Getting logs uphill to the landing without needing a second mortgage.

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KiwiBro

KiwiBro

Mill 'em, nails be damned.
Joined
Jan 28, 2009
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Location
Aotearoa
120m max haul distance (skyline about 175m max), fairly steep from landing down to bottom of small valley. Other side of valley has some good spots/trees/stumps for anchors. Road is just below landing which is itself just the ridgetop flattened or at least it will be. Some good trees to act as spars on the ridge, above the landing. Possible easily declining road across and over the ridge running roughly square to the haul direction. Two, possibly three man team. No money for expensive gear, sweet FA experience between us.
How should this be tackled? Skyline, mainline, carraige, haulback line, what winch/s? Could we get away with smaller turns and just rolling the tractor down the ridge road instead of a winch? Forget the skyline and carriage and just use main/haulback lines and skidder cones, with a block in a top spar?
There are times knowing FA about all this is refreshingly challenging. Other times, it's a royal pain in the backside. Couple that with having next to no $ once the roads/landing/s are paid for and it's also sometimes rather comical to say the least. Reminds me of a saying: "we had no idea it couldn't be done".
Apart from walking away or working another job until you could save for the gear, what would you do? Any help and even abuse is warmly appreciated.

The bulk of the trees that can be skudded/yarded to the same knoll/ridge landing are dropped. I tell you something for free: the slopping back cut and blue/camo cappuccino wedges during felling were the shizzle ma nizzles.
cheers,
Kiwibro
 
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What size area? Best bet is probably to find a cheap D4 or similar with a winch or a old clark skidder
 
About 5 Ha.

The D4 with a winch might give me a fighting chance of doing plenty of the track and landing work myself, which could save a few $ but then again I'd be really slow compared to an experienced operator so maybe not save much at all. So, D4 winch through top spar block to chokers, with no skyline, and using a smaller haulback line/winch (I'm thinking along the lines of a portable capstan winch or the like the guy setting the chokers operates. Something like that?

Looked on trademe and range from about $12k to $30k. Reminds me of a saying I read on here a while back : the best way to make $1m in the wood industry is to start with $2m.
 
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I was thinking more along the lines of just using the bulldozer as a skidder. If you push a couple of skid tracks in along the face you will be able to reach the logs with the rope an winch them up. Probably safer/more efficient than trying to set up a cable system without a purpose-built yarder
 
KiwiBro said:
120m max haul distance (skyline about 175m max), fairly steep from landing down to bottom of small valley. Other side of valley has some good spots/trees/stumps for anchors. Road is just below landing which is itself just the ridgetop flattened or at least it will be. Some good trees to act as spars on the ridge, above the landing. Possible easily declining road across and over the ridge running roughly square to the haul direction. Two, possibly three man team. No money for expensive gear, sweet FA experience between us.
How should this be tackled? Skyline, mainline, carraige, haulback line, what winch/s? Could we get away with smaller turns and just rolling the tractor down the ridge road instead of a winch? Forget the skyline and carriage and just use main/haulback lines and skidder cones, with a block in a top spar?
There are times knowing FA about all this is refreshingly challenging. Other times, it's a royal pain in the backside. Couple that with having next to no $ once the roads/landing/s are paid for and it's also sometimes rather comical to say the least. Reminds me of a saying: "we had no idea it couldn't be done".
Apart from walking away or working another job until you could save for the gear, what would you do? Any help and even abuse is warmly appreciated.

The bulk of the trees that can be skudded/yarded to the same knoll/ridge landing are dropped. I tell you something for free: the slopping back cut and blue/camo cappuccino wedges during felling were the shizzle ma nizzles.
cheers,
Kiwibro
Click to expand...

I have to say I am struggling to decipher this. It is almost like a foreign language.
What do you have to work with now? Doesn't sound like enough timber in and of it's self to warrant buying other equipment.
 
:)

I hope the picture kinda helps. Have tractor (no PTO winch for it yet), rope, pulleys, blocks, choker chains, assorted shackles, give-it-a-go-attitude.
There is a constant frustration about not being able to pay for any gear that's best suited to the job, or for any gear bought to not pay for itself given the volumes of work it's needed for.
It's not the Kiwi way to 'get some bloke in'. Where's the fun in that? But if it makes more sense than buying the gear and learning how to use it, especially on a very limited budget, then I'm OK with that.
The aforementioned D4 will help cut/prepare the tracks (for trucks) as well as winch the turns up the hill to the landing. Whether I could easily get the hang of it and be proficient with it in good time is another matter entirely yet one to consider against just hiring someone to get stuck in and build/improve the tracks/roads.
There's about 5Ha this year, and another 5 or so next year.
Note that once winched to the landing, there is no skidding to be done and as they will be bucked for firewood, there's no log loading needed in this case.

