Got my log arch / ATV hauler built

I know this isn't directly milling related but in the end probably 90% of its use will be. It's been rainy here the last couple days, so I had some time off from the lawn care to spend in the basement welding up the log arch I've been needing so badly for the ol' Polaris. Please excuse the darkness of the shots - I only got it to a drivable state at 9:30PM here. Still light enough to see OK but garbage for photos. I'll take better pics tomorrow in the daylight and replace these ones then In the meantime, here's what I've got so far:











The "arch" itself is 4" channel steel with the flat sides out. Some of you may recognize the wheels and the green steel as being from the bandsaw I brought home a few weeks ago. The main top rail is a piece of 6" X 2" channel almost 8' long that had been sitting in the alley behind my brother's house for the last two years untouched. The vertical piece at the front is also 6" channel, but the actual tongue is 2" X 3" X 5/16" tube, which is probably actually stronger than the channel. The 45° angle braces are just 1-1/2" squaretube, though I will probably increase that with additional reinforcement. The channel steel is very sturdy and resists both vertical and horizontal deflection quite well, but is more prone to twisting because it lacks a box structure. The nose roller for the cable is just a 1.5" v-belt pulley with a 1/2" spindle bore, so I welded two pre-drilled 1" X 1/2" bars and put a 1/2" X 3" bolt thru to act as an axle for the pulley. I'll just keep it greased, I don't think it's going to wear out at the speed it'll be turning.

The frame seemed to handle the load of the above log just fine, but that is on the small end of what I'll be dealing with. I will probably weld additional squaretube support to the underside of the channel sections to deal with the twisting issue. I also may weld bars at the front that come out from the sides of the main top rail at 90°, and extend about as far as the arch top rail. This way I could also pile boards or slabs on top of the trailer to haul finished wood out of the bush easier. More on that later though.

My quad hauled that log around like it wasn't even there. It's a ~16" X 9' long Douglas fir that had been laying on the ground in my backyard since last summer. I can fit about 34" between the sides of the arch, and about 40" high if I remember right. That $20 Chinese special hand winch did a decent job of lifting the log easily, however I'm going to need to modify it a bit. It has no drum in the middle to speak of, only the 5/8" diameter spindle between the sides of the spool. This is much too small for the cable to spool up properly on, so it just turns wants to turn into a jumbled, kinked mess. I'm going to cut a piece of 2" pipe in half and then weld the halves into the center of the spool to create a drum. Hopefully that'll work OK until I can afford something better.


I have a pint can of black Tremclad rust paint, and I think it might be a good time to try out the spraygun I got last year. But first, the angle grinder and a knotted wire wheel to get all the rust and old paint off. Not looking forward to that job much.

Looks Great!


Have you thought about another winch or loop to hold the front up? I know the "front up" can be controlled by having more hanging out the back but if you put more up the front and then lift the front you can get the whole log off the ground

Looks great.

BobL said:

Looks Great!


Have you thought about another winch or loop to hold the front up? I know the "front up" can be controlled by having more hanging out the back but if you put more up the front and then lift the front you can get the whole log off the ground

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All he needs is a ratchet strap to stabilize the front.

Nice

Brad in the pic of the pulley at the arch end the bolt ain't tite-case you didn't know. Hate to see you have to ride all the way home cause the pulley rattled apart an lost the bolt! Nice work by the way

Not having the welding abilities I was looking at a store bought one a week ago. I admit that looks really nice.

Bob - I'm definitely going to rig something up to hold the front end of the log up. I do have a few ratchet tie straps which should work in the meantime. I was also thinking it might be possible to screw in two eye bolts a few feet apart on the log, and run the cable through both of them and back to the frame of the trailer. This wouldn't work for really long logs, but might for something around 8 feet or so.

Jake - that loose nut did slip my mind at the time I put the assembly together, but I did see it when i was going through the photos. It wouldn't have gone unnoticed for very long anyway. I'm thinking I might want to install some sort of guide above the pulley so the cable can't skip out of the track when loose.

Ultimately this will probably be converted to an electric winch later this year. I do have a spare cheapie winch kicking around, but it might be more useful on the bandmill when I start on that project.

Loweecey said:

Not having the welding abilities I was looking at a store bought one a week ago. I admit that looks really nice.

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I looked at the offerings from Northern Tool and Norwood and thought them too small for what I wanted. I bought a Logrite atv arch from Ben Meadows on the 'net. I have a "local dealer" about an hour's drive from here, but would have had to pay full retail, shipping, and tax, plus having to drive to pick it up. Buying on the net saved me at least $200.

Br, that looks great! I have a couple of plans for one, but your design is simple. I don't think I will be using the 'wheeler too much though because of the steep hills here....much safer to hook it behind the tractor. After I get the extension welded up for the mill, I am thinking on an arch.

