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DIY Fellerbuncher

Started by northforker, December 14, 2011, 11:48:42 PM

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northforker

Greetings,

I'm new to the forum but have stopped in for a look several times over the years and have picked up lots of useful information from the knowledgeable folks here. I'm not a professional logger or a fabricator, just a guy who has about 50 acres of trees and tired of harvesting them by hand. That said, here's some pics of a fellerbuncher attachment for a skidsteer I recently completed. I only had time to test it with a dozen or so trees before the snow flew, but it seems to work real well and zips right through. It's your basic hotsaw or disc saw scaled way down. The disc is 5/8" X 36" dia T1 steel with 12 Quadco 1-1/8" teeth mounted on the rim. I use my ASV's 25 gpm circuit to spin the disc at 900-1000 rpm and the other circuit for the grab arm. I'll fab a bunching arm for it over the winter. I've designed it to cut a 14" stump maximum for safety's sake. I can't wait 'til spring to use it more!






islandlogger

Welcome to this here forum northforker!
Say, that's some nice fabricating you done there! Nice looking unit, I can see you will have plenty of fun with that come Spring!!

mad murdock

Welcome northforker. That is serious skookum you got on that tracksteer loader 8) nice job!!
Turbosawmill M6 (now M8) Warrior Ultra liteweight, Granberg Alaskan III, lots of saws-gas powered and human powered :D

sprucebunny

Welcome to the forum !
That is too cool  8)
Any guesses what it cost you to make ? What was the hardest part ?
I think I've found a winter project !!!
MS193, MS192 and an 026  Weeding and Thinning. Gilbert Champion sawmill

thecfarm

northforker,welcome to the forum. With a nice looking project like that one,there must be others?
Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

Piston

Nice looking project and welcome.  I'd get in trouble with one of those things!  ;D

Look forward to more action shots!
-Matt
"What the Lion is to the Cat the Mastiff is to the Dog, the noblest of the family; he stands alone, and all others sink before him. His courage does not exceed his temper and generosity, and in attachment he equals the kindest of his race."

chevytaHOE5674

Quote from: Piston on December 15, 2011, 07:28:25 AMI'd get in trouble with one of those things!  ;D

Very nice work. I too would get in trouble with that. I would have the entire farm treeless just because it was so fun to play with. hahaha  8)

Raider Bill

All I have to say it WOW!!! I like it!!!!
The First 70 years of childhood is always the hardest.

northforker

Thanks for the comments guys! Yeah, my wife saw the "Here's Johnny" look in my eyes the first time I fired it up and was very concerned for her trees. Yes, you do just want to cut everything down just for fun, kinda shaking like a junkie looking for his next fix.

I'd say the hardest part of building this thing was just figuring out how to do it. I went back and forth between building a tree shear, a bar saw feller, and the disc saw. Each has its set of pros and cons and that's why all of these solutions have been around for a long time. Because I have a relatively light carrier, weight played a big part in my decision. I wanted to build something sturdy, but have enough payload left over to actually carry a stem or two without tipping over. This ruled out a shear type of buncher as the high capacity ones (Dymax, Ryans, etc.) weigh in at around 1800 lbs. plus.

The bar saw feller is probably the most lightweight solution as there's no element of brute force to do the cutting. However, even a simple bar saw design ends up being relatively complex and requires a minimum of 3 hydraulic functions, 1 to turn the chain, 2 to grab the tree, and 3 to move the bar through the tree. Then there are the issues of oiling the chain, maintaining proper chain tension, and modulating the bar feed speed with chain speed. It's a fun to think about how to solve these little mechanical challenges, but I wanted to be cutting trees not tweaking a design until I got it functioning right. It seemed that the disc saw is the best combination of light weight and simplicity, just a big spinning disc and an arm basically. Cost-wise, I think all would end up being similar, with the shear being the cheapest and the bar and disc designs costing about the same.

I spent a lot of time just figuring out a workable design and what components I would use. Most fabrication time was spent on turning down the old truck axle. It is hard, hard stuff, probably 4140 chrome moly, and I have a cheap chinese 3-1 machine to do the work. I finally figured out that turning very slowly with carbide tool bits and lots of coolant worked taking off only a few 1000's at a time. Even drilling dimples for the setscrews in this stuff was impossible with HSS drill bits. I finally tried carbide tipped masonry bits (a few bucks at the hardware store) that worked very well.