I had hoped to come up with a relatively efficient system using just the tractor (with PTO winch yet to buy) and a portable winch, but maybe the D4 will be a better option? I have even wondered if making a few more smaller turns and just attaching the mainline to and rolling, the tractor down a road to haul the logs up to the landing rather than use the winch would be an overall faster/cheaper option. By that I mean, if through a few snatch block, the 2tonne+ tractor would be able to drag up a reasonably OK sized turn quickly with relative ease rather than slowly winching a larger turn up.
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Humptulips said:
I have to say I am struggling to decipher this. It is almost like a foreign language.
What do you have to work with now? Doesn't sound like enough timber in and of it's self to warrant buying other equipment.
Click to expand...
 
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What trees are you pissing round with if there being cut to fire wood, sounds like a lot of the small wood lots i run into round auckland here, there worthless pains in the ass wastes of time, just drop em and let em rot.

to be honest mate it really doesnt seam like its gona make you any money mate.

when i was working forestry just out of dunner they had me cutting tracks across the slope then the d6 with a winch would drag them up to the roads we made then they were hauled with grapple skidder
 
I like that color crayon logging plan.....beats the hell outa 'LoggerPC' BS! From what I could interpret of the foreign language=) you have a tractor with a PTO....you might look into finding or building some variation of a Kohler yarder. Oregon State University had or still has one mounted on the back of a 4x4 Kubota....20+ feet tall? I don't remember the specs....it is goofy looking and slow, but they make it work for cable thinning (the dumbest possible logging you can do) second growth d-fir. I think they made a 301 and 501 or something....20+ and maybe 30+ feet in height. Works good with a little shotgun carriage. You might look for a small christie carriage for a home-brewed cable setup.
 
The company I work for has a small Koller yarder that sounds ideal for what you are doing. In fact it is being set up today for a job near Berkely. Yes that Berkely! I can't remember the specs off hand but it has either 600' or 1,200' of skyline. Probably 600'. The Koller carriage has a hydraulic pump and clamps semi-automatically. It has only a 1,500lb capacity.

I have seen the older units like ours sell for $6,000.00.
Brand031.jpg


Brand030.jpg


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Loggin-08011.jpg
 
1. Around here there is logging equipment for rent due to the lull in logging activity.

2. You don't always need to pay cash for something. You could offer a percentage of proceeds, barter, offer to do something in return, trade something, etc.

3. If you can show on paper that this will make a profit, banks would be willing to make a loan.

4. Build your own contraption with what you have or can get for not much cost. Whatever works! Although you may have OSHA and the like to contend with...
 
Do you have any idea how much money's worth of timber you are trying to get at? Because if you don't already know what you are doing ............ you are aware that this is insanely hard work, likely more than anything you have ever done before, and you're going to need at least one or two more people, and do they want to work that hard for the little money they will get?

The cons aren't limited to having a bad day or loosing money, there is high probability that you could get serriously injured or killed or worse paralysed, also these new helps would have he same things happen to them.

My general feelings on such projects are that they are waste of time and money, and in this case its quite dangerous.

Sam
 
lfnh said:
Nice photos!
Thanks for sharing, 2dogs.

Couple of questions (can't tell in photo).
Is it mounted on tracks ?
Where are the controls ?
Click to expand...

This particular unit is trailer mounted. In the first pic you can see the controls, they are mounted on a swing out bar, to the engineer's right. They almost show in the third near the taped-to-the-control-bar radio. Some setups use a cage over the engineer's head. Not ours.

Here is another shot.
Brand026.jpg
 
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treeoperations said:
What trees are you pissing round with if there being cut to fire wood, sounds like a lot of the small wood lots i run into round auckland here, there worthless pains in the ass wastes of time, just drop em and let em rot.

to be honest mate it really doesnt seam like its gona make you any money mate
Click to expand...

Have to agree with this.
Seriously if it just a firewood show, get what is easy and leave the rest.
You are not going to make a yarder out of that cat by putting a drum on it. If you do move a piece of equipment in no matter how on the cheap it is it'll probably cost you more the the firewood is worth.
 
I like that picture you got there Kiwibro, if you have all the stuff you show here, I'd give her a whirl.The only thing I might try a little different is deadend my haul line to the carriage,have it were you hook your choker to a snatchblock, back up to the carriage through another block, then up the hill to the tractor.I think you can go faster with the tractor than with a winch, and if you use the 2 block set up the tractor shouldn't have any problem handleing the weight.Either way, best of luck to you!
 
Thanks 2dogs....that Koller 300 is like the one OSU has that is mounted on a Kubota. The bigger one is the 501, they work great in the right application. Did I read somewhere that this is a firewood show?
 

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