tow chain/choker/ whatever has a fairly straight line.
I've seen the front end come up on a skidder, not very far and not very often. That's to be avoided. If you're pulling power and the front end raises and drops and your steering is off a little you can get a pretty wild ride in a direction you hadn't planned on.
I've never seen the front end of the truck come off the ground.
If the truck driver and the guy doing the pulling are in synch it's almost boring to watch. Slow, steady, no excitement. No torn up equipment either.
When you get into a bad enough situation where you have one machine pulling and another behind you pushing it can get interesting. The puller and the pusher have to agree before hand about speeds and such. We had the pull Cat, a 6, take off fast with line on the ground before the push Cat was snugged up tight. The bull line on the pull Cat broke and whipped back into the cab of the truck. No major injuries but we had to put all new windshields, marker lights, horns, and one corner of the headache rack on the truck. And new shorts for the truck driver.

 

[chucker]

I've been on both ends of that "towing with a grapple skidder" routine. Like you said Ron, hook up low and pull smooth. The skidder operator usually drops his grapples to where the tow chain/choker/ whatever has a fairly straight line.
I've seen the front end come up on a skidder, not very far and not very often. That's to be avoided. If you're pulling power and the front end raises and drops and your steering is off a little you can get a pretty wild ride in a direction you hadn't planned on.
I've never seen the front end of the truck come off the ground.
If the truck driver and the guy doing the pulling are in synch it's almost boring to watch. Slow, steady, no excitement. No torn up equipment either.
When you get into a bad enough situation where you have one machine pulling and another behind you pushing it can get interesting. The puller and the pusher have to agree before hand about speeds and such. We had the pull Cat, a 6, take off fast with line on the ground before the push Cat was snugged up tight. The bull line on the pull Cat broke and whipped back into the cab of the truck. No major injuries but we had to put all new windshields, marker lights, horns, and one corner of the headache rack on the truck. And new shorts for the truck driver.

! now that would have been interesting to watch , rather than the garbage they pass of as experience! a skidder will pull a hell of a lot more then peps think. with the rear axels both not engaging the ground it was a fruitless effort at best....

 

[slowp]

Perhaps they could find the skidder that shot flames out the exhaust stack. That was cool to see in the dark of the morning. That skidder's main purpose was to pull the trucks up out of the landing. And no, it wasn't during fire season.

 

[1270d]

Seems like every time we have a truck stuck it takes one machine pulling and one pushing. Maybe its because their gross isn't far short of 200k.

They don't get stuck often though, its nice to work with real pro's.

 

[rwoods]

... We had the pull Cat, a 6, take off fast with line on the ground before the push Cat was snugged up tight. The bull line on the pull Cat broke and whipped back into the cab of the truck. No major injuries but we had to put all new windshields, marker lights, horns, and one corner of the headache rack on the truck. And new shorts for the truck driver.

Bob, I am really trying to behave and keep quiet.* But as much as it seems sometimes, AS doesn't have an exclusive on the ignorant and the idiots. Given my small inventory of military surplus, I am a member of a related forum which I rarely visit any longer. Among other things I got tired of the posts denying or minimizing the dangers of breaking the typical military truck 1/2" to 3/4" cables in recovery operations. My personal experience with whipping cables and other flexible connectors has been limited to the smaller stuff - typical recreational winch 5/16" wire cable, 5/16" and 3/8" chains, 3" and 4" tow straps, similar sized recovery straps and 1" rope so my voice didn't carry very far although it is not difficult to imagine the danger of the stored energy in the bigger stuff. Nonetheless, there are folks in response to those with experience who will say the old timer is exaggerating or doesn't know what he is doing because all you have to do is turn the hook in one direction and the cable will always hit the ground where its energy will be safely released - unbelievable. Sorry, for the rant - but I have two significant hot buttons related to safety. One is a cavalier attitude about tree falling. The other is a cavalier attitude about recovery operations be it with cables, chains, straps or ropes but especially concerning cables, recovery straps and attachment points. Too bad I couldn't have solicited some of your experiences to share with the other forum.

Ron

* One small step: I said nothing in UM's stuck truck thread. You said what need to be said and I believe he listened.

 

[Gologit]

Ron...

I've heard that "turn the hook and the line can't back-lash" story too. I've also had people look me right in the eye and say that heavy cable won't whip when it breaks. I've had them tell me the same thing about chains. I wish they were right. I wonder if they'd be willing to bet their life...or the life of someone else...on those theories being true in every case. They may not realize it but that's what they're doing.
I've seen both line and chain break under tension and the results are all over the board. I've seen them drop harmlessly to the ground and I've seen them do what I described in the push me pull me log truck incident. If that bull line had hit a man on the ground it would have torn him in half. We always tried to have the push Cat snugged up first. He'd signal the truck driver and the driver would signal the pull Cat. The pull Cat would then move out slowly. The only reason the truck driver wasn't hurt badly was that when the pull Cat took off at high speed with line on the ground the driver realized what was about to happen and fell over on the right seat with his arms wrapped around his head. LOL...he said later that he didn't sit up again until all the noise stopped.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that nobody really knows, or can guarantee, how a line or chain under stress will react. Maybe an engineer could give us some stress analysis facts and figures and pat us on our heads and tell us that certain kinds of cable or line or chain would be perfectly safe to stand near during a breaking event.
I probably wouldn't let him do it on my job though. I'm a long way from being any kind of engineer and my stress analysis usually consists of doubling up on lines, hoping for the best, and keeping everybody out of the way. But I remember what an old timer told me when I was starting out..."watch out for your gear, it's out to get ya".
I understand your feelings about a cavalier attitude toward safety. People screw up, that's a given, but their attitude about the screw up tells the tale. I asked the guy on the pull Cat why he did what he did and he said (with the profanity and obscenities left out) that pulling stuck trucks in the mud was a PITA, he didn't like doing it, and he was tired of it. No problem. I sent him to town.

 

[treeslayer2003]

any one who says a cable, chain or what ever can't hurt you ain't been around that kinda stuff long. where is this pine market? i got some nifty live ones i'll haul to um for that money...........

 

[Nate66n1]

Tread on the tires of that truck getting pulled up the hill surely would have helped.