Some sawing, logging and skidding pics and videos ......

[Slamm]

Half day of work today for me, its Grandma's 96th birthday. The guys are still out working in a new 126 acre bottoms job, while it is snowing so they are coming after they pull some more trees. We just started this job two days ago and I'm going to split the guys up and some will work up north here and some will work about 50 miles to the south where we rented a house.

Here are some pics of the front 20+ acres portion of the clear cut job, we didn't leave much behind. As you can see most of the tops are together and any dozer work afterwards should be pretty easy for whoever has to do that.

There are still a few trees here and there to get, but maybe just a couple of hours of sniping logs with the swing boom.

Here is a video of the front acreage of the clear cut. As you can see we cleaned it up pretty good. Some of the slopes where the tree all went downhill look really clean.

 

[Slamm]

Here is a video of the new bottoms job we just started a couple of days ago. They have already took some truck loads of logs out.


Here is the start of a new Amsteel 3/4" Rope/Cable it is 130 feet long. I used the last 100'er last year and its down to about 40 feet, I will splice it into this 130'er when it gets shorter.

Here is 130 feet of 3/4" Amsteel after pulling about 10 big trees. There is still room for more but this seems to be a good length for the little 540B Skidder's Winch.

Pulled out all the way to spool it in. The skidder is on the other side of the Mustang Skid Loader. If you can't reach it will this length you might be in a bad spot, LOL.

Here it is pulling a nice Pin Oak that we cut a 20'+16'+10.5' and 14'4".

 

[Slamm]

Its bad wet in this bottoms ground. We are just relying on the freeze at night in order to stay working. We can skid 1-6 times per trail then we have to move over or the ground will start pumping. The water level is only maybe 12" below the ground in this area, so there isn't much room for tire spinning or you sink really fast. I just drove this track seconds ago.

Here is Bert finishing a leaning maple. He was waiting for me to get the bigger pin oak skidded out before he dropped this one ontop of it.

It has some rot on the bottom, so he is butting it off while I drive past.

Topping some pin oak. The kerf kept pinching on the top of the bar.


I think, that is it for photos and videos right now. I have to go to the clear cut job tomorrow and pull out about 30+acres of logs and pulp and won't have a computer around.

Later,

Sam

Sam

 

[Metals406]

Thanks for posting more Sam!

 

[Slamm]

Thanks for posting more Sam!

No problem, glad to do it. I don't know if they show up correctly, but some of the "photos" are actually videos, and I didn't state that they were/are so they might just look like pics. They are nothing special.

Later,

Sam

 

[banshee67]

Others are looking for work and complaining about the lack of logging work, and I'm hiring people and getting more machines paid for and making money, and certainly having fun by getting to work with guys that love to work.

I don't get it, but that is the internet for you.

exactly the way i was seeing it. while others are whining about which way you cut the tree down or what saw you chose to do it with, youre out living the american dream:flag:
thanks for sharing, keep em coming

 

[Slamm]

Thanks, Banshee. Here is somemore of this week.

Just for clarification. We are working two different jobs, the same clear cut job that we have been since early December and now we have started a new bottoms job, that started out to be 126 acres of 18" and bigger at Breast Height and now has grow by another 100 acres and will likely grow to several more neighbors, but what is killing us is the very soft bottoms ground and the thawing out of the mud. We don't want to overly damage our landing or make a mess that will discrouage the neighbors from wanting us to cut their timber, so we work as fast as we can when it is frozen and then mark and buckup during the afternoon warmup and then sort and stack the logs the next morning at 2am when it is froze again. Oh the joy of mud logging, LOL.

Here are some pics of from the landing when it got light enough to take a pic. I stacked those logs and smoothed the mud on the landing and beginning parts of the trails while it snowed. The piles on the left are blocking logs and the stack on the right is mat logs. There are a lot more logs in other spots, but I apparently didn't take any pics of them. What is coming out of this bottoms jog is Grade Ash, 16'/20'/24'/30' Mat Logs and various blocking/pallet lengths. We are getting a lot of pin oaks that we are getting a 20'er out of the bottom and a 30'er out of the top section. Great timber just don't have firm enough ground to work at maximum efficiency.

Here is photos from the larger clear cut job:
Here me and Jerry are making a bridge to get over to a large amount of logs that the guys cut in three days a few weeks ago. The creek banks are about 6-8' deep in spots, so we made a bridge.

Getting bigger:

And wider:

Here is a leaner hickory, I cut to make a bridge log:

Final result, smooth, 3 cuts:

We have since added a couple of logs to it and skidded about 50 logs over it, but then it got up to 46 degrees and we had to stop skidding before we damaged the trail too much.

 

[Slamm]

We hold the logs together with a chain and load binder. Put the chain around just the outside two logs and then run it underneath the other logs otherwise if you run it over the top or completely around the logs the tires and logs/knots will catch on your chain.

Here is a video of Jerry backing a log up to the bridge for placement:


I jumped off to take these photos of our bridge holding the 30,000lb skidder and side pulling a "close" log from the bank. There were so many logs laying everywhere, I would just back over the bridge grab one and then side feed it to the 540B grapple that was waiting for it, or I would just drop/stack them across the creek on the right there and he would come and pick them up. We have enough room on the other side now to begin staging logs and pulp piles on the otherside, but I was working fast and didn't want to stop too much for photos, as the ground was thawing out fast. I will get more photos of the operation next week, as its suppose to get down into the teens.

Here is just some shots of where the bridge is going to, Hammer and I took a walk to see what the guys had cut down:

 

[Slamm]

While some more of that is uploading I will put these three of the bottoms job in.

This is the road down to the landing. We have to stop traffic for the trucks to enter and leave the jobsite. This slows us down and is a pain, but you do what you have to do.

Bob, runs this picker truck and we are sure happy is comes to our little landing and hauls logs for us. We kept him running one day with 15,000+ board feet leaving, and that was just what Bert cut, Menno pulled out and I cut, sorted and piled for him, that day. We had frozen ground to work with for most of the day then.

Here is an oops, LOL, the track for the Mustang MTL20 finally decided to give out. I have ordered new tracks and they will be here Monday. So I moved all of the guys to the clearing job, because if the tracked skid loader can't function we are shut down due to the fact that we can't get the skidder close enough to solid ground of the landing, so I shuttle the logs over to those piles and sort them.

 

[Slamm]

Here is my buddy, Hammer, that walks the woods with me. He is pretty good at walking the logs and not touching the ground, LOL:

Here is more cut stuff:

Edited this post and put these videos in it:

 

[Slamm]

Here is a lot of logs at different locations at the clear cut:

 

[Metals406]

What a sloppy mess! Thanks for the pics Sam!

 

[Slamm]

What a sloppy mess! Thanks for the pics Sam!

LOL, yes it is. It is suppose to get colder this next week or two, so I think we should be okay. Trying to amass enough funds to finance "modding" the skidders a little and going over anything that might slow us down when it dries out this spring/summer.

I would like to get the skidders completely free of leaking any hydraulic oil, LOL. Then I want to start using only John Deere Hydro oil as I have seen the results of using this cheap oil and it isn't very good on the trannies. John Deere oil has a much better additive package in it and I now know of three trannys being tore down this week by farmers that starting using a cheaper oil. I'm going to check the differences between the Amsoi and Deere oil and see what I want to do. The CAT wheel loader and Skidder so far are doing good. Had to replace the fuel line in the 518 due to a section of bad rubber fuel line that was colapsing and starving the engine for fuel.

Later,

Sam

 

[lfnh]

Sure enjoyed the boatload of pictures of your work this afternoon.
Haven't had bare ground in 2 months. last snow brought the depth up to 3'+. The one coming this week could mean skiing in 2miles to fell, before mud season close down. hope you get a hard freeze up for skidding this week

 

[Slamm]

Sure enjoyed the boatload of pictures of your work this afternoon.
Haven't had bare ground in 2 months. last snow brought the depth up to 3'+. The one coming this week could mean skiing in 2miles to fell, before mud season close down. hope you get a hard freeze up for skidding this week

Thanks for the good wishes. We were going to try and skid tomorrow morning but it was 56* today and that put a lot of heat into the ground. The overnight low is just 30* so I talked it over with the guys and we are just going to not try it tomorrow, as it just won't be worth starting everything up just to get stuck and muck everything up, epsecially when the forecast shows some good 20's and lower temps over the next week. The guys are going to pull and buck and sort logs at the clearing job and Karen and I are going up to the Bottom's Job to put the new tracks on the track skid steer (hopefully) on Monday, because its going to get really cold on Tuesday and I'm not really interested in putting tracks on in the cold with the tracks frozen in the mud, LOL.

You get a lot of snow, we just get enough to insulate the ground (4") and then turn to mud in a few days and it cycles like that every few weeks, its a pain in the butt. I dislike this time of year around this weather "belt" because it just doesn't freeze up hard enough to know you can work for 1 week, it gets cold then hot and half of the day its frozen then the other half is 12" of mud, and if you don't smooth out your tracks at 2am then the next morning you are bouncing around over froze ruts for the first part of the day and then making new ones in the afternoon.

Last night I hauled 14 bales down from the farm in IL to my place in Kentucky. Spent the day messing around here and rode a new jumping horse prospect my daughter (10 yr. old) is working on.

Fun, fun,

Sam

 

[Metals406]

Sam, have you ever considered a Yoder/Jammer and mobile spar setup? You guys could do awesome in this type weather as there would be no mechanical footprint. . . Once the ground dried up, you could hop right back into mechanical mode.

In a lot of cases (from the pictures I've seen in this thread) you wouldn't even need the mobile spar, and you could just use a nice big oak or similar for a tail hold. Just rig high, guy it off, and get to yarding.

You could wagon wheel your butts off, or do sets 60' wide at a time.

Not trying to spend your money for ya or knockin' what ya got going. . . Just thinking out loud.

 

[hanniedog]

What is the reason for doing the clear cut?

 

[Slamm]

Sam, have you ever considered a Yoder/Jammer and mobile spar setup? You guys could do awesome in this type weather as there would be no mechanical footprint. . . Once the ground dried up, you could hop right back into mechanical mode.

In a lot of cases (from the pictures I've seen in this thread) you wouldn't even need the mobile spar, and you could just use a nice big oak or similar for a tail hold. Just rig high, guy it off, and get to yarding.

You could wagon wheel your butts off, or do sets 60' wide at a time.

Not trying to spend your money for ya or knockin' what ya got going. . . Just thinking out loud.

Do you mean for the clear cut job? Is that what is on the Axmen shows with the big cable machines, that drag the wood up the hills?

If so, that is/would be a great idea for the clear cutting job, but this is the only clear cut job I have ever done, and doesn't seem to be any more in sight so far, but I would seriously consider that approach if the job was this big ..... again. I do see your point, there would be no need for wheeled machines in the woods, just drop everything and "cable" it out overhead.

What does one of those cost (used of course)? and how many people does it take to run one?

Sam

 

[Slamm]

What is the reason for doing the clear cut?

To make money ................ LOL.

It is for some mining company, it is their way of getting around some dumb Indiana Bat program that the Sierra Club and other animal rights and tree huggers have going on. I don't know much about it, I just do my work and make my money ..... however immoral that might seem at the time.

Sam

 

[Slamm]

Metal, that has me really thinking, that is a great idea period. I assume it works just as good for this flat ground as it does on hills.

I don't see it working for our select cut stuff though, but I am gettting some ideas in my mind. For instance I could cut a straight shot through a woods, and then skid the logs over to the Overhead main line and then "shuttle" them the greater distance over the mud to the landing and too the loader/trucks.

You see, typically the skidders can do 1 or 2 skids per trail, before they break through and sink to over the tires, but with a long cable stretched across the job, they could short skid select logs over a greater range with less "harsh" footprint on main trails, cause the logs could be "cabled overhead" down the "main trail".

Again, what roughly does one cost and how long of a cable can I "throw" out there? What does it take to move one.

I need it to move about 800 bdft of hardwood per pull or slightly less would be fine.

I like this idea of yours,

Sam