Scoot for hauling logs from woods to landing with pictures.

[Tdawg]

..........
Maybe "stone boat" is just an Ontario thing,  8) 8)

Grew up using one in IA, and built one to haul stones when clearing this land in WI (thanks to the glacier). Now no more hand digging as the forks on the FEL work so great.

But then we do have Ontario, WI  8) 8)

Ha Ha, gotta love that glacial till...my back aches just thinking about it.

Ontario, Wisconsin...must be a beautiful place  :D :D :D

[pineywoods]

OK, down here we called them a slide. Put a box on it and becomes a "Hoover wagon" If you understand that, you're telling your age. ;D

[rocksnstumps]

Jim,
That's quite the heavy duty sled. Those rocks musta been huge. As Beenthere mentions, I've heard them called stoneboats around here too and the size of the rocks they moved with those things with a couple of horses in the past is impressive. Not sure about copyright so here's a link and some dimensions similar to the ones I've seen stashed in an old shed or two.

http://www.inquiry.net/images/stoneboat.gif

[thecfarm]

The stone boat that we had was about 3 feet wide. The whole front was made out of metal and had a curve in the front. Had a big hole in the center to hook a chain too. Had a lip to bolt planks on too. All the planks rode on the ground,no skids.I never used it. Most of the time we would load up the woods trailer and haul them into a wet hole. The bigger ones was hauled off with the hyds on the back.

[Meadows Miller]

Gday

Thanks for posting this thread Jim Its a great idea Mate  ;) ;D ;D 8) 8) I usually just fell n buck then bring a fork full of logs at a time out on the loader and load it strait onto the truck if its a small clear felling or wide space thinning job Ill usually try and leave them in double lengths but I have done 40' long logs on occasion but it all depends on the block what lengths i take out I have skidded out two or three tree lengths at a time with chains on the fork frame to lift the logs up off the ground to keep them clean too  ;) ;D

Regards Chris

[Jim_Rogers]

Gday

Thanks for posting this thread Jim Its a great idea Mate  ;) ;D ;D 8) 8) I usually just fell n buck then bring a fork full of logs at a time out on the loader and load it strait onto the truck if its a small clear felling or wide space thinning job Ill usually try and leave them in double lengths but I have done 40' long logs on occasion but it all depends on the block what lengths i take out I have skidded out two or three tree lengths at a time with chains on the fork frame to lift the logs up off the ground to keep them clean too  ;) ;D

Regards Chris

I'm glad you brought up the idea of "doubles" we would do that all the time. Especially after we got the feel for what we could haul, and/or carry.

When we got to the landing and picked up a double (two logs already marked to be cut, but still attached to each other) we hold one of the two over the stack and cut them to separate.
Then set the second one into the pile.

I used to like the idea of hauling out doubles when we were hauling pine.

Jim Rogers

[fuzzybear]

Jim thank you for the idea.
   I have been pouring over old bob sled photos and any other type of sled for that matter, I plan to build two of these in the spring. My truck can haul them behind it with no problem across the snow. The only thing I will be doing differently is cutting everything directly in the bush with just the chain saw.
   I figured everything out and am just waiting for the weather to warm up a bit more then head out and try to get the trail plowed out. This just reaffirmed my ideas on how to build it.
   I plan to use 14" green Aspen split in two with a flat cut onto the bottom to install 1/2" mylar plastic for running on snow. The runners will be in direct line with the tire on the truck. (@5.5' wide) Then I'm going to use dry 6" spruce logs for the cross bunks. I should be able to put 3 cords on each sled and pull them out together.
   I am going to use a trailer type hook up with a V coupler to attach to the sled and then to the truck with the ball. This will allow me to control the sleds a little easier down two slight grades. I have build many smaller versions of these sleds for pulling wood behind the snow machine. Seeing how you built this and what it's intended use is for, has reassured me.  If they did it 150 years ago with horses I should be able to do it with my bush truck.
Thank you again.
FB

[Jim_Rogers]

Many years ago, I read stories in the northern logger about teamsters and pulling logs out of the woods on sleds.

Many a teamster was killed by jumping off the load as the horse were running as fast as they could down hill with the sled loaded behind them.

They would talk about at night they'd take the horse manure out to the hills and put it there to warm the ground and melt the snow and ice so that the horses would get some traction to get up the hill.

And they'd talk about wetting down the flat runs to get it to ice up so that the sled would slide easier.

But the stories of the downhill stuff was very frightening.

On my machine, that I pulled the scoot we had, we had a huge concrete block on the back. And if the scoot was going down hill and the scoot got going faster then the tractor the log on the scoot would hit the concrete block and more or less stop. But I do remember a couple of times that the wheels were turning slower then the machine was going down the hill.

Jim Rogers

[thecfarm]

I can remember my Father telling me he use to use hay for the hill at our place to slow down the sled. Than having to carry the hay back up the hill when the hay would get to the bottom. But this was only one hill and not that big of one.

[Bump]

I've used them a lot and built many as we have a team of Belgian chunks. The boat is just that steel or planks just a flat bottom used a lot for picking field stone as it had great floatation and didn't rut up the field. Scoots used for hauling round bales fire wood people with 2 runners 8' long just a log sawn in half the smaller the bottom had the last 4' sawn the smaller front of the skids are cut bevelled up. When pulled loaded or turning the hitch would raise the front making it ride on the larger flats at the rear for turning and hard pulling. Across the front I keep a set of tire chains when there is a descent would drop the chains so they are under the runners to hold the load back many times just leaving them there if the load starts to run up the front of the runners lower useing the chains to hold it back.

