couple pics... post what your currently cutting

[coxy]

its a nice tree 8)   but the top looks likes some of around here some ugly  :D :D :D

[mike_belben]

I did some rearranging in the yard yesterday to cut the time and labor down on unloading firewood at home when the bobcat stays at the job site.  This worked pretty well.






 

[starmac]

Mike, have you ever tried using dunnage under your logs, so you can get your forks under them to unload?

[mike_belben]

Yes and its terrible so ive finally quit.  You cant unload a 16" firewood round with an 8ft fork spread.  But you can make a heck of a lotta noise and poke your wooden trailer deck up pretty good chasing it around.  Under 10ft is a huge pain with that nasco. 

For sawlogs i put them on two of those wooden bunks like you see at the end and the mill plucks them with a fixed fork volvo loader.  But from now on firewood at my house is just getting tipped.  

[starmac]

Yea, I imagine the firewood rounds would be a fiasco. I have only hauled a few saw logs in like that, so nothing at all would have been shorter than 8 1/2 foot. That worked out pretty fair with the forks.

[Sheepkeeper]

Mike - it's a hay wagon

Coxy - I've got the ugly all  trimmed off now, looks a lot better  ;D

The second log is going to be a snort too. With the second tree it may make more sense to drag/shove the logs together on higher ground and take the mill there. The biggest issue with that plan is going to be the soft/wet ground.

[BargeMonkey]

Getting home at 9 gets old but trying to get these couple jobs wrapped up. Trailers for monday, Sunday is going to be a long day. 
 Delimb and deck in the woods, it's only 200ft to the slasher, didnt want to make a huge mess roadside and really dont have the room. 

[teakwood]

Eric, do you ever stop!?  You should take some days off once in a while. Hard work is good but you should slow down a little or you will get old and tired real quick

Ramon

[mike_belben]

Looks like youre getting your landing setup dialed in pretty nice.

[barbender]

I'm skidding a few poles, too.

Pole hauler shows up

Walt the bugg, my logging partner looks on as the truck gets loaded😊

[Skeans1]

40's and 50's for the pole lengths?

[barbender]

37' through  57'.

[Skeans1]

Have you guys tried bunking the 37's?

[barbender]

Yes, most of our guys do it that way. Actually most guys bunk everything. I've seen too many reserve trees mangled and poles snapped so unless there are a lot of poles and it's a straight skid, I let them pivot out the back.

[Sheepkeeper]

White oak #2. I borrowed a longer saw to cut this one but the chain was out of adjustment  :(. Saved by the hole in the middle again.

This is the sisty ugler Coxy.

Only one log in this one.

[coxy]

but them knots give the boards  character i don't like plane looking boards  

[Sheepkeeper]

And the cows don't care  :D

[Skeans1]

Only reason I ask is a local comapany has snapped in half a elephant king a couple times as well as another company doing long log on a forwarder, ponsse swears their warranty a buddy is selling is everything before the conference.

[nativewolf]

Had to look up Elephant King.  So that's Ponsse's largest forwarder, and it snapped carrying poles?  

I couldn't follow this:
ponsse swears their warranty a buddy is selling is everything before the conference.

I am looking at forwarders so trying to learn all I can.

[barbender]

One of my good friends is the head of service for Ponsse in Oregon. He's sent me some pictures of loaded forwarders out there, all I can say is they have to have them loaded to at least twice the rated weight capacity. That was with logs that were mid 30' long I think. The thing with poles is they put a lot of stresses on the frame, you end up bending stakes etc. so I prefer to let them drag off the back. If there's just a few poles, I'll usually just grab a few when I'm on my way to the landing, as many as I can hold in the grapple, and set the butts on top of the load so I'm not dragging them with the crane. We've had a lot of crane boom pillars crack, right around the top pin, and Ponsse blames that on our pole handling (they might be right). I do what I can to keep from horsing them around, try to finesse them and use their momentum and balance to minimize the stress to the crane and the rest of the machine. I'll often end up fishing them through tight spots in the woods with the crane, sometimes I've even have to throw them off at an angle and reload them to get out to the landing without tearing up reserves and busting poles. I enjoy the challenge of skidding poles. As far as frames, I haven't seen a forwarder broke in half in my 6 years out here. It was more common in the older machines, the only one of the more current machines I know of breaking came from the South where it was also hauling massive loads of long length wood (southern pine and hardwoods, heavy stuff). That long stuff is lifting that center section as often as it is pushing down.

[nativewolf]

Thanks barbender.  I was wondering how you kept the poles on the load, so you answered that as well.  Was Skeans saying that skidding poles breaks warranty?

[dsroten]

 
 This ugly thing!!!  Finishing up a patch of white pine and there were a couple of loners the property owner wanted taken down.  Big bushy things are a royal pain in the butt.  More pulpwood in the limbs than lumber in the stem in seems like.  For size comparison the larger saw is a 660 with a 28" bar.

[teakwood]

Wow, that's big and ugly! Lots of work

[barbender]

Thanks barbender.  I was wondering how you kept the poles on the load, so you answered that as well.  Was Skeans saying that skidding poles breaks warranty?

I don't think it specifically voids any warranty, but you can do things in a way that they would consider abuse. If you're busting ElephantKings in half I would suspect some severe overloading. I tried to find some of those pictures, but couldn't. It was a Buffalo with I think 36' logs, rounded way up. It would have been overloaded if they would have been 18's. Later I'll post a video of a guy skidding poles in Europe, a really skilled operator that gave me some ideas of how to do some things differently.
     Dsroten, I wouldn't have wanted to touch that thing!

[dsroten]

Unfortunately, the limby (admin edit) was part of the deal.  I'll fight through it, one painful limb at a time.   >:(  It was getting close to quitting time so I decided it could wait till next time.