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

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Logging got real inefficient and unprofitable due to the amount of rain, and associated issues, so stopped and did something else for awhile. Things are drying up so we are back at it. Don't have the full crew down yet. They are finishing up there other commitments, but are on their way after those. This job just requires me and Jerry to skid out the already cut and topped trees. Like a moron I left the keys at the house, but had already fueled and greased the skidders, so we worked all day without chainsaws, seemed wrong, LOL, but out of 140 trees I only found one that didn't get topped so far, so not bad. Running Skidders is much more profitable than running saws, LOL, so it was a good day.

Sam
 
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Well, we're back, but the ground is not giving up without a fight, as per the below photo, LOL.
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It rained maybe 1/4" the afternoon/evening of the first day working and it was suppose to rain during the night. I watched the radar and never saw anymore rain go through there, so we went and worked yesterday, tried to pull a few skids, but the bottom ground between the logs and the landing is pumping bad. I got stuck here just trying to get some tops swung onto the trail. So we just staged logs for the rest of the day getting them ready to go. We are going to just start dropping the pulp wood onto the trail and drive over that, its really just one section of maybe 50 yards that is the problem.

Muddy trail aside we had a good day, it was cloudy no dust, due to light rain wasn't hot, only had to top two trees, took off early to ride horses with the kids and get ice cream from town. Not sure when the owner of the logs is going to mark them up, he said he wanted to, as he wants to haul some trees out tree length and cut them up at the mill, which is fine by me, less cutting and loading for me. We will probably pull out another 200+ logs and then need to buck up, as it won't be practical to haul the rest farther out into the field.

I only took two pics all day, here is the other one, its just a nice red oak that Jerry is pulling out. Will likely make a 20-24 foot mat log out of the first section and maybe a 16 foot out of the top section. These are nice sized for handling, can pull two quickly or three at a medium pace. Here Jerry just found it on a hillside and is going to stage it with 1-2 smaller logs for the longer skid out, when we get the bottom trail fixed.
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Later,

Sam
 
I'm not sure if the links are working above.
Here is the Cat 518 stuck in the main trail:
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And here is Jerry with that red oak.
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Try this again,

Sam
 
Here are the photos from yesterday:

Here I got the CAT 518 stuck again, in a wet bottom down another valley. I was grabbing the log tops from across the wet spot up the other hill and pulling them to this side.
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Jerry taking a hitch to the landing off in the distance.
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Well here is the good and bad of today, we'll start the with bad, I've never flipped a skidder before, so this was a first. It wasn't very exciting, lost about 3 gallons of hydro oil and a few turns worth of time and production, but no apparent harm to the CAT 518. Was pulling two forked oaks and they caught on a stump at a bad time, when I was turning down a little hill. Jerry, pulled it over with the 540B and it started right up and pulled the next hitch out to the landing to check fluids.
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Here I'm standing on the CAT 518 cab, trying to figure out where Jerry is at. He had lost a log and it was partway up his "hill" trail, so he went back and got it.
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Here is his next hitch of crap wood:
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Now for the good:

Some random hitch:
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We are pretty happy with the amount of logs we got out today. This doesn't count or show a large amount of pulp only hitches that are way farther away. 1/2 of the middle row and everything on the long right row was pulled today. Several people thought it would take us two weeks to get this skidded out and we are basically done except for pulling the logs used for making the bridge and some pulp that was laid in the main trail to drive over.
Jerry
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Me
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Here is a pretty view, there are a lot of nice logs pulled today:
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This row goes for a long ways past where you can't see it anymore, Everything you can see and some that you can't was also pulled today.
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Some skidding videos:

 
Nice stuff! Seem's like around here for awhile, upside down or on it's side was a normall position for a skidder, according to my buddie's pic's, and tale's. His family has a local logging company take's ball's to rune em in the hill's. My hat's off to em!
 
Hey Sam, were you seat belted in when she went over? Glad ya didn't get pinned or something.

When I was in 6th grade, a girl in my class had a teacher quietly come get her out'a class. . . Her dad had been killed in a skidder rollover. Not cool.

BTW, does your wife scrub the laundry on them abs? LOL

Ol 056 has a 12 pack too, but it's in his refrigerator! Hahahahaha
 
Hey Sam, were you seat belted in when she went over? Glad ya didn't get pinned or something.

When I was in 6th grade, a girl in my class had a teacher quietly come get her out'a class. . . Her dad had been killed in a skidder rollover. Not cool.

BTW, does your wife scrub the laundry on them abs? LOL

Ol 056 has a 12 pack too, but it's in his refrigerator! Hahahahaha

No wasn't seat belted in, it would have been a good idea though, LOL. I did have to take some measures to not go out the door before the machine was settled, as it did almost happen that way. I just pushed myself into the upper back right corner of the cab and road it down. As soon, as it settled, I shut it off and climbed out and took the photos, as I could hear Jerry, coming up the trail. I positioned him and pulled the cable, hooked the cable to the right A-Pillar and he pulled it back over pretty easy.

056 reminds of this saying:

It's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or when the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worth cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt


I do my work, and it gets done faster and cleaner than most have ever seen it done, regardless of what state or region that I have logged in or who I have logged for. The guys that work for me like how I run things and they are given an equal voice in trying to get thing done as efficiently as possible, thats why they come back. What some hillbilly in cyberland, thinks is not overly important, as it is quite apparent that for all of his knowledge and experience that he has supposively amass in the last 2-3 years from when he cut his first tree to now (his first posts on this forum are some of the dumbest ever), he has little to nothing to show for it, except for a 12 pak in the fridge, LOL, but its good, it takes all kinds to make the world go around.

