I've logged with jitter bugs ( converted farm trucks) , farm tractors ,Duce an halfs, line ( cable ) skidders , rubber tired , FMC tracked line and grapple skidders , D5H grapple skidder DOZER, rubber tired grapple skidders , log shovels ( hyd tracked log loaders) , dozers, track loaders, snorkel track loaders , ( see Camp Inspectors avatar) been around diesel engined sled donkeys and spar trees and A Frames , stationary towers (Madill, Berger , Washington, Skookum ect , and swing yarders. And been around plenty of helicopter logging. I even did a bit of yarding with commercial seigners and my heavy welded aluminum skiff with a towing post. . May be some other form of yarding device I can't remember. Never worked under the balloons , but know guys that did. Oh Ya , I've hand logged ! Almost forgot that .I've fell trees that weighed close to 100,000 lbs. They don't make a buncher that can handle those. From what I've experienced , the modern direct drive , sprocket nose bared chain saw is the single most important piece of powered equipment in the woods. I'm the exact opposite of a conservationist !! But still a power saw is #1. Ground machines won't work most places on the coast up here. Wheel skidders are wonderful machines as are dozers and log shovels . same with towers. And if you like pullin haywire , spar trees and donkeys are Awesome. But the power saw is king of the woods. Because it is the only machine that will take an ancient boreal forest and turn it into logs and clearcuts. !!!
I think the chainsaw wins out, but only because of a non-logging reason. I am not that far removed from an old duffer (farmer/logger and even my foresters have said I am a dying breed), anyway I use my chainsaw for more then just logging. "Chainsaw carpenter' has a negative connotation, but when I wanted to build some beams in my home and have them look hand-hewn, I used my chainsaw. When I needed to make a few carpentry cuts, I have fired up the chainsaw, especially if I was away from electricity and to use a skillsaw would have required a generator and extension cord...in other words a pain to make the cut. A chainsaw though, just pull the ripcord then the trigger! But I also use it to make fencing, trim trees, move buildings and even crop rotate fields.
I have a skidder so I don't look at them as being evil, but part of that is because I have seen horse logging jobs that looked like a hurricane blew through after they were done, and skidder jobs that absolutely park-like. But I have also seen nasty ole skidder jobs,and nice looking hose-logging jobs. Here in Maine, with biomass being subsidized, a lot of logging is chip logging. It takes several forms, but the end result is that all the wood removed...with the exception of the sawlogs...is chipped up. Without tops and slash in the forest it looks good, but it is terrible forestry. A tree trunk is only 40% of the tree, so when it is chipped 60% of the future nutrients for the forest are removed as well. That is a lot. That cannot be good for soil or forest health. Here in Maine, we have what is called the 2 rule. That is where: Anything 2 inches in diameter or less, within 2 feet of the ground, will decay in 2 years time. In my experience, this holds true. So I drive over my brush and tops with my bulldozer and skidder to crush that brush down and get it rotting. This is building soil, but for the first few years it LOOKS horrid. The sad thing is, while those chips may reduce the nutrients in the soil by 60%, the land owner gets a lousy $3 a cord for them. I point this out to just show that looks is not always good forestry. It is a subjective nature for sure.
Interesting. I have been firewood hoarding with my father for almost 40 years, and I have always tried to convince him to leave the small stuff. He likes putting everything but the leaves in his firewood stack, and I think it's too much work to cut up anything much less than 2" diameter. So my brush piles are bigger than his. I do like to stack brush though, not leave it scattered all over the woods. Random piles here and there are more attractive to me, and presumably to wildlife. It will still rot, just not as quickly. If I can get to an old pile with my tractor, I drive over them or crunch them a bit with the forks or bucket, just to help them break down.
When watching the logging shows, the felling/limber/cut to length machine impresses me the most Sit in an air conditioned cab, fell/limb/buck acres per day But to the question Chain saw IMO
Well my grandfather had an 800 acre farm north of ST. Johnsbury. if anyone knows the terrain it is steep hilly and rocky... if I can ever find someone to turn the old 8mm film into digital files it would be awesome to post.. back then 1910 to 1940 time frames they had tractors each year they salesman came up and tried to convince gramps to buy the new tool a .. he had the money saved. each year he would point to the steep back hill and say if it can mow and bale that it's sold.. they sand bagged, weighted.. those that tried rolled. Gramps farmed with horses. Since he put up 55 cord firewood plus the sugar house. I figure he logged also.. the more cows and pigs you had the more fields ya needed! he only logged in winter before sugaring. horses pulled trees (limbed) to wood shed he had a two man saw a double bladed ax. the videos are.. but 55 cord each year that's what they would paid for some real insulation! he probably would have said tractor! he also cut firewood differently than anyone else I've seen.. after all trees were out he went back and girded tree with an axe.. meaning he stripped bark 3 feet high around base of tree in winter. where it died and dried. so he only had a 2 year plan.. obviously you don't cut this winters wood in 3 feet of snow that was next years.. the trees were dead and drying a year before they were cut down.
