Hi everyone,
Just wrapped up a few days on a Cat 308 to do some improvements to the logging trails here on our own property. Great unit - I got a ton done. This is our own bush (~700 acres) that we use for sawlogs, firewood, skiing and hiking as well as maple syrup on some of it.
Question is how does everyone do final prep on the trails? The land's got some soil mixed between rubbly limestone and a few boulders courtesy of the last ice age. I removed all the pin-poppers and rim-wreckers, scraped with the bucket tines and then back smoothed with the blade. Where there was some 6"ish rocks, I just tossed them aside by hand.
To put a nice finish on them I was thinking of using the 8' farm field drag but it gets bunged up pretty quick with branches etc. I have some old tractor rear tire chains that I am going to rig up as a chain drag as well.
Usually when doing a normal logging job, grooming's easy when you grab a gnarly top and just go for a drive with it but we're not cutting anything in the bush this year and have three able bodied boys to pitch in and help. We don't want to pave it or anything :D but do want to knock out the speed bumps
Thanks so much!
This is what I'm working on. The pic was earlier today after the first pass with the excavator
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/38203/image_00001.jpg)
some times I just get a bunch of tree tops and drag them around behind me does a good job
Usually when doing a normal logging job, grooming's easy when you grab a gnarly top and just go for a drive with it but we're not cutting anything in the bush this year and have three able bodied boys to pitch in and help. We don't want to pave it or anything :D but do want to knock out the speed bumps
Seems like you have your answer. I know you werent cutting any trees thisyear but how about one or two for firewood, It is hardly possible to be too far ahead in your firewood pile. Thats how I see.
On a previous post someone used tires chained together in a triangle pattern to smooth a woods road.700 acres should keep the boys occupied for a while.
A section of chain link fence with boards and some rocks on it ?
An old bed spring ?
Some people use big old equipment tires chained together with a weighted board or a log crosswise behind that.
The first two are going to pick up some branches but maybe the boys can walk ahead and remove anything over an inch.
You are lucky to have dry trails. When the state/snowmobile club fixed up the trail on my land, I used a roller I made out of steel culvert and boards to flatten the mud ::)
Will be giving it a whirl this weekend to clean up at least one section to see how it goes.
Our township is called Stone Mills - for a dang good reason...
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/38203/IMG_1970.JPG)
Tractor and a box blade..
Tractor and Harley Rake angled to the side. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzxTa2odFFI I haven't touched my box blade or york rake since I got my Harley Rake. The video explains how it operates well but doesn't show how well it works with rocks.
I don't know if this will work in your situation but ill throw it out there.
I saw a guy using an old buncher track for a drag and it did an awesome job on a gravel road. drive a pin out so its in a straight line, then use something rigid to hold the ends of the track apart (roughly how wide your road will be). the track pads were standing on end. they pulled this with the rigid piece ahead and the flex in the track, plus the u-shape pulling material to the middle, would basically crown the road for you.
now if you were to rig up that same thing and then pull on the middle of the track, you would basically make a v-plow. the flex in the track will follow the contour of the ground and it should push debris to the side of the trail rather than collect them in the middle. theoretically.
let me know if that description is confusing and ill try to draw a picture. I saw this before they started putting cameras on cell phones.
I usually use a d4 size dozer for clean up, depends on what the contract specifies, I dont normally like leaving a mess though.
Gettin the water off and away (ditching) from your trails is the biggest thing to get right first. Once you've handled proper drainage, the rest is "cake". Nice machine!
Thanks for the tips everyone. I setup a some large tractor tire chains behind a spreader bar that hooked onto the ATV hitch ball. Made a few test passes and it seems to be working fairly well. I'm going to try a weighted drag behind that to really help smooth out the humps.
The Harley rig's pretty nice looking but I'm not allowed new toys for a while (I'm on a time out :D according to my wife. Plus I'm pretty sure the rocks here would give the rotary head quite a beating.
Will try to post some pics tomorrow of the before, during and after
a really good experienced operator on a small dozer can do amazing things in a situation like this..the rocks of course are the x factor..might be money well spent to have someone come in and let you know what they can do for what price.
key words..good,experienced,small...well,like 16,000 pounds small..maybe less if he has a case..but the dressers and john deeres..a few hours and a few hundreds sometimes with the right operator can save you money..and a lot of time and wear and tear, and do what you couldn't in weeks.
heres what I use. a big old piece of I beam with 2 tractor weights bolted to it. works great
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11814/IMG_5692.jpg)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11814/IMG_5691.jpg)
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road_monkey,is that a trail or a road?? My truck road looks like that,well kinda,there are still rocks in the road,but my woods rails are rough. And I do mean rough. No way I could use that for most of them. I have rocks and stumps and uneven places to go through.
Quote from: thecfarm on April 25, 2016, 06:00:07 AM
road_monkey,is that a trail or a road?? My truck road looks like that,well kinda,there are still rocks in the road,but my woods rails are rough. And I do mean rough. No way I could use that for most of them. I have rocks and stumps and uneven places to go through.
thecfarm.... sounds like we have the same type of terrain.
