Tree Shear

[northwoods1]

Cedarman, I think you are in kind of a unique situation because you are cutting primarily or only cedar. No one really makes a large shear head because there would be very little market for it.
Shears are primarily designed for cutting & accumulating small diameter stems. You asked about how would a bar type sawhead perform in brush and with brushy trees?  I can remember back 20 years ago when sawheads were just coming in to the picture & shears were on the way out, at that time I was considering the purchase of a $10,000 dollar sawhead and I heard lots of horror stories. Bent bars, problems with brush preventing bar from retracting, high maintenence, slow...so I bought a shear and a saw. After going through the learning curve of how to use the saw, and there is one my conclusion is exactly that of Gary C., the shearhead it nothing but a large boat anchor. If I could sell mine for scrap price I would welcome someone to come and get it
Here is a pic from yesterday of my buncher with timbco sawhead mounted on it, I moved it on to a new job yesterday and I'll be using it to cut cedar which is on some high ground. No amount of brush or limby wood scares me when I am using this to cut, a big bushy tree I can just drive right up to and break the limbs of by lowering and raising the head, then grab it and saw it off in a couple seconds, put it on the ground wherever I want, and with the chains and fluid filled tires I just drive next to the stem of the tree and all the limbs will be instantly smashed off no problems. There is no comparing a skidsteer with a shearhead to a carrier like this with a sawhead.

 

[Cedarman]

Aaron and I have discussed getting something like what you have.  Until now the tree saw we have is used to cut everything up to about 10".  The shear is used on larger stuff.  We have the skid steers to move trees and they are easy for us to move from site to site.  The skid steer works very well for loading the grinder with trees.  They fuel efficient also.

But the trees are growing very fast.  1/2" to 1" per year at ground level, so will out strip our ability to whack them easily.

Also we will most likely get bigger moving equipment so would be able to transport a hydroax more efficiently too.
This is a great discussion and I am learning a good bit.

[barbender]

Northwoods, is your machine a 3 wheel set up?

[northwoods1]

Cedarman I am learning a lot from this discussion also 

it warmed up here and I have to wait until tomorrow when the cold will be returning so I can begin work out at that job, rain and in the 40s' now. I cut a bunch of the larger stuff yesterday by hand and I decided to wait for the cold to begin skidding because the limbs break off very easily when it is cold... it is more difficult to move a larger machine like my hydro axe, and barbender yes it is a 3 wheeler, but I am thinking a person could find a carrier like mine or what Gary C. has with a sawhead for the same kind of money as what a good skidsteer and shearhead like you were talking about would cost. My machine cost $120,000 bucks in 1991 but there are a lot of used machines available for a small fraction of that , and these are for real production logging in decent wood it takes about 1 hour to cut and bunch up, in a very nice way,  a truckload of wood.

[semologger]

nice axe there northwoods ive been running my 221 for about 13 years now. How many times have you layed it on its side? Ive only done it once no big deal. I would be lost without it. 

[northwoods1]

nice axe there northwoods ive been running my 221 for about 13 years now. How many times have you layed it on its side? Ive only done it once no big deal. I would be lost without it. 

I think I got it in 1991 so I have had it a while. I've tipped it over probably 4 or 5 times early on. I have fluid in the tires and that makes a big difference. The one advantage to a three wheeler like this is that you can turn on a dime which allows you to turn into the direction of the tree your carrying if it begins to tip. It really is amazing how large a tree you can cut and carry. Some species that have a really large canopy and if they are fully leafed out can get heavy and to large to pick up. Yes that machine has given me really good service in all these years I have never done a single thing to it other than replace some hydraulic hoses and most of them were going to the sawhead! I know I have cut well over 100,000 cords of wood with it, probably a lot more than that actually.

[barbender]

Northwoods, how does that third wheel behave in soft ground, like in a black spruce swamp? I've been thinking about those little Bell 3 wheels, I think they would be slick for what I do, but I was curious if it would work in the swamps. (For from down south, we only cut our swamps in the winter, when they are supposed to frozen, but it seems like they never freeze until they have been driven over a few times)

[lumberjack48]

barbender in our swamps, the Bell with tracks would be the way to go. I've been in swamps around Deer River, that a skidder wouldn't go in, we had to pack trails with a wide track cat.

