New home made toy for my 3 point hitch

One thing, THROW those flip flops far, far, away. Or you might end up hurting yourself again. I know when i was a kid, my toes pulled the front part of the flip flops off and i'd hammer myself on the cross bar of my bicycle. I'm really surprised i was able to father children.

 

Work looks solid. Just got a welder myself about a year ago. Been making all sorts of gadgets to make life easier.
Now I didn’t build this myself. Bought it used and did some mods. Originally had one of those hand cranked boat winches on it. Didn’t like that at all. Pushing a button is so much easier and faster.
This is just a little stick I put on it after replacing the leaky tires that came on it. Was just to put some weight on it to let air out of the tires. A log arch is quite safe all things considered. Haven’t had much use for it yet as I have a ton of wood to process already. Biggest log I’ve carried was 16” x 16’ with just the atv. Can hardly tell it’s there as it takes all the weight. Your sawmill blades will thank you as there’s no need to drag anything.
Strap in the second pic is just me toying with an idea for hoisting logs sideways up the back for bucking off the ground.

 

BB,
The flip flops or "Mandles" as my nephew called them, are a thing of the past. They have me walking with a brace to stabilize the sprained knee ligaments and doing excercises to get the torn quad back in shape. I should be back out in the woods gingerly in a week or so and should be full speed or pretty close in 3-4 weeks. They tell me the worst thing to do is baby it or limp, toss the crutches, they want me walking as normal as possible. Just don't get into situations past it's limitations. The exercises let me know exactly where those limitations are!!! Sorry to hear about the family jewels, but I'm sure your kids are glad there was no permanent damage...

jo191145,
What size winch do you have on the arch? I'm looking at putting a winch on the sawmill for rolling the logs up the ramps. It won't be making a full dead lift like on an arch, so I'm thinking I can get away with a smaller, less expensive one, although it will probably be a little slower.

 

The winch on the arch is a 4500lb Warn. Perfectly fine for that application. You mentioned rolling up ramps. The arch is used similarly where the rope is stung under the log and connected above. The log rolls up the rope as it tightens. I use tongs to fetch them.
I have a 5500lb Superwinch on my dump trailer. Impressive unit.
Also have a Polaris 3500lb on the atv. Nice feature on that is a rapid retrieval mode. Basically a high gear. Not supposed to be used for any pulling but if your needing a lot of rope in and out it’s nice. Seems the smaller winches designed for ATV’s have a habit of getting the ropes bound on the small spools. Pulling them out by hand can be a chore.

I seriously considered some of the economical winches for my needs. Luckily before I took the plunge on any of them I happened along some quality used ones for cheap on CL or FB marketplace.
The 5500 was ever used sitting in the box for years.
The 4500 was lightly used by some guy who used it for physical therapy on his shoulder. I laughed at the insane possibilities if something went wrong Who would want to tie a 4500lb winch to their arm?

One thing to look for is comparative horsepower of the motors and then gearing ratios. The cheapies use underpowered motors and low gears to make weight. So they are slow and prone to burning out. Some cheapies are very underpowered so it pays to compare specs even if going with budget models.
All mine have synthetic rope instead of wire. I like the rope. Only drawback is it doesn’t like abrasion.
A set of tongs and you may be better off just pulling them up instead of looping around and running the hook back to the mill.

 

I'm cleaning out and adding to a ditch through the woods and thought I better drop som EAB kills so I don't bump them with the tractor while working and knock some limbs out of the top on me. I pulled this one out to make some firewood, it's 40' long and 18" at the stump and 8" at the top. There's another 20' of smaller above the crown that is solid also and will make some nice heat in the house. This one is still small enough I didn't need to use the clinch hooks I welded near the bottom link hitch points of the skidder. I added those for pulling out large saw logs to keep the front end of the tractor on the ground.





Not a pretty paint job but it get's the logs where I want them.

 

I'm still hobbling around on the knee and after an MRI doc says I'll be needing the surgery after all... NOT happy bout that. 6 Weeks in a brace and can't bend the knee at all. Then weeks / months of therapy... I'm super careful out here working but I struggle sitting in the house for too long...

 

Sorry to hear you have to have surgery. Hope you heal quickly.

 

I think my dad will be having the same surgery this week. He tore his on Saturday in Maine and could have had the surgery there on Sunday, but opted to do it closer to home. Best wishes on yours.

p.s. Nice log!

 

Never mind the paint. Excellent engineering job!

 

Thanks all for the sympathy / empathy. Like every other curve ball ever thrown at me, I'll at least swing at it with my best effort on getting through the therapy and getting back to doing the stuff I love outdoors.

That Nice log is now split and in the woodshed. There was a little bit of spalting and touch of punk in the bottom two rounds of that log, the rest was solid. I got 23 rounds 22" long from the log in the picture then a bunch more from above the crown in the tops. Got that done this evening after work and getting ready now to take the wife to see "Yesterday" cuz it's senior discount day at the local theater. She's been wanting to see that and it looks kind of funny / fun.

 

Sorry to hear that you have to have knee surgery, that $uk's


Looks like your "new equipment" is getting the job done.


What size tractor you working with?

I've still got to get mine "trail ready".

Don't quite trust myself on it in the woods yet.

 

It's a 1959 Ferguson T0-35 that my great uncle Harley bought brand new. When he passed my dad bought it. That was probably in '71 or so. It's 35 horsepower gas and is similar to a Ford 8N but a little beefier. Our sawmill can do up to 26" logs 16' long. A log that size of fresh cut Oak or Locust is the goal to be able to drag out of the woods. I haven't tried anything near that big with this set up yet, but I will get to it one of these days.

 

Playing with the skidder again this evening to clear out a few acres to plant Walnut trees next spring. It's working pretty well. I go through and cut the stuff I want to remove and then bundle them up and pull them out to the wildlife habitat stacks.







I bought these 2 20' chains 25 years ago and they have proven a great investment over the years.

 

Nice. Can't have to many chains

 

I've been busy this week clearing some of the trees out of the area we want to plant walnut trees. Clearing out the underbrush completely and culling out Locust and crooked cherry trees although one of the cherry will make a nice saw log.

I decided I better get this cut and stacked so I would have more room to skid out some more stuff next week. I was hoping to get some help today to stack, but no one has shown up yet... I've had some help from family and friends to get this far and that help has been greatly appreciated.


The area all this is coming from is through a short trail into the woods behind the brush pile on the right. We drag the trees out whole and top them next to one of the piles and push the brush into the piles. The smaller brush just goes on the piles, but anything worth cutting for firewood is drug out into the field. There is a 22" diameter 9' cherry log that will go over the the sawmill. I hope it will dry well cuz this tree was a leaner. If you look close at the butt I cut off you can see the notch cut on the lower left, then a bore cut in the middle to set the hinge and holding wood on the back. Then the last felling cut to sever the holding wood at the back. I didn't want to lose the log to a barber chair. That 9' is the only straight part of that tree.


This will get cleared out back to the river bank to make room for future walnut trees. I won't get to see them harvested, but I'm trying to leave it better than when we got it.


Haven't even counted how many trees are laying there for firewood. I'm trying to get ahead into the 3 year plan.


Ready for limbing.


I put some pallets on tarps to start stacking on. This pick is from yesterday at quitting time. We play in a Euchre group on Saturday evenings once a month. We had 9 tables going last evening.


Got about half of it cut up this morning. I ran 2 tanks of gas through both saws so far today. That's the hardest the saws have been run in a single day. Usually I cut, then split, then stack, but so far today I've just been cutting. Taking a break from the heat to post this, then I'm heading back out to drop a couple standing dead ash to finish filling the woodshed for this winter's heating.

 

So much for getting those dead ash in... I dropped the first one and was just finishing up limbing it and all of a sudden I'm soaking wet!!! Sun is still shining and we're getting a downpour!!! I ran over to the truck and hopped in and sat there for 20 minutes and it just poured... Most of the time the sun was shining too. My scabard, wedges, and hatchet were over by the tree I dropped so I sat there thinking it will stop any second so I can continue working. It finally slowed down and I grabbed my stuff and went up to the house. I still have my chaps on... Oh well. The wife wants to go out to eat, so I'll put stuff away and get cleaned up. It will probably stop raining about the time we head down the driveway... LOL

There's 3/4" in the rain guage and the sky northwest is black... The sky in the pictures above from a few hours ago was beautiful. Looks angry now...

 

You have really been working hard. Looks good. Glad you are improving the land. It would be nice to reap some of the investment though...

 

Stashed a cherry log in a shady spot out of the way for later treatment on the sawmill.




I coated the ends with old paint from when we built the house years ago. Hoping this will keep the checking to a minimum.