Woods road/working with a tractor in the woods

That is a well balanced post Dave. I want to like it for the trailer, hope we get some pics of it articulating, then the metal carnage ensued.

 

Tough to get any trail work done with snow on the ground, so I started hauling blow downs out for future firewood.







A few weeks ago we had a bunch of rain. Some of the White Pines were foaming at the base. Only the bigger trees and only on the South side of the base of the tree. I had never seen this before, but apparently it is not uncommon. The tree produces a soap like substance, that under the right conditions gets washed down the tree and can produce this foam, weird looking for sure.

 

That must be where PineSol comes from, eh?

 

Nice tractor/winch setup you’ve got there!

 

Lookin good Dave... good idea pullin out logs on snow, if you can. No dirt, rocks, etc... jammed into the bark waiting for your just sharpened saw chain... ...

 

Had a little issue with the chipper, new bearing under warranty



Issue with the Fiskars too, third one I’ve broken.


Question about the sliders on the winch line. Why are they shaped this way? Is there an advantage to running the choker chain through in one direction versus the other or are they shaped like this just to give a little offset for your fingers when feeding the choker chain through?

 

On your slide question, I bring the choker chain in from the left as you are holding it in the picture (in left side, out right). I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it, but I'm pretty sure that is how I usually do it. That will leave the bent tab pointing toward the free end of the chain and easier to grasp as you release.
I leave at least a foot of chain between the choker hook and the slider (if you hook too tightly you will ensure some battles on the landing when unhooking.)

I also try to make sure the open face of the hook points away from the direction of the pull. Most of my skids are downhill, and the load often slides and slacks a little, causing trouble at the winch and trouble at the hook.

Sometimes when the load is light I try to get cute and pull two logs with one choker - I usually pay the penalty mid-skid of having to get off and re-hitch. Instead, I winch in a few and hook them to the chain hooks on my winch, and then pull in a few more (so I can use more chokers than I have sliders and end hook). Sometimes I'll put a double-wrap of choke chain around a small log in hopes it stays for the whole skid. It also helps when cutting a stem in half before skidding to make the cut just below a natural flare so the choker doesn't have any excuses.

I only use the end hook wrapped around large logs - if the log is small it puts more wear there at the end. I'll use a choker on the end hook if the logs are all small.

I usually cut a load's worth, skid it out, cut another load, skid it out, ... You don't want to get too far ahead on the cutting because if you have to stop skidding to do something else (like work for a week) you run the risk of snow - even 4" is a pain to go back to (soaks your gloves, etc). Plus the variety of tasks is good for my aging body.

Lots and lots of ways to get hurt, especially as the logs get closer to the winch, and even more so if you bring in some logs and attach them and then pull in more.

 

Thanks, that's very helpful information. Mostly what I'm doing now is dragging chipable brush/cut offs left from the timber harvest to my roads so that I can chip it up later. It's not very fun but it sure does make the woods look better and produces material I can use on the roads. Currently working with my forester to develop a USDA forestry plan so that I can qualify for some NRCS money.

 

In places where my roads traverse a grade I am digging ditches on the high side of the road to divert the water to a spot where I can then drain the water under the road with a culvert. When I’m digging the ditches I am encountering spots where the bedrock (ledge) is very near the surface and I can’t always dig the ditch deep enough to maintain enough grade in the ditch to keep the water flowing nicely. The water ends up backing up behind the piece of exposed ledge which then creates a soft spot in the road. I don’t want to re-route the road and putting in another culvert at the spots doesn’t work either due to grade or ledge conditions, so I’d like to try to remove some of the ledge, creating a channel in the rock so the water can flow better, it wouldn’t have to be a lot of material to remove, maybe 16” x 16” and maybe 8-10” deep at most, some spots a quite a bit less than that. How would you go about it?…some options I’ve thought of:

- electric jackhammer
- gasoline jackhammer
- demo hammer drill to create a bunch of holes and then sledge hammer or maybe “feather and wedge” or try demo grout
- demo saw electric? or gas? to cut some grooves and then sledge hammer

Anything electric would have to be run off a generator or be battery powered. I’m kinda worried about working in water with an electric corded tool like the drill or saw powered by a generator.

I’m kind of leaning toward the electric jackhammer, there are some very inexpensive ~ $200 (China) models available or maybe rent one (Hilti). I think I’m done making roads so once I’m done I wouldn’t likely need the jackhammer again. The rental fee would likely be more than buying a cheap one. I currently don’t have a demo hammer drill or demo saw and those could be useful to have for other things so I’d just buy a quality one.

 

Rent an excavator with a hydraulic hammer. The options you listed will be time consuming, hard on the equipment and your body.

 

What kind of rock? You could rent a large battery powered hammer drill and use a chisel bit in it after drilling a few holes to loosen it up. Most serious units should have a hammer only option for chiseling.

I gotta take some rock (sandstone I think) out of the base of one of my more difficult to maintain trails. Gonna use a genny with a rented electric jack hammer. The hump I gotta get rid of is about 3'x4' and I need to go about a foot deep. If it goes well, I have a couple other little bothers I'll take care of same day. The one *has to be done or I will never get that piece of trail where I can keep it nice. My bandaid has been to just throw a bunch of fill over and around it. It's on a slope, so it ends up going away pretty quickly.

 

Use this you should be able to buy this at Lowe’s or Home Depot and it will keep you safe

 

It’s granite.

I think I’ll start with buying an SDS Max hammer drill and see what I can accomplish with that. I’d like to own one anyway. If that’s a no go then I’ll hire the guy who did some forestry mulching for me with his excavator, he’s got a hydraulic hammer for it.

 

Quite a while ago I worked for a company building a dam and fish ladder on the Nisqually river here in Washington State. We had some huge granite diorite boulders that had to be removed from the river bed. We were drilling holes and using hydraulic rock splitters. Rotohammers would not touch the stuff. We had to use pneumatic rock drills. Unless your granite is largely degraded or shelf rock in layers you will need some powerful tools. Wish you the best of success!

 

The humidity broke so I decided to do some more work turning the harvester trails into woods road.

harvester slash to be the new road

trying to access this area so I can clean it up a bit, the debris in here is 3-4 feet deep in spots, I have a foot trail through here I use everyday and it bugs me how ugly it is



leveling out with some stump cut offs and cedar slabs leftover from making corduroy road in wet areas





grabbed a dead fall cedar for the edge to help hold the chips back

post clean up



buncha chips on top




the next section is very uneven so I need the back hoe on to do some dirt work

blowin stuff off before putting it away

back it in over the dolly


detach and roll away, having the PTO driven implements on dollys helps to line up the splines when reconnecting because there is no way rotate the PTO on the tractor

take the 3pt off

roll the hoe in place


connect the hydraulics, fire up the tractor and lift it off the dolly…ready to go

handy tool to relieve hydraulic pressure build up in the implement


handy little rolling work table I made out of an implement shipping crate

 

Nice

 

Nice work and equipment!!

 

Been a while since I've seen your set-up DaveGunter ... trails & shop look really great Dave. I've discovered wheels on anything/everything, in the shop, are a good idea too... ... Nice job on all of it !

 

thanks for the kind words, it’s been a lot of work, a long and at times difficult journey but well worth it, I’m grateful and pinch myself at times to make sure it’s all real.

nice to see you’re making some progress with Glasir FarmerJ

 

Got the next section dug and leveled as best I could with the hoe.

Before


After

just need a good layer of chips now

Got some chipper maintenance done. Flipped the knives, about time, think I got my monies worth out of that side, and reset the bed plate.






Amazing how much stuff gets wound up on the flywheel.