Cost-wise, I figure I'm in the $2500 range on this project when you add it all up. The most expensive component was the hydraulic motor (~ $700) and the heavy duty type E Moline flange bearings (~ $400 for two). The Quadco teeth were about $150 at Baileys and steel was probably another 6-700 bucks or so. Throw in a few hundred more for hydraulic hose/fittings, double crossover relief valve, nuts/bolts, etc. Adding a bunching arm will cost a couple of hundred more for the cost of a small cylinder plus some kind of circuit splitter/selector valve.  Anyway, not too bad considering that a shiny new one built by real fabricators cost north of $25,000. I'd love to have one of those but, well you know...


Coon

That would be a nice rig to play on, however, on my land you would end up doing just as much if not more hand felling due to timber size and also due to the windfalls and such. 

Why wait for spring? A man's gotta get his fix of sawdust ya know.  ;)  ;D
Norwood Lumbermate 2000 w/Kohler,
Husqvarna, Stihl and, Jonsereds Saws

Raider Bill

That would sure work for me as a weekend/monthly wannabe logger trying to thin out my land. Hat's off to you northforker!
The First 70 years of childhood is always the hardest.

barbender

Very nice work! I'd like to build a bar saw dangle head for my skid steer. My problem is I only have one hydraulic circuit, and it is only 16 gpm.
Too many irons in the fire

thecfarm

northforker,if Raider Bill ask to borrow it say NO or he'll return it all burnt up.  :D
Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

semologger

from were did you learn to do fab work that well at? Very well done.

simplicityguy92

did you build or by the saw?

Banjo picker

That is one cool build.  And welcome to the forum.  Banjo
Never explain, your friends don't need it, and your enemies won't believe you any way.

treefarmer87

welcome to the forum :) very, very nice job 8)
1994 Ford L9000
2004 Tigercat 718
1998 Barko 225
1999 John Deere 748G
FEC 1550 slasher
CTR 314 Delimber
Sthil 461
Sthil 250

northforker

Thank You all again for your comments. Here's a couple more pics from the build. As you can see if you look close, I'm not a great fabricator. My goals are always simple, things that are made to stick together should stay stuck together, things should m/l work as they are designed to, and that nobody gets hurt. Anyway, as my Dad always said, "If you can't learn to be a good welder, learn to be a good grinder."




northforker

BB, You can do a lot with 16 gpm as long as you don't want to do it fast or do it all at once. An advantage of the bar saw design is that you grab on to the tree first. This allows you to take as much time as you need to saw through. Have you seen Danzco'z website (http://www.danzcoinc.com/html/standard_saw_components.html)? They sell hydraulic chainsaws and components that you could incorporate in a design. Their basic chainsaws are powered by gear motors using from 10 gpm up to 30 gpm. I have no idea what they charge. I think they are using Cross gear motors that will run a couple of hundred bucks new that you could source yourself. One thing I'd be interested in if I was making a bar saw is their feed and motor control valve. This stuff becomes more important with lower gpm/psi available.

Quote from: barbender on December 15, 2011, 01:58:02 PM
Very nice work! I'd like to build a bar saw dangle head for my skid steer. My problem is I only have one hydraulic circuit, and it is only 16 gpm.

northforker

Quote from: Coon on December 15, 2011, 01:19:06 PM
Why wait for spring? A man's gotta get his fix of sawdust ya know.  ;)  ;D

I hear you on that, but most of my trees are 7+ miles off any kind of plowed road and the snow is *deep*. This is what we use to get there in the winter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGByXUsWsBw&feature=plcp&context=C38a19c8UDOEgsToPDskKD6hd4DPfnGdFjpSZ8SqiS

northforker

Quote from: thecfarm on December 15, 2011, 06:57:12 AM
northforker,welcome to the forum. With a nice looking project like that one,there must be others?

Oh I do some stuff here and there. Here's a snowblower I built for the ASV 9 years ago. It's still going strong. I usually bust off a fan blade or two every season or something, but I just cut out a new one and weld it on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYku0xoAmh4

sandhills

I'm very impressed with the fabrication to say the least!  Welcome to the forum, and with skills like that I think I'd be fabricating some windows for that ASV if I were you  ;).

northforker

Gimme a break! I've only owned this thing for like 11 years now ;)

Quote from: sandhills on December 16, 2011, 02:51:22 PM
I'm very impressed with the fabrication to say the least!  Welcome to the forum, and with skills like that I think I'd be fabricating some windows for that ASV if I were you  ;).

reride82

With a name like Northforker in the NW corner of Montana, would I venture a guess you are on the North Fork of the Flathead River?
'Do it once, do it right'

'First we shape our buildings, then our buildings shape us'
Living life on the Continental Divide in Montana

northforker

That sounds reasonable.

Quote from: reride82 on December 16, 2011, 03:46:39 PM
With a name like Northforker in the NW corner of Montana, would I venture a guess you are on the North Fork of the Flathead River?

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