Loweecy, mig welding is not real hard to learn(if I can do it anyone can), & once you learn it you will use it forever. A small mig(140-180) can be had used in the $3-400 range or $5-600 new. So you could possibly buy a welder, scrounge metal at a junk yard & build it yourself for less than the price of a new arch & get a welder out of the deal. Anyway, it's just a thought.........

RD

The weakess link I see in this design is where the 6" channel is welded to the top centerline of the 4" channel on the arch. The leverage factor between this point and anything the wheels encounter will bend/kink at some point what you already have.

Myself on this, I might come off of the 90° corners [two per side, with the second one being lower down on the vertical upright above the wheel] of the arch at a 60° angle or so -to the main beam with some square or rectangle tubing or other structure steel than maybe on hand.

Anyway; Some food for thought. :greenchainsaw:

MotorSeven said:

Loweecy, mig welding is not real hard to learn(if I can do it anyone can), & once you learn it you will use it forever. A small mig(140-180) can be had used in the $3-400 range or $5-600 new. So you could possibly buy a welder, scrounge metal at a junk yard & build it yourself for less than the price of a new arch & get a welder out of the deal. Anyway, it's just a thought.........

RD

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I remember trying to learn in high school and my teacher saying "well not everyone can do this" as he took the tools out of my hands. Besides it would be one more thing I would have kicking around. I would rather get the arch and go on with my other projects. Thank you.

Semi-Hex said:

Besides it would be one more thing I would have kicking around. I would rather get the arch and go on with my other projects. Thank you.

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I can respect that. Personally I'm of the type that would rather do as much as possible myself, even if I bork it the first time, it takes me longer, or ends up being more expensive. But I'm also a textbook-case tool hoarder and packrat and have more of most things than I really need. I do often consider the time and space I could save by adopting your stance a little more often...

MR - I was already considering doing exactly what you described and probably will, just no time so far. Haven't even had time to snap any daylight photos yet! Been working long days with the yard care, a couple rainy days this week put us behind. Those braces will involve some fun angles and calculations. Glad I know my trigonometry well. But I agree, a cross brace system like that should mitigate a lot of the tendency to twist.

All in good time. It's usable as-is, but certainly not finalized or ready for really big wood. FWIW the wheel bearings are shot and loose, but the hubs are all welded up so I can't swap them out. I'm already looking for better hubs for it.

M.R. said:

The weakess link I see in this design is where the 6" channel is welded to the top centerline of the 4" channel on the arch. The leverage factor between this point and anything the wheels encounter will bend/kink at some point what you already have.

Myself on this, I might come off of the 90° corners [two per side, with the second one being lower down on the vertical upright above the wheel] of the arch at a 60° angle or so -to the main beam with some square or rectangle tubing or other structure steel than maybe on hand.

Anyway; Some food for thought. :greenchainsaw:

Click to expand...

yep, definitely weak link is where the arch connects to the overhead beam. problem is the wheels wil buckle/fold backwards when forward pull is applied and wheels meet resistance.

3-4' of 1" sq tubing from (bout midway between the top of the tire and top of the arch where the weld burn is) and to (somewhere forward on overhead beam) will do fine.

great job, just need to finish

Took it into the bush today...

I had a couple hours free this afternoon, and my neighbor was outside working on his firewood, so I asked him if he'd be interested in going up in the woods and trying to haul a log back. We've both had an eye on the same big Fir tree that came down over the winter, and it was a good size to try this thing out with. We cut a 12' length at about 18" diameter (there's still at least 50' of the bottom left, about 30" at the butt). When I started winching the log up with the hand winch, the gears started skipping in the winch. Upon inspection, the two gears are barely even engaging each other - they should be at least 3/16" closer. Cheap Chinese crap. So, it looks like I'll be throwing the electric winch on it sooner than I'd planned on.

Since the hand winch wasn't going to work, we had to get creative. I unhitched the trailer and turned the quad around to face the trailer, blocked the wheels of both units, and used the winch on the quad to lift the log. I then used the hand winch and a couple chains and ratchet tie-down straps to secure the log to the trailer, turned the quad back around, and hitched it up again. The wheels were taking the weight of the log pretty well, and it wasn't terribly heavy to lift back onto the hitch. Once it was all loaded up, this is what it looked like:




The trailer and the quad both took the weight extremely well. With the quad in low gear, I barely had to give it any throttle to get everything moving. Everything was going swimmingly and we got it about 1/3 of the way home, and then...



