Building a tracked skidder

Roxie · July 16, 2005, 07:08:15 AM

Been following ya here Sprucebunny. Two words.....

YEE HAW!!!!
8) 8) 8)

Vermonter · August 17, 2005, 10:02:33 PM

Congrats on the new mill. I think they build one DanG good mill, I like a lot of their features.

SwampDonkey · August 18, 2005, 06:47:43 AM

When are we gonna see some new boards? Am I gonna have to come down and do some off-bearing? ;D ;D

sprucebunny · August 18, 2005, 07:58:40 AM

Thanks, everyone ;D

Sure, SwampDonkey 8) That would be great. First They got to build the access road :

and then I got to collect a pile of logs. Maybe in October ??? ;D

sprucebunny · March 03, 2006, 06:51:33 PM

Well I never did take the cat up there this summer partly because the access road wasn't done till mid November :

Then it's been a poor winter but now the trail has hard snow and no snowmobiles are out so I took the cat up there today to recover some recently blown down balsam.

Once I remembered how to work the winch ( :

), we yanked a hung up tree down and dragged it away 8)

There are 2 logs hitched up and then we dragged the smallest log out with the quad and dragged all 3 a mile and a half.

The balsam is about 15" at the butt. It was hung up in the birch behind Steve.

The cat also enjoyed it's first picnic ;D You can see one wing of the Coleman stove.

I'm pretty excited that this thing works well ;D and even more excited that we didn't break anything ....yet :D

Oh... and when I got to the little icy hill and spun the tracks I backed the whole messs up about 15 feet !!!! Finally got over the little hill by Steve pulling the cat with his quad :D

isawlogs · March 04, 2006, 10:47:40 PM

Joan
Glad to see that thing out there earning its keep . ;D I am also pleased to hear that it works and that you are having fun getting logs out for the mill .
How long where these , ??? ???
I guess you dont have studs on the tracks of the cat , those steel crossers on ice dont have much traction do they ..

sprucebunny · March 04, 2006, 11:13:30 PM

Thanks, Marcel

The logs were all about 16 feet.

Nope, no studs, but I'm thinking hard about adding them or fixing that spot in the trail :P :P ;D

I can't wait to get back up there and drag some more logs ;D

isawlogs · March 07, 2006, 07:56:21 PM

Did you get that mill going and saw all those logs up yet .. ???

Have you pull any more logs Joan . ???

smiley_paparazzi smiley_paparazzi smiley_paparazzi ;D

SwampDonkey · March 07, 2006, 08:07:57 PM

It's probably getting sloppy down to joan's in the woods. It is up here, snows been melting by 10 am, ground is chilled in the mornings. Nearly no snow in alot of fields, further north of me there is more snow. There is also about 8 inches of ice and crust in the woods, less on south slopes.

isawlogs · March 07, 2006, 08:32:26 PM

I have been breaking trails with the skidder . I have a JD 540 , enough snow out there to have the belly pans leave there mark on the snow . I went saturday all day and went back there today and openned up a couple of landings . One for the pine and one for poplar . And then broke some more trails .
Where I drove saturday I could move around in fith gear .. as soon as you fall off you are back down to first and playing with the steering to get around . :

sprucebunny · March 07, 2006, 08:36:37 PM

No logs today. I tried to take a mini-dump trailer load ( 1 cu yd ) out to the icy spot with the cat. Turns out there is ANOTHER icy spot :

Had to shovel /dump out the trailer and move the cat ahead and tow the trailer with the winch..... Got the cat turned around and slid on the ice sideways into the trailer :D Just my typical day :D Finally got that all untangled with no damage to anything and got all the toys back to thier parking spot.

It got up to about 34F today but things are still pretty well frozen in the shade.

Think I will need to start a new log yard beyond the icy spot :P

Sure wish I had your snow problems , Marcel ;D