skidding with fransguard winch

[bulldozerjoe]

Hi woodsman and woman, new guy here..... Just found this forum last week.... GREAT FORUM........ Iv got a fransguard 3pt hitch winch on my new holland tc45 tractor. Winch works great... Iv got a question can i skid with just the cable like on a skidder or do i have to use the slots on the top of the blade... Someone told me if i use the bottom pully i can skid with the cable. Every place i looked on the net has videos skidding with the slots... Im in west ny, so most i pull is hard wood...... iv got a little logging back ground as i worked for a guy who used a skidder.... He had a farmi winch but i cant remember how he skid with it.... Thanks for any replys..... Once again great forum and so much info to sort through

[OddInTheForrest]

Hello, and welcome to the forum !

Not big on winching, but I asked the people from Igland on a expo here in Norway a few years back.

They explained that the axle for the winchdrum can be affected if skidding with the wire, on these tractor mounted winches. I will guess the same is valid for Fransgaard and most other PTO winches

Best Regards
Odd.

[thecfarm]

Welcome to the forum,bulldozerjoe.
I have a Norse winch. No idea about the other brands. We had some 3 foot white pine,3 foot was no big deal in size,even had some that went 4 four feet. We skidded off the cable. If using the slots,we would never get the butts off the ground. We used the winch for 3 years twiching out that big pine.
I run six slides on my winch. Sometimes all 6 are filled,once in a while just one. It lives a life of ease,twitching out firewood now. Most times I don't cut anything big,2 feet across.
Do not pull at a sharp angle,log gets hung up and you could tip the tractor over.Watch out for the slash as you winch in. Keep away from the tractor,if it does slide back. Yes,the blade should dig in. One winter I was cutting wood and straddled a dead fir that was laying on the ground under the snow. The tractor slide back a few feet because the blade could not dig in.
Have fun. I really like a winch. Makes things so much easier.

[curved-wood]

Welcome to the forum. You could get a lot of info by doing a research in the SEARCH BOX.  A good one about winches : Winch issues in Forestry and Logging
You could skid with the cable only but I do it only when the load or the distance is small. If your load is heavy, it will tend to lift the front of the tractor specially in rising hills because of the leverage when pulling higher than the hydraulic bars. When ever I could I attach the chains at the bottom bar.  

[bulldozerjoe]

Thanks for the input, I read the manual on the winch. It says don't do it of safety reasons and could damage the winch.... it's just a pain when cutting to length at landing, muddy logs, chain binds when hooked to the blade, if you get in trouble you can't drop the hitch... 

[Ed_K]

 The biggest problem I have with hanging off the cable is the log at times will tighten the cable so when you go to pull it out you can't. So you have to hook to something solid and drive away to loosen it up. I have a tajfun winch and only used the slots once, the metal bent an I couldn't get the chain unhooked. So that was the last time for that.

[47sawdust]

I prefer to not use the slots except for smaller logs.As others have mentioned it can be a nuisance to unhitch.
Hooking a couple logs off the cable is my preferred way as I can drop the hitch if needed pull ahead and rewind.Of course I'm cheating as I have a wireless remote.



 

[petefrom bearswamp]

I use the both the cable with 3 slides and an end hook and the slots depending.
Mine is a farmi but much the same as the fransgaard

[curved-wood]

It took me a bit of practice to have the good length of chain hook on the bar. Too short it's hard to unhook and the log could be completely lift in the air when lifting the hydraulic. Too long it's too much dragging.    I use the bar also to balance my pulling weight according to the need. Since I have some slanted roads I put more weight on the high side of the hill. Most of my skidding is done in winter and sometimes icy, so sometime traction and direction is not that great.

[g_man]

I have a Farmi 501. I mostly use the cable. If I want to pull from lower down I use the bottom pulley.  In small wood if I run out of sliders I will use the notches too. Hitch swings much better on the cable and steering is easier. If you use the slots make sure you leave enough slack so the butts don't bind against the dozer blade in a turn or get cantilevered going over a rise like in the picture. A cantilevered log can pick your front end up and bend up your slotted bar or the dozer blade on the winch. Ask me how I know.



 

gg

[bulldozerjoe]

thanks for the responses....... i just dont want to bend anything if i use the cable to skid......

[John Mc]

If you are skidding off the cable, make sure you always have a tight wind of cable on the drum. If the cable was not wrapped on the drum under load, you increase the risk of pulling the outer wraps down into the inner ones, jamming the cable in. As @Ed_K mentioned, you can usually hook to something solid and drive way to pull the cable back out. However, this kind of wrapping and pulling can also result in a kinked cable.

[Ed_K]

 If the cable isn't crushed to bad you can hook to a tree an unwrap almost all the cable and pull it tight and leave it overnight. Just be careful that no one's going to run into it. I do this with my skidder cable too.

[thecfarm]

@John Mc,I never had too much trouble like that. Most times it happens when I come up against something when I am winching it in. It comes up against something and I really pull on the rope. Than when I want to go past that place I remember when I did it. 

[g_man]

@John Mc,I never had too much trouble like that. Most times it happens when I come up against something when I am winching it in. It comes up against something and I really pull on the rope. Than when I want to go past that place I remember when I did it.

I find that to be the case also. You find the bind next time you pull out the cable and all of a sudden it stops where the bind is. But I think that if the cable gets pulled down into lower layers on the drum and binds during the skid you don't know it most of the time  because the bind gets pulled free when you drop the hitch. I usually pull forward a little too to give me some room to work and some slack cable.
gg

[John Mc]

@John Mc,I never had too much trouble like that. Most times it happens when I come up against something when I am winching it in. It comes up against something and I really pull on the rope. Than when I want to go past that place I remember when I did it.

It hasn't happened often to me, but it has happened a few times over the years. My winch may be more susceptible to it since I have 230' of cable on the spool: the more windings it has, I suspect the more susceptible it is to this happening. I now make it a practice to run the cable almost all the way out at the beginning of the season and wind it back in under a good load. As the season progresses, as I've had occasions to wind things back in without much load, I may occasionally repeat the procedure. I definitely do it if I notice a bit of "birds' nest" has formed in the cable on the spool.
On my worst case, I managed to put enough of a wave (a bend, but not quite a kink) in the cable that the cable would trip one of my self releasing snatch blocks if there was not much load on it when pulling that wave/kink through the block. (It only seemed to affect one of my two blocks. The trip mechanism on the other seemed not to be phased by it.) I lived with this for quite a while until someone passed along @Ed_K 's trick for straightening the cable.

I just thought I'd mention it, since the problem is a simple one to avoid: If you are winding in a bunch of loose slack, even having someone pull on the end or stepping on the cable to put tension on it as you are winding it in can help.