The wheels literally fell off. Well, one anyway. Remember that loose wheel bearing I mentioned before? Well, it's really loose now! That pretty much killed the evening right there. It was well past dinnertime so we're going to go back and retrieve it tomorrow - I'm not worried about anyone stealing it the way it is right now. I wasn't planning on milling that log anyway, so we're just going to take a couple regular trailers and buck it into firewood and bring it back. It has a fair amount of whitespeck and honeycomb from end to end, so it'll burn fine but won't make decent lumber. I cut a firewood round out of the tree about 10' up from the stump and it's nice and solid there though, so I'm not sure how much of it is specked. That was fun, I finally got to run my 181SE with the 28" bar completely buried for the first time since I ported it. I think it's now my favorite firewood saw - my neighbor thought the log was still punky and soft down there because of how fast it cut! I'm interested to see how it will cut with skip chain on an 8-tooth sprocket - this was full-comp on a 7-tooth.

The trailer will be thrown on top of a long, low firewood trailer that my neighbor has and brought back home to fix. Now I have to find a pair of decent 4-bolt hubs that I can afford. Free would be the best, maybe it's time to load up the cutting torch and start visiting the rural dumps and backroads.

So right now, my to-do improvement list is:

1. New hubs for the wheels.
2. Replace the hand winch with an electric, and figure out some kind of quick-disconnect for its power leads.
3. Additional bracing from near the wheels up to the main crossbar as already discussed.
4. Weld a couple anchor points on each upright above the wheels, so I can connect a strap between them under the log for additional stability.

All in all, I have to say that I did fully expect something to go wrong on its first test run, and I pretty much expected that whatever failure there was would be related to the wheel assembly and not structural. But it always takes a couple trial runs to work all the bugs out, and now I saw first-hand what needed improving and why. I'm pretty excited about it overall though, once everything's all fixed up and it works as it should it'll make my life a whole lot easier. It's so nice not having to pick the log up to put it ON a trailer.

Took it into the bush today...

I had a couple hours free this afternoon, and my neighbor was outside working on his firewood, so I asked him if he'd be interested in going up in the woods and trying to haul a log back. We've both had an eye on the same big Fir tree that came down over the winter, and it was a good size to try this thing out with. We cut a 12' length at about 18" diameter (there's still at least 50' of the bottom left, about 30" at the butt). When I started winching the log up with the hand winch, the gears started skipping in the winch once the weight was really on it. Upon inspection, the two gears are barely even engaging each other - they should be at least 3/16" closer. Cheap Chinese crap. So, it looks like I'll be throwing the electric winch on it sooner than I'd planned on.

Since the hand winch wasn't going to work, we had to get creative. I unhitched the trailer and turned the quad around to face the trailer, blocked the wheels of both units, and used the winch on the quad to lift the log. I then used the hand winch and a couple chains and ratchet tie-down straps to secure the log to the trailer, turned the quad back around, and hitched it up again. The wheels were taking the weight of the log pretty well, and it wasn't terribly heavy to lift back onto the hitch. Once it was all loaded up, this is what it looked like:




The trailer and the quad both took the weight extremely well. With the quad in low gear, I barely had to give it any throttle to get everything moving. Everything was going swimmingly and we got it about 1/3 of the way home, and then...



The wheels literally fell off. Remember that loose wheel bearing I mentioned before? Well, it's really loose now. That pretty much killed the evening right there. It was well past dinnertime so we're going to go back and retrieve it tomorrow - I'm not worried about anyone stealing it the way it is right now. I wasn't planning on milling that log anyway, so we're just going to take a couple regular trailers and buck it into firewood and bring it back. It's quite knotty and has a fair amount of whitespeck and honeycomb from end to end, so it'll burn fine but won't make decent lumber. I cut a firewood round out of the tree about 10' up from the stump and it's nice and solid there though, so I'm not sure how far down the tree the speck goes. That was fun, I finally got to run my 181SE with the 28" bar completely buried for the first time since I ported it. I think it's now my favorite firewood saw - my neighbor thought the log was still punky and soft down there because of how fast it cut! I'm interested to see how it will cut with skip chain on an 8-tooth sprocket - this was full-comp on a 7-tooth.

The trailer will be thrown on top of a long, low firewood trailer that my neighbor has and brought back home to fix. Now I have to find a pair of decent 4-bolt hubs that I can afford. Free would be the best, maybe it's time to load up the cutting torch and start visiting the rural dumps and backroads.

So right now, my to-do improvement list is:

1. New hubs for the wheels.
2. Figure out some kind of quick-disconnect for the electric winch's power cables.
3. Additional bracing from near the wheels up to the main crossbar as already discussed.
4. Weld a couple anchor points on each upright above the wheels, so I can connect a strap between them under the log for additional stability.

All in all, I have to say that I did fully expect something to go wrong on its first test run, and I pretty much expected that whatever failure there was would be related to the wheel assembly and not structural. But it always takes a couple trial runs to work all the bugs out, and now I saw first-hand what needed improving and why. I'm pretty excited about it overall though, once everything's all fixed up and it works as it should it'll make my life a whole lot easier. It's so nice not having to pick the log up to put it ON a trailer.

looks good to me

I think with the improvements you have in mind this will be a handy tool. Love to see scrap put to work...