We have three main types of rock here.
Limestone
Granite
Leverite
What is Leverite? (too dang big to move, leverite there)
On my woods roads and trails I find the best maintenance is to NOT use them when they are soft. If I mess them up sometimes I use the tractor with a rear blade turned backwards as a drag. On a bad spot I turn the blade around the right way and just work on that spot. I find using my wheeler with a drag that can swing side to side gets caught on to many things. If the roads get real bad the best tool is my little dozer. I am no expert at all but can still do a decent job. Loosen a little surface dirt with the rake going up over the rocks to big to move then back drag to spread the dirt across the road fill the low spots.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21065/FirLoop16.JPG)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21065/FirLoop17.JPG)
gg
"On my woods roads and trails I find the best maintenance is to NOT use them when they are soft"
exactly. that's why my roads are smooth. once or twice a year I go over them with my hillbilly grader or sometimes backblade. most of my roads could be driven on with a car, all of them can and do get driven on with my golfcart.
"On my woods roads and trails I find the best maintenance is to NOT use them when they are soft."
Wish that was the case for us, but with sap season it's muddy so we invest some decent time and manpower to make sure they're built up well on the trails to the pipelines.
The new road trails are coming along well. We're doing a final hand-pick of the >6" stones and should have some new pics to post soon (the befores and afters).
Snow in the forecast for tomorrow apparently.
Quote from: 711ac on April 22, 2016, 08:51:45 PM
Gettin the water off and away (ditching) from your trails is the biggest thing to get right first. Once you've handled proper drainage, the rest is "cake". Nice machine!
"Cake?" Are you a Yehuda Moon fan? That comic strip is the only place I've ever seen that expression used.
Even with proper drainage, on a well ditched and builtup road, when you live in deep freeze country there is a few weeks during the spring thaw where you are going to destroy your road if you use it. Coincidentally, this is the same time period as when the sap is running :(
For building a new road, it's tough to beat a dozer with a 6 way blade.
Dustinthblood, what do you have available for pulling implements?
Quote from: enigmaT120 on April 25, 2016, 04:20:57 PM
"Cake?" Are you a Yehuda Moon fan? That comic strip is the only place I've ever seen that expression used.
Never heard of yehuda moon, just short for "piece of cake" :D
your roads are smooth because you don't have the rocks I do. ;) I betcha I am way more fussy on my roads than you are. I don't even use my after a day that it rains. Any wet spot I start to haul the rocks into it. I hate ruts and I do mean I hate them. I have a hard time trying to get a road through the woods. I have to flag it 2-3 times before I can get it the way I want it. No way even a pickup truck could go where I go. The pumpkin would get hung up on a rock. My land is a challenge to work on. Some places are real good and some are real bad.
Just a picture to show what I have to deal with. This is a real good spot. ;D
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10436/thinning2.JPG)
Quote from: barbender on April 25, 2016, 05:22:36 PM
Dustinthblood, what do you have available for pulling implements?
150 HP Case 4WD that really does well in the woods. We have a whole selection of drags, chains, I-beams etc.
Haven't gotten back out there yet due to other work but hope to tomorrow.
Drier than a witches fart here this weekend so I hit the trails again.
Used the chain drag and hand-picked the debris. Man oh man they are shaping up well. I'm able to scoot though them with the big Case in the same gear now, but in a higher range 8) 8)
Many good and innovative ideas presented here depending upon the grooming standard desired or required by the harvest contract at the least cost, soil types to allow and meet the grooming objectives ,and the logging equipment already on site that may be used to complete the task at the least cost.
A cheap investment in a 9 foot farm drag towed behind the skidder, tractor, ORV, or 4 wheel drive pickup works well on most of our sandy, sandy loam soils here.
Nice dozer g_man!
For my humble woodlot and in the interim, I drag my 3point winch on the way back from the deck; to the next set of logs.
When I'm done with the maple harvesting, I'll mount the box scraper on and hit the trails before summer sets in.
When all I had was a quad; I dragged an oak pallet weighted with rocks.
After taking out the the rim wreckers:
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/38203/IMG_0684.JPG)
We are close to getting things in shape:
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/38203/IMG_0683.JPG)
Mercy those are some nasty rocks!
That's not fair. You can move yours. ;D I have bunches that can't even be moved. When they was digging for the foundation here all was going well. 3 corners and was going well. That last corner slowed things down. I heard the "kunk" of something. :( That put a stop to the digging. We kinda talked about moving the house about 10 feet to get away from "The Rock" BUT as I said what is 10 feet away,another big rock???? Plus we have a view and did not really want to move the house. A phone call to a blasting crew did the job and "The Rock" was moved. Took 2 blastings to get "The Rock".
Seems like a few other maple syrup makers here so I guess I'll chime in. We use the same roads year after year so I use a compact 4WD New Holland diesel tractor with a 1/2 yard front end loader and a Gannon box scraper on the back. I can fill in the low spots with sand, dig out the high spots with the bucket, smooth out the rough spots (sort of) with the teeth or the scraper, and push myself backwards out of most of the jams I get into.