Yup . taking all the limbs, tops and other non merch out of the woods is Not good for the forest. I take limbs down to 2" diameter For my own firewood. I Very Much enjoy logging my own personal firewood with my 4 wheeler and wood trailer that I built. I can put almost 1/2 cord on it and pull it easily with my 650 Arctic Cat 4 wheeler. Historically I bucked it all 4' and loaded it with a pulp hook. I grew up with one in my hand . Just can't stand to pick up a lot with my hands. Now that my hands ain't like they used to be . I'm going to try a hand tong like the Swede's ect use. Not to replace my Peavey Manufacturing pulp hooks . But to augment them. Should be GREAT for poles !!! And maybe for lifting pieces onto the Champ.
Sorry for the derail. I really love skidders . Would love to have a 230 D Timberjack in great shape. Not really for making a living with. Just to have one and go log with for fun. If it's more than 3 easy steps to get in the seat , I loose my keenness to have a skidder. Settin my own chockers when its 5 or 6 steps in or out of the cab :-(.
I run a Clark 664C and it is so high up that I climb ALL DAY! That wears me out right there. Then there is no good way to climb down, so I jump, and that is very hard on the knees. I grew up with a pulp hook myself and miss Bucksport Paper Mill where they took 4 foot wood. It never made a mess in the woods; just a lot of woods roads from the tractor and trailer combination. Still we always had to put the big butt logs up high on the pile so that people thought we had a log loader! Practically blew out my back at 15 for such appearances, but that is what we did. My Grandfather now would be amazed at how we log and what we have. He saw skidders and was impressed, but I think he would be more impressed with my little log trailer. Considering the hours he spent moving 4 foot pulpwood and hauling it to the mill, he would be blown away that a 6.5 hp engine could do the same work so much faster and easier. It is not the size of the equipment, the fact that it is so small and does so much work!
I think that is the ultimate decision in any logging operation, no matter the scale or type of operation: what to leave behind. Right now I am recovering the tops of the hardwood logs I cut last week and it is a real bear; what a tangled mess. But what do I cut off and leave behind. I have already go my money out of the tree in the form of logs, but I hate waste too. I have found that after a year, when the tops, limbs and brush have dried out and are brittle, driving over them really crushes them down. My skidder is heavier at 16,500 pounds, but my bulldozer, even at only 10,200 pounds, has 3 inch high razor blades every foot and shatters the debris. I have a design in my head for an implement that can be towed by my bulldozer that will shatter this dried wood, but still roll up over stumps and rocks. Done a few times, it would allow me to break up my slash and get it to rot, and that would build my soil up. Granted I can rent a mulching head on an excavator, but that is VERY expensive. Now to build the thing!
I love bulldozer logging the best. Yesterday my skidder blew a rear tire so I finished out the twitch with my bulldozer and it was a lot of fun. As my wife noted, I smile when I am on my bulldozer. Sadly I am a dying breed. I know it is different out west, but here where mechanization has taken over, a farmer cutting his own woodlot off, taking care of his animals, etc is unheard of. When I had one of my foresters do my forest management plan there was an 18 acre section of forest that she never even put down. I was shocked as it has never been logged and could use some thinning. When I asked her about it, she was like, "Well I forgot you do your own logging. For a logging contractor it would not be worth their time, but for you it would." It just shows that landowners now have their wood cut off for them, and most have no idea where their property lines are, I have to show my own family theirs. It is too bad, for $750 for a chainsaw, and $12,000 for a cable skidder, a person could make a living. I have talked with mechanized guys, and not only do they have the challenge of finding 40 acres of wood to cut per day, they also make $500 at the end of the week doing it. Labor, fuel and machinery costs eat into over all profit. They won't go back to hand felling though, so either they got lazy, or they are whining!
Around here tracked skidders (there is a difference between that of bulldozers) are starting to come up for sale now that logging has all but died in the State of Maine. I am up in the air about them. Don't get me wrong, they would be great for logging, but I also clear land and so need to really push stumps. The Cat Tracked skidders are d6 sized which is the equivalent of a John Deere 700, and I ran one last year and was not impressed. Maybe the tracked skidders are different, but the JD 700 was hopeless. It only could push 3,5 cubic yards, did not weigh enough, and struggled pushing stumps. The John Deere 850 is only one sized bigger, but twice the blade capacity, way more horsepower, and twice the weight. The tracked skidder and an excavator would make a great combination, but once the stump is out of the ground, you only need a small dozer to move the stump because the hard work is already done. They are quick going back and forth too, and of course burn less fuel. I am in no way knocking the tracked skidder, I just don't know if it could push stumps well. If it did, it might be the ideal machine for me.
Well I like your scoot, or that is what we always called them. Maybe it is a Maine thing, but I grew up with them. Ours was a touch bigger than the one towed by your fourwheeler, but it was amazing the amount of wood that could be cross-hauled onto it, then pulled with our John Deere 1010. Not much of a bulldozer, which says what a scoot can do on frozen, snow covered ground. I always felt my log loader towed behind my tractor, loading a scoot pulled by my bulldozer would be a pretty good combination. The problem is Jay is not taking wood any more and they are the only ones that take 8 foot wood. My log loader is not big enough for tree length wood. :-(
A JD 850 Is a me awesome dozer it will push circles around the D5H grapple skidder DOZER I'm running in the pics. I just do my own personal firewood any more. I like to go have fun putting out a cord of firewood in a day. I just take my time , enjoy being out in the woods.
I want to build skis for my woods trailer. Weld up 4' long double ended skis on 4 wheeler trailer wheels with PTex nylon skins so they slide real easy. Double ended with an 8" rise. I could back right up to a rik in the woods and load away.
