Special delivery arch

[DanG]

I trust oww to use his 450 if the skidding is that steep. ;)

Yeah, I'm sure that OWW would put the dozer to use if the situation called for it.  But at the same time, an awful lot of people read this forum, and most of them don't have the equipment or the experience that OWW has.  I can just picture some poor guy getting an arch and heading down the mountain with it behind his lawn mower.  "Hey, it's 20 horsepower, right?  I'm cool!"  I just think we owe it to the public to express all of our misgivings about these situations.  These are not Tinker Toys we're playing with.  If we can keep somebody from getting hurt, by speaking up about undersized equipment and oversized logs, we will have done a service.

[Maineloggerkid]

I agree with DanG, I have seen alot of people that aren't knowlegable in forestry attempt things that should have killed them, simply because they had no clue it could be completely wrong.

[OneWithWood]

I think I need to clarify a couple of things.  The brakes have been installed to slow or cause drag when traversing a down slope.  The brakes on the arch are in no way inteneded to be a parking brake.  If for some reason I need to stop on a down slope the bucket gets dug in, the tractor brake gets set and I block the wheels.

What I am attempting to accomplish is some measure of control traversing relatively steep slopes with a sizeable following load.  By being able to apply braking power to the arch in a measured manner I am hopeful I can create enough drag to keep from overpowering the tractor, or worse, lifting the tail of the tractor or pushing it sideways. 

I will be putting a controller on the 450 crawler for the same reasons. 

I could easily do all this with just the crawler by paying out cable and winching it in but I want to miimize rutting on the trails.  The more I can do with the tractor the better.  The tractor has IR treads and is much easier on the ground than the grouser cleats of the crawler.    The current game plan is to fall selected trees and winch them up to the trail using the crawler, buck to length and bring the butts out on the crawler forks then make however many runs with the tractor and the arch to bring out the uppers.  Anyway that is the current plan and as always is very subject to change.  One thing I have learned about the IR treads is that muddy surfaces tend to pack the tread and then it slides as on ice.  When the ground is frozen neither the crawler or the tractor are any good on the slopes.

[DanG]

Thanks for the clarification Robert.  I knew all along that you would be doing this right, but I could just envision some newbie getting into trouble with too much log and not enough tractor. ;)

[stonebroke]

If the ground is frozen chains really help.

Stonebroke