Steve NW WI
Unwanted Riff Raff.
This could probably go in a couple different forums, but the a lot of the tree climbers are too snotty, and it wasn't really logging, so I'll share it with my firewood homies.
My neighbor lady has been worried about a row of pine trees falling on her house and wanted them down. They were mostly fairly straight, with a couple that had a light lean toward the house. It was nothing serious enough for me to worry and call in a pro, but it was enough to get my 3/8 Amsteel Blue rope out and lead em where I wanted them. There was only one good way to drop the row without having to move a propane tank, and the ground was soft enough that I'd have sunk the front end of the loader tractor trying to move it.
Here's the before pic, hard to tell exactly, but there's 8 red pines there, from 8" up to 16", average about 14".
The rigging, CMI pulley block chained to an oak tree, running down the trail to my M Farmall providing the pull. I need to get a big short strap to hang the pulley with, just haven't got one yet. If you're working with a long rope, having a pulley to redirect not only gets you out of the way better, but lets you stay out in the open instead of having to go in a straight line, which wasn't really possible here.
My buddy, the owner's nephew brought his little New Holland TC23D up to help. It pulls pretty well, but I had to pull the last few logs with the M, because they were bigger and on top of the hill, so the pull was harder. 7000# pulls much better than 3000#. It's a slick little tractor though, and if I didn't have bigger toys, I'd want one.
When "tractor wedging", I like a real thick hinge to make sure the tree goes in it's intended direction.
The last one was a double from about 3' up. We roped em together and dropped it as one. Here's the last one on the ground:
The pile of logs, my buddy plans to use em for firewood. We skidded em out to the trail to get them away from the house and to keep em out from underfoot when working the trees behind em.
Lots of brush to deal with. We hauled 3 loads this size on my wood hauler trailer to my back 40. They'll make nice bonfires later this summer. They unloaded pretty easy, just hook a chain to a couple big ones on the bottom, hook it to my buddy's truck, and yank. No manual labor involved. Notice we had lots of help loading though. It was pretty nice for me, I just cut, pulled, and limbed. I'm not ready for limbing on a logging crew yet, but by the end of the day, I had a pretty good system going.
The after view:
A video of pulling one of the bigger ones down, from the tractor seat:
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Vl9SkvuyqGc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The pay was excellent, a spaghetti dinner.
My neighbor lady has been worried about a row of pine trees falling on her house and wanted them down. They were mostly fairly straight, with a couple that had a light lean toward the house. It was nothing serious enough for me to worry and call in a pro, but it was enough to get my 3/8 Amsteel Blue rope out and lead em where I wanted them. There was only one good way to drop the row without having to move a propane tank, and the ground was soft enough that I'd have sunk the front end of the loader tractor trying to move it.
Here's the before pic, hard to tell exactly, but there's 8 red pines there, from 8" up to 16", average about 14".
The rigging, CMI pulley block chained to an oak tree, running down the trail to my M Farmall providing the pull. I need to get a big short strap to hang the pulley with, just haven't got one yet. If you're working with a long rope, having a pulley to redirect not only gets you out of the way better, but lets you stay out in the open instead of having to go in a straight line, which wasn't really possible here.
My buddy, the owner's nephew brought his little New Holland TC23D up to help. It pulls pretty well, but I had to pull the last few logs with the M, because they were bigger and on top of the hill, so the pull was harder. 7000# pulls much better than 3000#. It's a slick little tractor though, and if I didn't have bigger toys, I'd want one.
When "tractor wedging", I like a real thick hinge to make sure the tree goes in it's intended direction.
The last one was a double from about 3' up. We roped em together and dropped it as one. Here's the last one on the ground:
The pile of logs, my buddy plans to use em for firewood. We skidded em out to the trail to get them away from the house and to keep em out from underfoot when working the trees behind em.
Lots of brush to deal with. We hauled 3 loads this size on my wood hauler trailer to my back 40. They'll make nice bonfires later this summer. They unloaded pretty easy, just hook a chain to a couple big ones on the bottom, hook it to my buddy's truck, and yank. No manual labor involved. Notice we had lots of help loading though. It was pretty nice for me, I just cut, pulled, and limbed. I'm not ready for limbing on a logging crew yet, but by the end of the day, I had a pretty good system going.
The after view:
A video of pulling one of the bigger ones down, from the tractor seat:
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Vl9SkvuyqGc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The pay was excellent, a spaghetti dinner.
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