New mini-skidder, what do you think?

OLD_ JD · December 18, 2005, 05:39:02 PM

get any pic of it :

Scott · December 19, 2005, 09:24:55 AM

Theres just a little black and white picture of it in equipment seller. I could scan that if you want but I don't think it would help much :-[. They don't have it listed on their online postings either.

Scott · December 19, 2005, 09:28:39 AM

Turned out pretty good 8)

SwampDonkey · December 19, 2005, 11:31:09 AM

Although I whole-heartedly agree that bucking in place is the best method in single tree selections I have seen good results with treelength also. On a tract I was managing the trails where placed with no turns and twists. Instead the yarding trails were placed hearingbone style to the main trail. One disadvantage we had was a bit of a larger yard, but it wasn't that bad. We were also on relatively flat land and any land that was sloped a bit the trails were placed to take advantage of the terrain. Also, skidding distance was under 400 meters. If a tree fell in the wrong direction, ya just hooked it by the top. We were working in deep snow and in one place the snow was up over a 6 foot high skidder tire. Up in the hardwood it was 3 feet. This was two winters in the months of February and March. The hardwood was quite thick growth and needed thinning badly. We had to clean up some areas that had mature fir and poplar, but I measured those areas when we were done and they only totaled 6 acres on a 90 acre lot. I was thinking about planting them, but I said to myself that would be foolish. And today they have all kinds of fir and poplar, which was harvested to begin with. Why try to change nature. :

Pre-harvest tree marking in dense hardwood.

A couple of harvest trails converge here and carry on ahead.

Mini clearcut of mature softwood and poplar (< 1 acre)

Yard with area behind, that has been completed. Trails spaced every 100 feet. Keep in mind that 80 % of the woodlot is young hardwood.

Yard across the road from previous picture with 100 meter buffer from a creek, no harvest zone. We are only required a 30 m buffer with 30 % selection within 15 m. This area is a bit protected from the wind and deer yard up here. A couple of deer were killed by coyotes during our occupation.

OLD_ JD · December 19, 2005, 12:58:50 PM

ok SD i my look stupide :

..but y some of the tree's in the yard have red cross on it and some not :-\...maybe u work diferente way then we do :P

Scott thank's for the pic ;)..nice looking rig....look like pretty far price too

Scott · December 19, 2005, 03:04:26 PM

OLD_JD, I thought it was a pretty resonable price too. I'd rather have thier little skidder but the forwarder looks like a good rig. 6 wheel drive too

SD nice looking job. Did any of the logs in that bottom picture go for sawlogs? It looks like there are a couple nice ones in there. I was curious about the paint on the butt of the logs too.

SwampDonkey · December 19, 2005, 04:21:07 PM

JD, it was just my method of tallying the poplar logs with veneer in them. We had several tractor trailor loads of poplar veneer. Nice white stuff. ;D We used a slasher on the poplar and harwood to slash 100 ". ;) When your moving wood and piling more wood on the same pile, how do you know what was already tallied, from the new being added? ;) :D

The softwood went as treelength to Frasers in Plaster Rock, which was 10 miles away.

OLD_ JD · December 19, 2005, 11:43:18 PM

y'a SD good way to see it ;D...i agree whit u about bucking in place,take more time in the wood,but work is done when u get in the landing ;)if ure bucking only the big stuff..pulling treelength work better

some thinning made whit cable skidder 3 year's ago

the one i'm doing right now whit the F-4 fowarder

pic of the landing whit the saw log allready scale in the wood

OLD_ JD · December 19, 2005, 11:47:42 PM

my pic at 30k can't be as big are our's SD...weird ???

SwampDonkey · December 20, 2005, 07:26:58 AM

JD, it's in the compression. I use Adobe Photoshop's Save for Web optimization. ;D I was surprised at some of my pictures, I had to go down to 35 % quality to get them under 30k and there isn't that many colors. :

Looks like your getting along quite well with your new toy. ;)

You cutting some fir out too? I find in some areas the fir is rotten when grown in hardwood. What are you finding out with your fir?

X marks the rot. Ahem ;)

Up in my pictures with the poplar, the wood was chalk white, on the back of the lot the poplar was all punky. :(

OLD_ JD · December 20, 2005, 08:58:52 PM

SD Fir are pretty rare aroud here..what u see in the pic are hemlock...

on a soft maple and cherry stand

Tom · December 20, 2005, 09:12:54 PM

One way to look at those optimized pictures is that

Pixels equates to width and length
KB (kilobytes) equates to density

It's the width and length that can destroy the integrity of the screen format.
Haven't you seen a big picture push the rest of the page off of the screen
so that you had to use the sliders to see one side or the other? Some are
so big that you can't see both sides at the same tiime. The aggravating
part is that, once corrupted, the whole page is corrupted and that includes
other posts as well.

The Density is what requires storage space. If you think of a Kilobyte as
a bean, then more of them either require a larger jar or a stronger arm to hold
them. Two pieces of metal may cover the same hole, but one (aluminum) is light
While the other (Steel) is heavy. By optimizing, you are thinning out the particles
that it takes to make the picture. In essence, turning Steel to Aluminum. If you
go overboard and remove too many, the aluminum becomes so porous that stuff
falls through it. Or, in the case of the picture, it loses its sharpness and definition.

The whole secret is to keep the KB's high enough to make a good picture but thin
enough that the picture can be transmitted easily or stored in a small amount of space.

By working with the width and length first, it makes it easier to optimize. Only if you can't
"thin" the picture and still keep definition, do you have to make the picture smaller
than Forum standards, which is 400 pixels.

The less dense your picture, the longer the forum can retain a 100% post format.

So, the format of the forum kinda rests in your hands too.

etat · December 20, 2005, 10:47:47 PM

Hey Tom, can i try to explain the density part?

If you looked over the top of bean wagon and looked at down and even if the beans were piled up four feet deep in the wagon all you would see is the top layer. That's how a big picture is, there's a lot of Kilobytes (beans) in it even if you can't see them all.

If you filled that same wagon almost with cotton and then put a layer of beans on the top of it and looked you'd still see beans. Why, if you didn't know that cotton was under there you'd still think you had a whole wagon load of beans.

A picture is the same way, you can get rid of a lot of them (Kilobytes) beans that you can't see by putting cotton underneath and still be looking at the same picture, up to a point.

Get that first layer of beans (Kilobytes) toooo thin, and you're gonna know that you've been stuck with cotton.