Like I always say, everyone can serve as an example, some of them, as bad examples, LOL.

We are back at the hotel, we have bucked up everything and are taking showers and going to go back out and start moving the machines to the front of the property, cause its 3 miles of dirt/rock road back to them and the low boys don't want to go to the back (I don't blame them).

Going to go work again on that nice swamp/bottom ground that we were on this spring and finish it, there is likely 150-200 acres still to cut. Timber buyer is up there now finishing marking a back line in the last corner of one of the properties. Bert, my best cutter is going to be coming down pretty soon, I saw that he called twice today. Jerry and I are going back to Kentucky to put a new undercarriage on the Mustang MTL20 Skid Steer and probably bring it up to move logs at that job. Will see how it goes.

Later,

Sam
 
I started reading from page one.

I like your work, your attitude, and your set-up, but most of all your willingness to share it all with us. Thank you for taking time from your day to make videos, take pictures, and post messages. It would be a pleasure to meet you someday.

Always liked the Kickapoo Valley area. I take it your father farmed somewhere around there? I had family that farmed outside of Hillsboro many years ago.

Take care and thanks again,
Marty
 
I started reading from page one.

I like your work, your attitude, and your set-up, but most of all your willingness to share it all with us. Thank you for taking time from your day to make videos, take pictures, and post messages. It would be a pleasure to meet you someday.

Always liked the Kickapoo Valley area. I take it your father farmed somewhere around there? I had family that farmed outside of Hillsboro many years ago.

Take care and thanks again,
Marty

Well said.

Thanks for the updates Sam.
 
Thanks for the good words guys.

I took several photos of us removing the bridge, not that it was a big deal, but it was a low key event, LOL, but this is the only one that was on the memory card, don't know what happen.
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To me this is just a beautiful sight, LOL. There is more toward the left, but it is flat and can't get a photo of it. We bucked it all up in about 2 hours. We didn't have to cut all of it as the timber buyer had to quit marking due to someone at the sawmill about cut their hand off, so he left. We then just cut the forks and knots off and left a lot tree length for easier loading and hauling, as per instructions. The sawmill is about 8 miles away, and they have a deadline for getting all of the wood off the property, and there is still a lot to haul at other locations on the property.
This was one of our longest skids ever with some logs having to go up/down 3 hills, and it all came out really fast. Our setbacks were:
1. 540B had a leak in the hydro line from the brake nitrogen tank that had to be replaced.
2. Bridge chain broke and had to stop and fix it.
3. Cat518 got stuck twice.
4. Flipped the Cat518
5. Main trail was pumping and had to drop pulp in it to get across.
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Here is what my gypsy setup looked like going down the road, LOL. The diesel tank is empty and sitting on 4 sets of skidder chains. I was glad the one hour trip didn't involve any major roads or cops, LOL.
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Today we are going to replace the undercarriage on the little track loader.

Later,

Sam
 
Just to show the different definitions of Flat Ground. This is flat ground out here. I have never heard of anyone tipping over on level ground. Tipovers happen on slopes and when going off the edge of roads, or going too fast and losing control.

Here are flat ground photos. Flat is 35% slope and less. However, while walking units, 50% slope can seem flat after being on 90% ground. These photos show our gentle and rolly flat ground. Higher up, the processor operator said he ran into trouble as the cab was self levelling so one does not realize how steep of ground one is on. We had to make some changes and switch the upper parts of the unit to helicopter yarding.

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Well between jobs, we put a new undercarriage under the skid loader and cleaned up the shop.
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Still need to organize the tools a bit, but its a vast improvement.
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Unloaded my 4 chains, 2 have never been used and 2 have about 20ish hours on them, and I think I'm going to just sell them all, as they don't work very well in the bottomless mudd around here, because you just sink faster with them, LOL. If its dry, you don't really need them. They help in climbing over downed trees and branches, but just not worth the bother.
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Here Jerry is clearing out a landing of a more appropriate size for our needs. We need to be able to get the log truck with the loader and pup trailer down the ramp and then back the semi down next to it for easier/faster loading. The bottoms ground is so dang soft its just hard to get much weight on it. I'm thinking about having some tree service companies dump loads of wood chips to kinda fill in some low spots. Not sure how good it will work, I know of some trail riding companies that have used wood chips with some success on muddy trails and areas used by horses and tractors, so will see, won't hurt anything.
Before:
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After:
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Here is the loader and various tools and things loaded onto the long trailer. Stopped to fill the 100 gallon tank in Kentucky as it is a little cheaper than Illinios.
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Moved the two grapple skidders one morning CAT 518 with Swing Boom on the back and the 540B Single Grapple on the front:
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They are mating, LOL.
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We cut a few trees one evening and messed around, had to work in another line of work today, so didn't do much logging greased the skidder tonight and got things ready for tomorrow. Have to make some 28" chains in the morning, had a 25" bar on the painted Sawzilla 441 and I just hate using a 25" bar, just never got use to using one, I know where the tip is on a 28" bar, but a 25" is just weird, for this size timber it always seems like its too big or too little, and I like the reach of a 28" for limbing. Going to use the 28" Stihl Lite bars that I have, and see how I like them ............. not sure what there is to NOT like, LOL.

Sam
 
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