Some Ideas On Milky Hydraulic Fluid !!!!!!

[myrtle]

Myrtle, what is the biggest turn those machines can handle rigged like that?

I can understand putting a brow log just behind the idlers, I do that when throwing logs on a grade.

For comparison. On average day I can fell and buck three loads, grapple log it out to say 5/6 throws, bump the knots and deck it.

On previously cut timber where all I have to do is log it and bump the knots, I can get 6 loads/day pretty easily.

That puts my loads/man rate at 2/3 (on average).

Where I really fall down is on the deep holes and long corners where it might take me a couple hours pulling stumps and digging a track berm to log out two or three turns. Thats where I'd like to be able to use a drum set up.

The set up I was looking at mounted the drums, (smaller cap.) on the boom, one on each side. I might have a pic of it. Will look.

Regardless, I have logged with just about every kind of set up imaginalble and have never seen anything that compares to the cost effectiveness, minimum crew, and easy, than a grapple shovel.

Turns average two 40' logs. They can usually handle up to a 30" DF forty. Thats about as big as it gets on BLM. Well 'till our new management plan goes into effect and we can get away from the Northwest Forest Plan..... (maybe)

Yeah, you can't beat shovel logging for efficiency on good ground. I could see how some drums and a simple shotgun or mechanical carriage could allow you to save a bunch of time and effort by yarding long corners or steep draws to a swing landing in the brush. What I see on our thinning sales is half of what the Yoder is capable of doing. It could be pretty slick to use a single tailhold and walk the machine along a ridge, yarding as you go without restringing lines.

If I could dream with someone else's money, Eagle does make a Yoder-sized grapple carriage with a video camera on it....

 

[Bushler]

I think the Cat 325 is a bigger machine than the Deere 270 LC, not sure. If I had to scale back from the 40' X 30" turn max it just wouldn't work. Maye by high lead instead of skyline/carriage I could do it. I have plenty of lift.

Appreciate the input. I logged for WeyCo on the Delwood side, 4 decades ago.

 

[myrtle]

I think the Cat 325 is a bigger machine than the Deere 270 LC, not sure. If I had to scale back from the 40' X 30" turn max it just wouldn't work. Maye by high lead instead of skyline/carriage I could do it. I have plenty of lift.

Appreciate the input. I logged for WeyCo on the Delwood side, 4 decades ago.

Don't hold me to that max turn size, thats just what I have seen on our sales. I'm sure a guy could get more if he was not hanging out as far or wasn't using a motorized carriage.


Delwood eh? The guys I started working with before they recently retired told me tales of the WeyCo operations. They liked to tell me about those off-highway trucks that used to run on that mainline. They said you had to find a hole to hide in when you heard them on the radio or you could end up in the water because the trucks took up both sides of the road when they came down river.

I spend my first summer here cruising sales on Cox Creek off of the North Fork Ridge Road. There is some steeeeep ground in that neck of the woods. I liked looking at all the recent WeyCo clearcuts in the area with all the 100' rock bluffs in them. They were probably the same stuff you logged.

 

[Bushler]

I worked for a gypo on those rock faces. WeyCo contracted out a lot of the dangerous stuff.

Is there anything left at the old Delwood dump? I remember watching them dump the off road trucks and building rafts to tow down to the mill. There was a rock face just past the dump where the water sheeted off into the road, we'd stop the crew bus there in the summer and wash off the dust. It was rude way to wake up if you were sleeping on the way out with an open window.

 

[slowp]

It used to seem like every unit here had one of those rock cliffs in it. Since the ground was usually less steep above, a road would be punched into where the slope dived off and the yarder set up there. The good thing is that there was usually some way to get around the cliffs on foot, so that wasn't a problem. We did a lot of "vegetation belays" while cruising the units. While burning them, we would do "firehose belays" and hope the hose was still hooked up to something sturdy on the landing.

 

[Bushler]

They let us off the cliff face with haywire. We had it rigged from the yarder to a short stob at the edge of the cliff, and every morning we'd put on pass chains and the engineer would lower us down. At night they'd haul us back up. It was gnarly.

The logs would all run into the steep guts and get half burried with rock rubble and we had to use dynamite to blow the choker holes.

I 'think' I remember the name of the Co. was Rock Point, and the hook tender's name was Sammy Hightower. Sammy was legend. He like playing with dynamite a little too much for my taste, and after about a month I quit and went back to work for WeyCo.

The worst part was we couldn't see above us, and had to stand ready to dodge rocks and rootwads that would get knocked loose. The chaser would stand on the edge of the landing watching....when something got knocked loose he'd signal the yarder engineer who'd blow a distress whistle. When we heard that, we'd focus our attention above, and wait, and wait, then run like hell when we saw the obvious path of the rock or rootwad.

Seemed normal at the time. Normal except for Sammy. He was strange.

 

[myrtle]

I worked for a gypo on those rock faces. WeyCo contracted out a lot of the dangerous stuff.

Is there anything left at the old Delwood dump? I remember watching them dump the off road trucks and building rafts to tow down to the mill. There was a rock face just past the dump where the water sheeted off into the road, we'd stop the crew bus there in the summer and wash off the dust. It was rude way to wake up if you were sleeping on the way out with an open window.

The truck wash is still there and flows all year round out of the side of the cliff. I think they filled in the log dump and sort pond they had there. There's nothing left but a big flat area where they keep a few culverts stockpiled.

The whole WeyCo operation seems on a downswing. There are only ever a few pickups at their office anymore. Most of their wood gets trucked out the east end of Delwood to get to the valley instead of coming into Coos Bay. I heard a rumor a few months back that they might be selling their operations on the coast here to concentrate on the I-5 corridor.