The Descriptive Process

[northmanlogging]

Creepers are great, until one of us… Semi hobbled people has to get up and off of them. I have days where it’s just worth hanging around on one because my back’s going to spasm trying to get off of it.

That said, I’ve never used one off-road before. I usually had a tarp for that use. Fun fact: They can, and will, catch fire if molten dross or weld spatter accumulates on them.

Tarps not a bad Idear, I keep a big Tatimi type mat in the disService truck for that purpose, give a little more cussion for the wrenching (of the back...) That and a beach umbrella to hide from the rain and Sun, I hates working in the sun lol (don't move here)

 

[catbuster]

I’m not sure which I dislike more, the Sun Belt’s summer solar beatdown or the constant damp of where you live for 3/4 of the year. Oh, and the long darkness of the winters at your latitude combined with being caught behind mountains.

They both suck. Right now I’m fighting… Mud. The stuff goes everywhere. You wipe everything in your truck down one day and it’s s everywhere again if one takes five steps away. Kiss your clean cloth seats goodbye. Heaven forbid the fleet guy gets me one with vinyl.

I mean, how does it get here?

That’s just under the headrest. Forget trying to keep an equipment cab clean. I found mud splatter on the inside of the top window of an excavator cab last week.

 

[northmanlogging]

in todays fun, if you squint, the power lines are on the far side of a busy hwy, after that 90 in the road are 2 more switch backs... i slid most of the way down the middle one

 

[rwoods]

Looks to be a nice house site.

Keep the truck dry on the way out.

Ron

 

[catbuster]

• Service brake works? *Check
• Jake on, high, and working? *Check
• Transmission doesn’t hop out of gear in low range? *Check
• Can I afford to reupholster the seat? *Hopefully check

I don’t know of any truck that’s meant to be run underwater, so I hope you keep it on the slope.

 

[northmanlogging]

• Service brake works? *Check
• Jake on, high, and working? *Check
• Transmission doesn’t hop out of gear in low range? *Check
• Can I afford to reupholster the seat? *Hopefully check

I don’t know of any truck that’s meant to be run underwater, so I hope you keep it on the slope.

jakes work, locks the drive axles up and you slide....
engine retarder works, locks drive axles up and you slide...
Transmission doesn't hop out of gear, which is nice
Seat already needs replaced (who we kidding, the whole damn truck needs replaced)
Service brakes... yeah those lock up trailer, and drive axles and you slide, even with light pressure
I've taken 6 loads out of there, theres probably 6 more? Not sure my ticker can handle too many more.

 

[rwoods]

They say you can never have too much horsepower. I say you better have a big chain.

A few Saturdays back, I topped a large storm downed red oak at the firing range. I left it on the stump since the top was just barely holding it on a sheer 6' rock ledge.


A quick assessment told me that it was too heavy for my machines as I expected it to roll down hill and possibly off the ledge once the stump was cut. The county told me that the JD 750 would soon be fixed so I left it for another day. I could get within 80 feet +/- of it so my plan was to tie it to the 750 and then sever the root ball. Well, the 750 still isn't fixed so this past Saturday in a drizzling rain I cleared a path with my little crawler and then borrowed this little toy, a D7H:


I used a 9/16" cable choker double hooked to 3/4" synthetic winch line. Not having proper equipment, the double hook is what I used to skid two logs at once; it is a short chain with a 3/8" grab hook and a 5/16" grab hook. The first pull was a failure. The smaller hook apparently went from a grab hook to a slip hook to a no hook. Just as well as the chain was ready to break. Glad I didn't have any delusions of hooking to the 1/2" quick link.


Second attempt was successful, though it tweaked a 3/4" shackle. The stick was 57+ feet long. 18,500 to 19,500 #s of good red oak.

I used the garden rake to find my short chain.

The 3/4" synthetic winch line lived up to its hype though under tension it shrinks to about 1/2" in diameter.

Be safe.

Ron

 

[northmanlogging]

They say you can never have too much horsepower. I say you better have a big chain.

