You might try mounting some additional lights at 45 degree angles wherever you can. I had some on my 6, switched separately from the regular working lights, and they really helped. You can never have too many lights.
Falling pics 11/25/09
- Thread starter Burvol
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You might try mounting some additional lights at 45 degree angles wherever you can. I had some on my 6, switched separately from the regular working lights, and they really helped. You can never have too many lights.
bitzer
******** Timber Expert
I actually took the two off of the sides. They were busted when I got the machine and I haven't replaced them yet. I definetely need them. I actually busted one of my back lights the other day too, so I was only running three. We are only getting about 10 hours of light these days. I didn't even bother to stack the logs out at the landing. I don't usually leave the machine with a full bunk, but the landing is on the owner's driveway and I'd hate to come back Monday and have the him tell me he had to move a bunch of logs to get out. I suck at stacking pulp sticks as it is.
LOL...lights. They're definitely an expendable. I tried lots of different kinds and finally settled on the regular Cat lights set in a metal mesh box with a hinged mesh cover. And I still whacked one now and then. I kept a few extra ready-made wires with quick connects handy, too. Sure beats trying to twist two wire ends together in the dark and rain.
Another trick...I found a control stick grip from an old fighter plane. The kind with several buttons and switches on it. I mounted it on the right hand control lever and ran my working light circuits to it. Once your muscle memory stores which switch does what it really makes things easier. No more fumbling all over the dashboard trying to find the right switch.
Steve NW WI
Unwanted Riff Raff.
On the lights, I tell ya what, if you can find a safe place for em, HID is the way to go. Tractor my renter plants with has em, they shine to the end of a 40' planter and then some, just about like daylight. They ain't cheap at $400 or so a pair, but you see just about every full time farmer that has to work at night adding em to the old machines and ordering the new with em.
Figure out where to hide em from the tree branches trying to get even with ya, weld em on, and fear darkness no more.
I seldom give 3 thumbs up to anything, but these are the exception. I might be putting a set on the firewood hauler for snowplow duty soon.
Lemme know if you want a link to a couple good places to buy em, I'd have to look a little to find it again.
If they'd have been around back then, God would've used HIDs for the sun.
Figure out where to hide em from the tree branches trying to get even with ya, weld em on, and fear darkness no more.
I seldom give 3 thumbs up to anything, but these are the exception. I might be putting a set on the firewood hauler for snowplow duty soon.
Lemme know if you want a link to a couple good places to buy em, I'd have to look a little to find it again.
If they'd have been around back then, God would've used HIDs for the sun.
Sounds good Steve. But...at four hundred bucks a pair if I busted one off on a limb you'd probably be able to hear me cussing from way out there where you live. If I busted a pair of them I'd probably have a good ol' time riggin fit.
Besides, us poor old broke loggers can't afford such fancy stuff. And everybody knows you farmers make BIG bucks.
Besides, us poor old broke loggers can't afford such fancy stuff. And everybody knows you farmers make BIG bucks.
Samlock
Addicted to ArboristSite
Up here the forwarder operators usually just leave most of the crosswise sticks behind. Still they appreciate putting them. 'Specially in the snowy season. Effectiveness is all.
A forester marked the timber? Lucky thing we don't have such a protocol here. Cutter makes always such decisions. In many cases a forester does never see the place, just maps and data. I say lucky, because a forester probably wouldn't give much thought for the actual felling.
I've taken a stick on my foot once too many times, I never go out there cutting sticks without a hook and a tong.
On the topic of lights, my brother outfits fire trucks, brush rig kind too, and all sorts of off road machines, he has these new surface mount LED lights he was showing me. They are all of about 3/4" thick and he puts them inside 3" C-channel guards that he makes. They are awfully bright, at least as bright as a 55watt tractor work light. I don't think he is paying more than $50.00 or so for them. Inside that guard they are just about bullet proof, he's never had one damaged or come off. I'll see if he can send me some pictures and more info. I don't know that he's mounted any on skidders, but he did put some on a hydra-axe type machine a few months ago and they take a beating.
