Lifting stems

[westphalian]

Now I’m fed up milling all by my lonesome in a cold dark wood so I wanna bring the stems home and mill in my yard.

I have an L200 and a portable winch but no heavy machinery.

How to get the 10’ conifer stems on the back of my truck.

Not tried anything yet, going on Thursday.

So far two ideas.

[westphalian]

In the woods is no problem as I can roll the stem onto the mill (use a farmers jack if particularly heavy) but for the truck need to be end on. Any bright ideas? Will be alone so one man job onl

[Woodworks]

If you do a search on Google there are plenty of log lifting arches on trailers so maybe something similar on the truck?

[westphalian]

brilliant. problem solved. lets see if I can make one

[Bob_z_l]

17 hours ago, westphalian said:

 

Now I’m fed up milling all by my lonesome in a cold dark wood so I wanna bring the stems home and mill in my yard.

I have an L200 and a portable winch but no heavy machinery.

How to get the 10’ conifer stems on the back of my truck.

Not tried anything yet, going on Thursday.

So far two ideas.

 

Interested to see how you get on.
I try, where I can to use rollers (egyptian style) and roll up boards. Scaff pole offcuts.

I also use an ifor trailer and mount load ramps on the side to do the same.
I thought about suspended rope contraptions but the weight of the stick meant tension between trees etc made the whole setup ready to fail.

Back to rolling. If I can load it...it goes home. If not it stays there.

[westphalian]

I looked at ready made rollers, too expensive, I think you are right about the rope between two trees, you need two decent trees in the right place. I did build a substantial tripod with block and tackle for lifting the stem onto the mill but abandoned this for the farmer's jack which was a lot quicker. might resurrect the tripod for this. so far, a ramp seems most feasible with the winch at the back of the truck. if it's no good I will build a lifting arch, but the disadvantage of that is the free fall onto my pick up truck but that is probably easily avoided.

I bet I probably go back to milling in situ

[nepia]

Have you got a trailer?  Bob_z_l's idea would work with ramps and a rope via parbuckling.  It's amazing what one man can achieve that way, especially if he can set up a 3:1 rope system.

[westphalian]

no trailer, just the L200 single cab

I use this for rolling onto mill but I wouldn’t like to be behind it rolling it as high as my truck plus wrong angle

[billpierce]

Tripod is the shizzle. Done a few like this 30'' x 8' larch stems. Winch length ways up ramps is a bit poor, often push ramps around and requires a very good winch point on yer pickup. Have have hoyed a trop around the whole back of cab with the doors open in the past, but obs not ideal. What length and diameter are you doing?

Can you bully/farm Jack one end up onto back of truck and slide it on the rest other way? Found the farm jacks good to a point then suddenly lethal when the decent to drop sideways.

[billpierce]

Cant find link but an America fella did a vid on a sweet simple trailer he had made up which works like the skip loaders.