A few Saturdays back, I topped a large storm downed red oak at the firing range. I left it on the stump since the top was just barely holding it on a sheer 6' rock ledge.
View attachment 1045618

A quick assessment told me that it was too heavy for my machines as I expected it to roll down hill and possibly off the ledge once the stump was cut. The county told me that the JD 750 would soon be fixed so I left it for another day. I could get within 80 feet +/- of it so my plan was to tie it to the 750 and then sever the root ball. Well, the 750 still isn't fixed so this past Saturday in a drizzling rain I cleared a path with my little crawler and then borrowed this little toy, a D7H:
View attachment 1045619

I used a 9/16" cable choker double hooked to 3/4" synthetic winch line. Not having proper equipment, the double hook is what I used to skid two logs at once; it is a short chain with a 3/8" grab hook and a 5/16" grab hook. The first pull was a failure. The smaller hook apparently went from a grab hook to a slip hook to a no hook. Just as well as the chain was ready to break. Glad I didn't have any delusions of hooking to the 1/2" quick link.
View attachment 1045620

Second attempt was successful, though it tweaked a 3/4" shackle. The stick was 57+ feet long. 18,500 to 19,500 #s of good red oak.
View attachment 1045621
I used the garden rake to find my short chain.

The 3/4" synthetic winch line lived up to its hype though under tension it shrinks to about 1/2" in diameter.

Be safe.

Ron

the synthetic stuff has its uses, its light, easy to splice, but what it does do is stretch like a mofo, despite all the advertising wank about it... it in reality stretches far more then wire rope... I would advise against using it in a regular logging atmosphere as its also terrible with abrasion, chemicals, and is easily cut... wire rope, no F's given lol.

I have yet to tear up a 3/4 shackle... good job lol

 

[rwoods]

NM, I am sure you have heard of the guys who can break an anvil. It seems I have that touch. Started young - back when I was in school, I worked part time at a junk yard. One day, they put me on a Coates tire machine breaking down and removing tires. You know the bar you use to pop the bead over the rim - I broke it and busted my rear on the concrete. No one believed that a then 165# kid broke it. Sales rep told my boss that this was the first one he had ever seen break. After that they found other things for me to do.

I am careful where I use the synthetic line as it can be easily cut. It is much easier to tote and is safer on your hands than wire cable.

Ron

 

[catbuster]

Dyneema line is awesome, even if it does stretch. Spectra braided cables are amazing for rigging. You are right though, they need a sheath in an eye around a steel shackle.

Also, good call on the chains. 1” chain is pretty much the minimum to pull behind a tractor like that. A D7 probably will slip before it parts it, even if a modern high drive one like that 7H has a drawbar pull of somewhere between 70-75,000 pounds.

I did some calculations a while back and with a straight pull (no dynamic/shock loading) a 4-leg 1/2 grade 100 chain would pull two stacked trench boxes out of sand. That was last summer, on the job I posted some pictures of here. Well… We broke it. Several times. Chains are scary.

Matt… Like I said, a D7 will tweak a 3/4” shackle in a hurry. Burning a lot of fuel doing it and making a mess.

 

[northmanlogging]

what is it about clients that suddenly demand a contract, that are almost guaranteed to be a problem.

Guess I'm moving the skidder again tomorrow

 

[northmanlogging]

puttering around the house today, trying to rebuild the big onsite diesel pump, (not failing, but something else is wrong...) anyway, since the tank was empty I moved the fuel from the old crummy's tank, then since the hose ain't long enough moved the fuel from the 100gal tank in the disservice truck to the crummy, to the big onsite tank... (they are sort of in line with eachother, and the disservice tank doesn't have enough hose to reach...)
Well in the process of diagnosing the big pump, I swapped filters with the crummy's pump ( turned out to be a kinked hose...), got the big tank working sort of (still sucking air somewhere, but it is faster now). And decided to just transfer all the fuel out of the Disservice truck to the big tank, for reasons?
Go to run from the crummy to the big tank one last time.... flip the switch and it sound funny, but it always takes a moment to settle in, I'm halfway back to the nozzle end of it... when I notice that some idiot never but a filter back on it.... so theres is nice geyser of red diesel shooting out of the crummy, landing all over said crummy...
Probably lost 5-6 gallons... but the ole crummy isn't going to rust away anytime soon

 

[catbuster]

I had a… I dunno, probably 1000 gallon, not really big, onsite fuel tank with a probably 25 gpm from a gas powered pump high on a water project I was doing back in the day. Like, I was still very green day. I was taking fuel from it to go in the transfer tank in the foreman truck and then back to the equipment a couple miles back down the road. I think we were about to hit a holiday layoff or something and we wanted to brim tanks to keep as much moisture out as possible.

The nozzle clicked and locked on, so I assumed it, like the ones that lock on at the station, would click off. Anyway, so I went around the corner of a tool connex box to pee in the porta john. When I came back to my horror there was a pink geyser shooting five feet above the diesel tank from where the nozzle did not, in fact, click off. It probably ran that way for a minute or so and spewed a good 25-30 gallons, which thankfully was only around $60 at the time. I drove the truck back and my foreman couldn’t get very mad, he knew I felt like **** already, but I did hose the truck down and he later took it through a car wash to get it cleaner.