Mr. HE
Mr. HE
Hey now, we're working on that. Part of it is training and part of it is making the markers understand and care that somebody will be in there after they're gone. I daresay you'd like working in my units -- I always have the big picture in mind, and will take a group or leave it depending on access and lay. The individual tree means nothing if the stand is ignored. One of my sales came down this spring and I couldn't be happier with the residual stand -- this thing is gonna go BOOM! in the next few years, and it already has five distinct cohorts growing in it, from scraggly prairie pioneers to knee-high seedlings. This was a third entry and is a textbook example of how to make VDT work.
bitzer
******** Timber Expert
My guy is actually a pretty good marker I think. He puts the little toe spot on the base, but gives me nice thick horizontals about eye level or slashes on the pulp trees. He tries to anticipate how the trees will lay out and mark accordingly and he really does have the future stand in mind as his ultimate goal. I do too for that matter. Hopefully I'll be back around at these same stands in 20 years. I know his job is tough in terms of layouts. He usually leaves the roads to me though. There is often some type of existing or old logging road I can use. I think no matter how you sliced it that pine stand was going to be a ##### to thin as I'm sure the first thinning is on many.
First entry sets the tone for the entries to follow. Screw up the first entry, and subsequent entries will be a game of catch-up. Roads will make or break an operation. Putting roads to bed may look good on paper, but if the stand is ever to be re-visited, it's best that there be an existing road-bed to recover and re-use. I worked in a first-entry pre-commercial unit not too long ago which was a 30+ year old plantation, long-forgotten. It was the intact road grades under the canopy that made the operation possible; the wet ground would otherwise have ground things to a halt. Finding good rock under a foot of leaf debris was a bit of very good fortune.
Samlock
Addicted to ArboristSite
Haha, I'm confident working in your units would be a shear hell, Nate, just as it is anywhere in the world...
This is one of the cultural differences. If you came here and painted a stand for cutting as usual, people would take long drives just to see that. You do that once, it would make a tourist attraction. You do that twice - they'd send you to an art school!
No marked trees in the commercial logging. Never. All you get from a forester is an e-mailed map, a copy of the sales and a copy of the forest plan - if there is one. The cutters - nowadays they always arrive alone - figure out themselves what to do next. There is pre-meditated schemes for thinning based on species, basal area, DBH and height. You just follow them unless there's some other agreement. The foresters here don't get much time in the woods. You very seldom see a fellow human being during the cutting days. The foresters got their aerial pictures and laser scanning data and plans and other computer things to play with.
Your way works there, I believe. Our way sometimes doesn't work, but it usually does.
Sometimes calks get worn a bit in the scuffing at the dirt to "see if there's any rock under that." There usually is. And the old roads were often wide. Very wide.
Hey, now, I have an art degree, too...
We use that stuff in initial planning and in landscape-level modeling, but we still have to go in and ground-truth what we THINK is there and then mark accordingly. LIDAR and airphotos and all that are great for planning, but they're never better than just snapshots in time, and always in the past, no matter how recent.
bitzer
******** Timber Expert
The new job. This is the flatest part. The steepest is getting a little sketchy for forwarder country I'm thinking. Working the northeast corner of this hill but there is timber all over it and down the other side. A lot of ash reduction and maple. Short trees with only 20-30 feet of logs in them. The rest is pulp/firewood. Feels damn good to be cutting some sawtimber though. I made 100 cords over the last three weeks with only a trickle of about 8,000bf to go along with it. I'm enjoying the crashing and destruction again.
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Samlock
Addicted to ArboristSite
Tendency here is that more and more of the ground-level responsibility is given to the workers. I hear a big forest company is currently hiring economists for managing the forest operations... I don't really mind. The mindset of my countrymen has always been that the workers will know best how a job should be done, that the bosses and officers and other executives are there just to make things more difficult. Yes, there is nowadays a new profession too, a "Jack-Forester", who's responsible of field planning and operations and does cutting too. That's one of my options in the (near) future as I'll wear out and can't keep up the pace no more.
Off the "injured" list as of about an hour ago! Wrist is still tender, and doesn't bend quite right, and my whole arm kind of weak, but everything's there and works pretty well. Glad to have that more-or-less over with.
paccity
Addicted to ArboristSite
glad to hear it. are you doing any physical theripy? i know when i blew mine up and they took most of the metal out it took a lott of time to get it working . still don't work rite but i live with it.
Pretty sure this plate is staying put -- the docs are pleased by the way the bone is growing around it. The therapy is minimalist; mostly just stretching to regain range-of-motion. I'd say I'm about 50% of the way there. Won't be doing push-ups for awhile still, tho.
Metals406
Granfodder Runningsaw
When my old man severed his tendons in his wrist, he used to sit and watch TV and squeeze a handball (or tennis ball) to regain his strength in the hand. Worked pretty good too.
Glad to hear your healing up Rasputin! :evilgrin:
