I have never cut a Sycamore. What is it worth, that log on the payloader? What is it used for?
Nice pictures and pretty country. I too am curious about the Sycamore. What is it used for - pallets? There is quite a bit down here along the creeks. Ron
sycamore can be used for pallet stock, ties, mine timbers, or in this instance it was gonna be sawed into roof bolt blocks for the coal mines, its in the .20-.35 price bracket.
Nice looking pics! I like that 344 E loader too. My uncle had one a few years back now and it was awesome, It carried everything! I don't think we picked up one log that it couldn't carry. Good job! Rep sent!
That 344E is sweet, when i got it i didn't know if it would be big enough (was really looking for a 444 E,G or H series) but now i love the thing, I haven't found a log it won't pick up yet, and since i can move any length of log if it is big i can just cut it short enough to handle, rather than sending a big 20' (for mine timbers) i can cut it back to 2 10' and the pay is the same with half the strain. i found that machine in michigan, it was a 1990 and had 1135 original hrs on it!! i jumped all over it and haven't looked back!
And I was excited about getting my 70' something 440B tonight! I was gonna post pics..........but now I guess I won't. LOL I feel inadequate...........
Nice pictures, I wish the ground around here laid like that. Played with the skidder tonight, probly gonna put it in the woods tomorrow, will attempt to post some pics if my feeble mind can figure out how to post em'!
Tom
Would it be wrong to rebadge my 440 as a 540 GIII??? LOL, after seeing those pictures it feels a little inadequate too......:msp_wink:
Everybody has to start somewhere, its a big leap of faith to jump out and buy equipment. i was 23 when i bought my skidder, i had been logging for several years, but it was definitely a gut check to spend as much money as i could have bought a house for on a piece of equipment and jump into it.
as for the 540 GIII's, that is my favorite series of skidder, for a cable machine i would want nothing other than one of those, personally i would get a GII or GIII because the cab jacks over, once you have one that does that you will never look back.
Really great pics. workin in those bluffs is interesting. Thats good to know it will winch itself up. I'm very impressed with the size of your timber. What is sycamore like. Hard like oak or soft like cottonwood? ?
Nice lookin show you have there. !!
That was a nice piece of property that i was logging with the bluffs, but it was a bit of a pain to log. was prolly that most road building i had ever had to do on a job, the ground was broke up enough i was building roads with the dozer just to run the skidder, i prolly have close to 3-4 miles of roads running through that property due to the way the ground laid out.
Without the winch i would have never got to the top, the spot i had to go up was the least steep, but was still to much to climb and i had to turn in the middle of it, i never had the dozer hanging by the cable, but the machine would slide if the slack was taken off the cable... it would have been no good if the cable would have broke. there was about 3-4 acres of good timber on top (box canyon on one side and forest service on the other-thats why i had to go up the bluff) which is why it was still there cuz the last guys didnt wanna/couldn't get it.
as far as sycamore goes, i would call it a medium hardwood. it isn't like cottonwood and it isn't hard like hickory or sugar maple... honestly i would compare it too a nice red oak, with a good chain you can motor right through it, it is a fairly dense and has a bit of weight to it, and this time of year generally quite a bit of water, (bottomland species)
HEY! Don't be so quick to hang yourself! The 440B is a legend! They will run forever and a day, and they are like a go-cart in the woods, extremely agile and nimble. Parts are available and cheap. The only thing to remember is they are not super stable on slopes, and they are not over-powerful. Load light and run often. They are very quick, use that to your advantage.
You did the right thing buying a JD. The lock-in axles are the best thing since sliced bread. No crabbing like a Tree Farmer or old Clark or TJ. Oh, and the 440B will run a week on a tank of fuel! Try that with a 648G-III !!
The 440B are good skidders, agreeable with Oldtimer on the stability of the machines though, they are light and don't have a real wide stance, there fore you can flip one just by catching a stob or root with the tire.
I was honestly looking for a 548 G-GIII when i went to buy equipment, but couldn't find what i wanted, this machine was local. I got to run it on a job and new what i needed when i got it. and now that i'm used to it i like the size. I could have saved myself quite a bit of money by going smaller, but when im cutting timber i can't stand waiting on a skidder, so i want a machine that can keep up.
to go along with that, i keep pretty good track of machine hours and fuel consumed, when i pull onto a job i right down the hours of each machine and know how much fuel i have, and keep track of the number of trees cut, when the job is all said and done i know what the total bdft was, how many trees and how many machine hours and how much fuel it took and keep a mental log of the terrian/conditions. Therefore when i look at a job it have an idea of volumes/hr that i can produce and gives me an idea of how long it will take and what kind of inputs i have.
I'm a thinker, and its alot of numbers (which im good with) but it helps me keep better track of things. on a rough hill job or a really long skid the skidder will average 1500 bdft/machine hour, an average job it bumps up to 2000-2200, and ive had it up as high as 4500-5000 bdft/hr (15 trees/ hour on flat bottom jobs) When i bought that 648 everybody was saying it will be a big fuel hog, and yes it does burn more fuel but it gets more work done. if you can get it in the grapple it will pull it. a good turn is around 1000 bdft (3x350bdft trees) it will pull more than that, but you spend more time trying to grapple them and regrapple them if you lose any on the way to the landing. and ive seen it continuously make 1500-2000 bdft turns cutting big bottom timber, so yes i burn more fuel but this thing is a horse!! it all boils down to averaging 500 bdft/gallon of diesel in the skidder.
as for the loader, it isn't too hard on fuel at all, and it averages around 6000 bdft/hr, that is sorting, stacking, and loading trucks, so that isn't too bad.
and when i'm cutting timber i usually average 8-10 trees per hr, that is cutting and topping. that is a long running average, some hours it is 15, some it is 5, lol.. but day in day out 8-10, so usually works out to around 2-3000 bdft per hr.
clear as mud, right??? i keep pretty good track of stuff so if you have any questions about how i figure things just ask.
opcorn:
