Sam, is the wear something you can live with? Or does it wear out quickly?
Well depending on how its used it will wear out more quickly than steel, but for instance I am using 3/4" and in 2+ years I am only on my third line. The first being 5/8" and we were pulling a lot of 36" and bigger trees it lasted long enough that I didn't feel I got screwed but I decided to go with the larger 3/4" and that made a huge difference. Due to the size of the trees and my smaller 540B skidders the 3/4" is perfect and this summer we pulled a lot of 2 tree hitchs where the mainline looked like a Z or W between trees and the opposing sliders and it held up just fine. Like I keep saying the benefit of amsteel is noticed if you aren't short sighted.
This is a fact it doesn't break any more or faster than Steel, I stand my 20,000lb machine on its tail and drag both locked tires with the amsteel and it doesn't break.
You or your operator will not be near as fatigued, because its like pulling yarn/string or rope, LOL, not some heavy steel ....... that alone will make up for the difference in production in a years time. Unerstand this, if you pull out the needed length right there at the back of the skidder and then walk to the two/three trees, you are not pulling anything, zero, all you are doing is carrying chokers. Now that is easy, you can't say that about a steel cable, period.
Amsteel doesn't get jaggers in it that stab your hands.
Amsteel can be spliced to full strength right in the middle. You can't do that with Steel cable, so if you mess up a steel cable in the middle you have not compromissed the strength a lot, and you have jaggers and pretty soon it will just break there and then you will be spending another $250-350 dollars on a new steel cable, or running around with a 60'er, LOL.
With Amsteel you can splice that new cable onto whatever length you still have on the winch after it has gotten shorter. For instance right now I only have about 50' on the winch, I ordered 130' more feet of Amsteel I will now splice that onto the end of the old 50'er and have 180' of cable on my winch, because you can hold a lot more Amsteel on a winch than you can Steel cable.
The benefits to the machine is (for 2-3 years that I have used it), I have not one single time had to free wheel the winch and pull the machine forward to line up the wraps correctly, like you do with steel cable, because if you don't you will damage the steel cable in the first 10 trees. You can set your winch to spool out as free as it can and never worry about having to hit the brake to stop a crows nest or prevent a mess on the spool, because Amsteel won't crows nest, which damages the steel cable badly and shortens its life. This all increases production and damage to your skidder because you aren't stopping production to relay a dumb steel cable, repeatedly. And anyone who says that aren't doing that is either lying or going through a lot of steel cables ......... again with Amsteel you will never have to do this.
You hear above what it takes to splice a steel cable, cut off wheels, Cutting torch, pulling the cable tight, having ends put on the cable, blah, blah, blah. My little girl or my grandma could splice Amsteel its that easy. I have pictures of the tools needed and what it looks like in my thread "Logging, sawing and something or another thread" in the Chainsaw Forum.
Again, Amsteel has two cons, cost and not as good of abrasion resistence.
The cost is easily made up for in the increased production ...... probably a lot.
The abrasion is made up in the ability to be spliced again from the old line to the new line and you don't or won't ever have to throw that last 50' section away, it just becomes part of the new line.
That is my experience with Amsteel, these other people are too smart to use it. You have to have enough vision and work/production to overcome the initial cost and to give the Amsteel time to pay for itself and see the benefits. If you lack either of those two things, then it might not be worth your time and you had better stick with the normal. I have a lot of logging work, I know I can and have benefitted from Amsteel in a production setting. I don't ever pull (pro) or break (con) an Amsteel line and wish I had just stuck with steel, like all the others that lack vision or work or a desire to run as efficiently as possible. I try new things in every industry that I have worked in and I push the envelope in every industry that I work in, because I'm not afraid to try new things, especially, when it increases the amount I make at the end of the week or it decreases the amount I have to work for the same production.
Later,
Sam