Topping spar trees

[Humptulips]

Never tiped one over but I was standing along side the drums inspecting the lines when we broke both gantry straps. Boom sure hit the ground fast. Straps were less then a 6 months old. Line shop hadn't cleaned the acid off when they poured the babbit in the Ds. Corroded. Luckily no one was in the chute so nobody was hurt.

 

[oregoncutter]

Makes You realize just how mortal You are!

Never tiped one over but I was standing along side the drums inspecting the lines when we broke both gantry straps. Boom sure hit the ground fast. Straps were less then a 6 months old. Line shop hadn't cleaned the acid off when they poured the babbit in the Ds. Corroded. Luckily no one was in the chute so nobody was hurt.

Never spent that much time on the landing working around the towers, must have been a tower yarder? I know those tsy 70s run two cables on drums, and 2 big ass bolts for the boom but with as much stress as they take I wouldn't count on the bolts much. I've been on the landing for two swing yarders coming over the first one was a result of too heavy a turn and we were running a motorized bowman internal drum dropline carriage so sometimes You're at the mercy of the rigginslinger, and an idiot of an operator, the tailhold tree pulled over and he set the brake on the skidding drum, broke the left guyline cable,slacked the center and right cables, and ended up on his nose, gantry in the dirt nobody got hurt too bad, other than he was rattled, and he about dumped 75ft of guyline on me as I ran straight toward the shovel (somebody told him if you are going to tip, dump you're guylines so You don't snap over). The second was an arrogant hooktender that couldn't pick a good stump if his life depended on it( despite lot's of remarks about his por choice of stumps), soft dirt landing in the winter long roads lot's of lift, plenty of stumps, rocks, and bluffs and again another bowman carriage, he was using a about a 24'' poorly rooted second growth stump on the left, a rotten to the core old growth about 5 ft for the center, and a poorly set d6 for the right guyline, got in a hard pull and the front right corner of the yarder dipped down hard pulled the left stump, guyline went right through the rotten one, yarder operator started sucking in the d6, and considering went over fairly gentle on his side the gantry got hung up on the boom of the loader just forward of the cab, and that was about all that kept him from going on down the hill. I was good and clear packing coils to the riggin truck a short ways off when it happened. The real work is the cleanup, and setup to get em greasy side down again, not to mention the shaken up operators, and lost time and money.

 

[Humptulips]

I hear you about the clean up afterwards. We pulled the top out of a Washington 127 once. Mainline fairlead landed a couple hundred feet down the hill. Haulback fairlead about 40 feet off the landing. Cut the haulback off but the skyline just sidewashed over the top of the tube. What a mess! Other then that and broken lines probably the worst thing I done was tore off a leveling jack while moving. Oh, and a few broken tracks on Madill tank mounts. Allways had trouble with those tank undercarriages. They are made to breakdown.

 

[oregoncutter]

I hear you about the clean up afterwards. We pulled the top out of a Washington 127 once. Mainline fairlead landed a couple hundred feet down the hill. Haulback fairlead about 40 feet off the landing. Cut the haulback off but the skyline just sidewashed over the top of the tube. What a mess! Other then that and broken lines probably the worst thing I done was tore off a leveling jack while moving. Oh, and a few broken tracks on Madill tank mounts. Allways had trouble with those tank undercarriages. They are made to breakdown.

Never had much trouble with the Thunderbird tracks or undercarriages, but all of em I have been around required alot of maintenance on the pneumatic (air)system. I remember one operator in particular that was good at fouling the skidding line, I'd work my ass off guiding it back on the drum clean, a few times a day, moving lines minus logs don't make much money, he finally did it up pretty good once with a turn on had it wound onto the shaft asembly over the drum and over the guard plate bent it, we worked for hours on it, could only slack the skyline so far and the skiddin line would come tight. So we made an eye in our unused haulback hooked a riggin chain to the skiddin line pulled some slack, attached the haywire 7/16 with another riggin chain to the skid line off the drum pulled some slack, set it all down, and basically cut our way clean, had to dissassemble the guards and plates to unravel the skidline, The next day we got a new skidline and Yarder engineer.