Ah, the days of being green. I hurt a lot less then, too.

 

[Swanman]

I had a… I dunno, probably 1000 gallon, not really big, onsite fuel tank with a probably 25 gpm from a gas powered pump high on a water project I was doing back in the day. Like, I was still very green day. I was taking fuel from it to go in the transfer tank in the foreman truck and then back to the equipment a couple miles back down the road. I think we were about to hit a holiday layoff or something and we wanted to brim tanks to keep as much moisture out as possible.

The nozzle clicked and locked on, so I assumed it, like the ones that lock on at the station, would click off. Anyway, so I went around the corner of a tool connex box to pee in the porta john. When I came back to my horror there was a pink geyser shooting five feet above the diesel tank from where the nozzle did not, in fact, click off. It probably ran that way for a minute or so and spewed a good 25-30 gallons, which thankfully was only around $60 at the time. I drove the truck back and my foreman couldn’t get very mad, he knew I felt like **** already, but I did hose the truck down and he later took it through a car wash to get it cleaner.

Ah, the days of being green. I hurt a lot less then, too.

I grew up too far from the mountains to be a logger, but I worked on a farm and we burned through a lot of diesel. I remember in ‘98 or ‘99 we bought a tanker load of red dye for $.50 a gallon. We had to fill every available tank to take the whole 10,000 gallons. On with my greener self story…I was delivering a hundred gallons to an irrigation pump in a slip tank. The tank did not have a proper vent in it, so when you heard the tank go “doong”, you were reminded to unscrew the barrel bung that was the lid for the slip tank. Where I filled the slip tank up was pretty level. When I got to the irrigation pump, I had to park pretty cockeyed to get the hose to reach. I didn’t think one bit about how much lower the fill bung was than the top of the tank. So as I was sitting there pondering life on the prairie, I heard the “doong”. Without missing a beat, I walked over and unscrewed the cap. Sploosh! A geyser of red dye all over me and the fuel wagon. This is how we learn, I suppose.

 

[056kid]

I talked to a landowner yesterday about some logging.
He was from San Francisco...

One of the things that the California's flowing into Brookings all are doing is having all of the trees cut on their lots because they're scared of fire... sounds just a tad hypocritacal

 

[catbuster]

The amount of blowdown from yesterday’s storm system is brutal. Trees aren’t meant to handle it blowing 60 sustained with gusts of 80. It’s wearing me out. And… Yeah, the west coast setup works really well here in Kentucky. I bought a new saw… Unsurprisingly a 441 (first ported saw)/32” light bar/skip sequence square ground chain. Cuts like buttah.

 

[056kid]

The amount of blowdown from yesterday’s storm system is brutal. Trees aren’t meant to handle it blowing 60 sustained with gusts of 80. It’s wearing me out. And… Yeah, the west coast setup works really well here in Kentucky. I bought a new saw… Unsurprisingly a 441 (first ported saw)/32” light bar/skip sequence square ground chain. Cuts like buttah.

People of East have been telling themselves that 5 cube saws won't pullbmore than a 25" setup in their hardwoods for a while. Now that light weight bars are common, they don't have any excuses, because we know that's the reason for the 20" setup, weight savings. One thing is for sure, all of the big brand pro saws can pull 32" of skip chain through any Eastern hardwood with authority..

 

[catbuster]

People of East have been telling themselves that 5 cube saws won't pullbmore than a 25" setup in their hardwoods for a while. Now that light weight bars are common, they don't have any excuses, because we know that's the reason for the 20" setup, weight savings. One thing is for sure, all of the big brand pro saws can pull 32" of skip chain through any Eastern hardwood with authority..

At this point for sure. The first MS462s with the smaller piston and lighter case were a real disappointment in the big bar department.

 

[northmanlogging]

People of East have been telling themselves that 5 cube saws won't pullbmore than a 25" setup in their hardwoods for a while. Now that light weight bars are common, they don't have any excuses, because we know that's the reason for the 20" setup, weight savings. One thing is for sure, all of the big brand pro saws can pull 32" of skip chain through any Eastern hardwood with authority..

I cut some oak the other day... I was rather disappointed with how easy it cut, been an awful lot of hype from the east coast guys about it...

 

[rwoods]

Fresh red oak is a piece of cake. Poplar is icing.

Ron