[Meadows Miller]

Thanks Jim I learnt the Doubles one from My Dad ,Grandfather and Uncles  ;) you can either saw a long log or dock it into shorts for whatever order you need to fill and the way I see it you gotta dock it in the bush or at the mill either way Mate ;)

You had a tractor like that too its better than a ride at the show/fair mate  ;) :D :D :D ;D ;D

[AfraidChocker]

Thanks for all the hard work Jim putting everything together regarding your scoot build. I just bought a bulldozer and one of the things my father did when I was a kid to improve efficiency was put a scoot behind our 1965 John Deere 1010 and you would be shocked at what it could pull.

Now around here (Maine) a scoot is far different than a stone boat. They were short and squat so that rocks could be rolled up on them. Here in New England you can see what they hauled for massive boulders because they are still on the rock walls, at the base of them granted, and on the low side of the hill. There was no way oxen could ever drag such burdens uphill.

A scoot was a bit different because the runners were a lot taller. They had to be in order to get the load of logs up over rocks and stumps. They were efficient because they have very little bearing surface on the ground. Between dips, cradle knolls, hummocks and other undulations, the runners might only be hitting in a few spots and on frozen ground with snow...it slid really easily. It was not uncommon for us to roll 2000 bd ft of long logs on the scoot and watch the dozer walk away with it as if it was nothing. I suppose you could use one without snow; granted not 2000 bd ft on it, but we never did; we switched over to using a woods trailer then.

Back in the 1980's we typically did what they did back in the 1920's. We would bulldoze a decent main skid trail into a block of the woodlot where we knew we would be cutting in the summer when the ground was not frozen, then in the winter drive in with the dozer with the scoot and park it. Then we would dry skid the logs to the scoot on that good road and load it up. Then on the way home for dinner, or at the end of the day, bring the scoot loaded with wood out. There were variations to this, but that was generally how it was done. All this was done so that we were not traveling the bulldozer back and forth between the stump and deck and wearing out the tracks without a lot of wood behind it.

I say this was like the 1920's because this is how they moved wood here in Maine. They used men with shovels and not a bulldozer to make the "two sled road" in August granted, but the 2 sled road always had favorable grades of no more than 5%, always down hill, and done on iced roads. The world record holder on a dray with 2 horses pulling it was 11.5 cords of pulp wood!

[sandsawmill14]

OK, down here we called them a slide. Put a box on it and becomes a "Hoover wagon" If you understand that, you're telling your age. ;D

i understand that ;D but havent built one in 3 or four years now this last one has held up good i guess the stock is getting tamer  ;)  these ground slides usually have a short life around here sometimes it might take 3 a year depending on the mules. we use the slides to break draftstock to work and it is alot easier to make a new slide when it gets busted up than it is to fix a wagon wheel or replace a set of hounds  >:( sometimes we get some pretty wild rides but they usually dont last long ;D :D :D :D

[florida]

This post reminded me of this old film about a sled maker.

http://www.folkstreams.net/film,225

[luvmexfood]

My dad grew up farming with horses back in the 40's. We would be working on the farm in the 70's clearing woodland and brush to convert to pasture. When we ran across a sourwood with a good crook in it that would make a sled runner you didn't cut it. Just in case we needed to make a sled for the one workhorse we had to pull. Made a couple and used it. Was handy in that you could be loading it and call on the horse to move up a little and she would move up till you hollered for her to whoa. Never had to get off and on a tractor.

Used to use the horse to plow out a patch of tobacco. After doing so you learned what the meaning of a workhorse was. Don't know who did the most work. The horse of who ever was on the plow handles.

[timberlinetree]

Nice job!

[SRQ Sid]

Hi all, I would like to comment on this topic regarding my logging experience in the 1960s in western Massachusetts. The scoot we used had only two cross bunks that were connected to the steel shod runners by vertical pipe (2 inch?) pins. It was kept somewhat ridged by two loose diagonal chains from corner to corner and had a draw pole connecting to a small Oliver "Cletrac" crawler. The chains allowed flexibility but if one runner was stopped by a small stone or stump the other runner kept going perhaps a foot or so until the chain tightened and jerked the scoot free. The draw pole prevented the scoot from running into the dozer when going down hill. The bunks had steel plates attached by bolts that had vertical triangular "teeth" cut by a torch sticking up an inch or so to prevent the logs from sliding off, fore or aft, on slopes. The crawler had a home-made PTO cable winch and wooden boom with tongs. The winch used a model A Ford banjo (differential) that had the spool on one side and a emergency brake drum on the other. The drum would free-wheel so you could set the tong and when you applied the brake the spool wound in the log to be boomed onto the scoot. We had a blacksmith in my hometown of Orange that could whip up steel runners, draw poles, stake pockets, etc.
For stoning fields we used a stone boat for the biggest ones which was a low hardwood sled with a steel triangular draw plate shaped like a ski tip so as not to get hung up. This was pulled by a Farmall tractor. The sled had 2X4s bolted flat to the edges to prevent the stones from rolling off on cross slopes. My boss was a dairy farmer so we logged and sawed lumber in the wintertime and fire was not a concern. He was left-handed so we used a wood framed Lane sawmill next to the barn. If you are facing the carriage, what I call a left hand mill has the log deck on the left and the pit on the right. That lets the sawyer use his left hand to adjust the setworks and his right to control the carriage.
Orange MA was the home of Chase Turbine Co. which made shingle machines and sawmills for a hundred years or so. Their "Whirlwind" sawdust blower was very popular with New England sawmills.
Well, my brain is about empty now, let me know if you have any questions. Keep making sawdust!

[DeerMeadowFarm]

Great stories here! I loved the film of the sled maker especially when he said he wouldn't take the welfare check. In his condition at the time, he could have used it! Boy how times have changed...