If you drove a three wheel feller, with fluid in the tires in one of these swamps, that's right where you'd be in the swamp.

It wouldn't work with out the fluid, there's to much weight per sq inch on the ground, with rubber tires.

[northwoods1]

barbender in our swamps, the Bell with tracks would be the way to go. I've been in swamps around Deer River, that a skidder wouldn't go in, we had to pack trails with a wide track cat.

If you drove a three wheel feller, with fluid in the tires in one of these swamps, that's right where you'd be in the swamp.

It wouldn't work with out the fluid, there's to much weight per sq inch on the ground, with rubber tires.

For sure a hydro-axe like mine is a hard ground machine... I took it down to the cedar job because there was an area that was not to soft I knew for certain I could cut, and I was hoping for a colder winter. As it turned out I had no difficult freezing that job down and I could go just about anywhere with the buncher with impunity. As long as I worked the edge that I froze down and did not willy-nilly go driving around to far off the beaten path that is.

Mostly where my buncher works better than anything are selective cut jobs where limiting residual damage is the biggest factor. In the early 90s' I had to cut a lot of large federal sales that were just that. At that time the forest service was going away from aspen regeneration and clear cuts and they were trying to convert a lot of the stands to hardwood.

[barbender]

One more question Is your sawhead a chainsaw bar type or a disc saw (hot saw) ?

[northwoods1]

One more question Is your sawhead a chainsaw bar type or a disc saw (hot saw) ?

Its a timbco bar saw, here you can see one mounted on a timbco carrier:

[lumberjack48]

Now that's the way to go, it really kicks butt in that blow down, or right away clean up. It would be a good place to be running semi carbide chain, there's a lot of dirt, in, round and on that kind of cutting.

I have cleaned up many blow down sales just like that with a cable skidder, this is just a little bit faster i would have to say, and takes the danger out of it.

Now if it would limb and cut to length wouldn't that make it sweet machine, getter done, in stead of making a another job out of it.

[treefarmer87]

If i bought a bell and bunched with it would i speed up production pulling with my c5? i think my wife is going to buy me a new piece of equipment i need to decide what to get. if i had to do it over i would have bought a forwarder.

[lumberjack48]

Absolutely, just don't put more in a bunch than you can pull, use you main line for the first choker.

I would lay a tree cross ways, then put 1 cd bunch's on that to make it easy hook'en, it shouldn't take more than 30 seconds to hook-an-book.

Depending on the timber or the weather, i usually had a man limning the bunch's in the woods.

I don't think a forwarder would be you answer, you still have to fall it, buck it, and limb it.

I would ask for a CTL machine, and a forwarder, and a new truck, than have her drive one.   [see what she says]

[northwoods1]

Now that's the way to go, it really kicks butt in that blow down, or right away clean up. It would be a good place to be running semi carbide chain, there's a lot of dirt, in, round and on that kind of cutting.

I have cleaned up many blow down sales just like that with a cable skidder, this is just a little bit faster i would have to say, and takes the danger out of it.

Now if it would limb and cut to length wouldn't that make it sweet machine, getter done, in stead of making a another job out of it.

I think it looks to me he is doing right of way clean up too, I just love to watch a good operator you can tell it isn't that guys 1st day in that cab
He is probably laying that up for a stroke delimber and my guess is that stuff probably goes to the mill tree length. In the right kind of timber a machine like this can be used to clear right of way to very good effect. You can just tip the tree out, pick it up and saw the stump off out of the roadway, then make nice bunches all neat and organized waiting for the skidder. Saves a lot of stumping with the cat and eliminates the mess.

[treefarmer87]

i figured it would make it a little faster. i would be hooking chokers to a whole bunch, instead of trees here and there

[lumberjack48]

This when you put a choker slider bell on your maine line, so you can hook your first choker back in to the line, this makes one big dang choker.

I had my riggen rigged this way all the time, just in case a tree was to big for a choker.

I would have 5 or 10 long chokers made up, and have the guy limning per set them, and hook it for the skidder operater, this would keep that skidder moving, if you ante moving, you ante making money

[treefarmer87]

yep, i have done that before, your right, if you aint moving you aint making money