A winch is "half the tractor". You have no idea how many times I have had to winch, drive the tractor ahead, winch the trees back up to me, drive the tractor ahead, etc just to get out of a wet spot. It makes for long days, but it gets the wood out. I have a log trailer now, but even then my winch is attached to my tractor and my log trailer is attached to a hitch I welded on my winch. In this way I fell my trees, then use my winch to pull the tree length wood up to my log trailer since it has 150 feet of steel cable, then pick the trees up with my grapple so I don't dull my chainsaw by hitting the ground, and load 8 foot onto my trailer. (One of the paper mills I haul wood to buys only in 8 foot lengths). I would NEVER be without a winch. Its bad enough logging without a winch on my dozer, but in most cases I just use the dozer to build roads for my tractor that does have a winch! (By the way, I use my winch to move big round bales of hay around too. Just wrap the cable around the bale, attach the hook back to the winch and suck it in. Then pick the whole bale up and drive off with it. With a bale spear on front, and my winch on the back it is perfectly balanced and gets me two bales instead of one. My log trailer easily grabs bales too now though and I can get two on that and one in the front). Here is my tractor/winch/log trailer set up. It really works well.
Dang you and your trailer, that's another item I'm just too cheap to buy but it is on my build list, one day A neighbor has one that I can steal the critical boom measurements from, again, one day. I drool over them on youtube, and the articualted and driven ones, I gotta go calm down now.
Very jealous! I could really use a logging winch and a root grapple lately. Not in the budget this year. Definitely on the short list for the future.
I hear you. I am a welder by trade working in various shipyards and railroads and it upsets me at the price of things. This log trailer was interesting because it was up to a equipment dealer just as I really needed something for my bulldozer. My tractor does well pulling wood, but is limited to where it can go, so I bought my dozer, and as I said, it can go anywhere, but it kept snapping chokers because unlike my tractor, my bulldozer does not spin...just a "tunk" sound whenever the wood I was dragging on the ground hit a stump, rock or root, and I would know another $30 choker had snapped. The answer was simple; get the wood off the ground. It works better than I thought that is for sure. Its on the small size because that was the trailer they had, but the guy who ordered it backed out at the last second and so they sat on that log trailer for 2 years. The owner of the equipment dealer wanted it GONE! Me, I saw more uses for it than a log trailer, but also moving round bales, setting rafters, lifting heavy bulldozer components, etc! So I ended up getting it at their cost. But you would have a better set-up than I would. What I am finding is that these only work well if the wood can be bunched prior to hauling. For large logs it is not that big of a deal, but for pulpwood it is. Your grapple would bunch wood quickly. I might forgo that route though and just go with a feller-buncher on my dozer. There are some home-made ones on youtube. There is also a guy that made his own log grapple trailer from scratch too that you might want to take a look at. What I really need is another bulldozer; a tracked loader really with a feller-buncher on the front of it. That would be an excellent all weather, all terrain team.
It's mainly firewood and a few sawlogs that I'll mill up I took on this house lot clearing for the wood , mostly softwood with a bit of sugar maple and a couple of birch . I know a retired couple on old age pension , I give them a couple of cord every year , I've already dropped off a couple this summer from another lot , they'll polly end up with 3+ of small stuff from this lot . It's thick with pencils , bean poles , fenceposts and the odd stem .
Yuck, though I have many acres of that stuff. Mostly unmanaged Hemlock forested wetlands. I am at odds with the USDA regarding it. They claim it never makes good farmland because its "wet", but I can cure that with a dozer. They also claim a forest removes more water from the soil then field, but there again I disagree. I concur that forest has the potential to suck up more water in a given acre since they are 60 feet high instead of 2 feet, BUT they also shade the soil and keep it damp a lot longer. Maybe on undisturbed soil its true, but when you farm land you stump it and smooth the ground and ultimately get the water to run off the land and not pool like in forest settings. I had a wetland expert come out from the USDA this summer and we sparred on a few details. The biggest was ledge versus hard pan. I said the "depth to impervious layer" on the soil maps was ledge, and he said it was just hard pan and that ledge was some 15 feet down. NOPE, more like 3 inches because that is how deep the grouser bars are on my bulldozer and I can't get a grip with all the ledge under my tracks! (It is actually why its wet, the water does not seep into the soil but lays on top of the ledge). Then he showed me a tipped over hemlock and claimed the hard pan came from glaciers millions of years ago. I nonchalantly pointed out that what he called hard pan was only 12 inches down and if the earth makes 1 inch of topsoil every 600 years, then topsoil started about the same time God made Adam and Eve and not millions of years ago. If his theory was true, the topsoil would have to be hundreds of feet deep. But what do I know, I am just a dumb sheep farmer and he is the wetland expert.
Wish I had a winch at home we've got one at our camp with the tractor there super handy for all kinds of things. If you plan your path right and have a handful of chokers and some redirects you can suck in a whole pile of wood in one turn the only downfall is dirty wood in some cases depending on ground conditions. For the time being at home for now a couple eye and ferrule chokers suits me
My concern there is dirt getting pushed onto the log; then when bucking your saw is going into that dirt. For those that drag, do you wash the logs after dragging them?
I brought a small winch from HF; it was cheap but should be useful if I understand its limitations and don't abuse it. It is 12 volts and the Old Girl is 6 volts so I need to figure where to mount a 12 volt battery case. I also brought it to mount in the ceiling of the shed to help me lift things that I can not lift because it is always just me here. I used a come-along to get the bonnet off of the Old Girl when I had to repair the oil pan leak (you have to swing the front of the tractor out of the way) and that did not work out that well. I will need to pull the bonnet again in the future when I rewire her.
How big a twig can that set of clippers (last pic) you're making cut off? Looks impressive. Really would like a small woods trailer with a loader on it like yours... not hapnin. I gotta figure out a faster and easier way to lift 14' long logs up just high enough to slide my skis under it... then, I'm all set. Maybe a tripod rig with a hand winch on it.
Most of the logs I've been winching have stayed fairly clean but as an area gets worked they will pick up a bit of dirt . Since I'm ready to go all year a fair bit is done in the winter as well .
Here's the chain chokers we use and a couple of skidding cones . The cones help snake stuff through tight woods .
I am guessing the cone works to twitch the logs out, or skid with a draw bar? I keep the logs elevated with the winch, so mud is generally a non issue. Long twitches, I definitely can see value.
