The Forestry Forum

I always love sawing wide, thick gnarly looking slabs but moving/rotating/stickering them by myself has always been a major pain until now. I invested in a jib crane that has a 16 foot swing arm with a chain hoist on a trolly. I fabricated a device that allows me to pick up a slab that weighs up to 800 lbs, move it anywhere within a 32 foot diameter circle, rotate the slab then set it down on stickers in the reverse order that it was sawn off the log.The device is a horizontal beam (that is fastened to the end of the chain hoist chain) two vertical arms  travel  on rollers on the beam. The vertical arms are pulled open/closed to a common centerline with a hydraulic motor and roller chain. At the bottom of each vertical arm is a piece of angle iron that has sharpened pins on the inside face. The vertical arms/angle iron/sharp pins are pulled into the ends of the slab. Once the sharp pins are embedded in the end of the slab I lift everything with the chain hoist and move it to my stack. I can rotate the slab because I have the angle irons mounted on a shafts/pillow block bearings. All of this is difficult to describe so maybe a pic will help. 
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/20672/IMG_20200911_125158451_HDR.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1600033260)

I'll agree. Flipping 3" thick, 48-50" slabs Is a pain. I just stickered a log of pecan but used my 5tn crane truck to roll the log first, then slid 1 slab off and onto my tractor forks, washed the slab off, then flipped the slab while on the forks and washed the other side. Then stacked and stickered. I was thinking of a way to do all that, with either my tractor or crane, and something similar popped in my head a few weeks ago. But instead of bumping pins in the slabs, using 2 peices of angle and all-thread and "bolting" the angle to slab/s allowing me to move 1-3 slabs at a time and rotate/flip them. 

1 person operations tend to find ways to make that 1 person, into 2-3, just to make our lives easier and less wear/tear on our bodies. 

Nice set up you got there.