Rotate freely or hydraulic log grab

[Al Cormack]

Not for a week or two like 35yr since i last had any thing to do with one and at the time it just seemed to be a waste of time/diesel/machine hrs for us, watched a lad on a Avant moving timber about 12 month ago with a free rotating grab and he made it look a very difficult but there again its like a lot of other things , operator expieriance , what he moved in a afternoon i could of moved in a 1-2hrs tops with our forwarder, But we are in to production and tonnage not just moving a lone tree from a domestic job, I was all ways told to buy the best bit of kit/machienery you could to do the job and that seems to work for us, i have had cheap kit that are supposed to be up to and do the job but it never seems to have worked for me,

I agree. Definitely buy the best you can afford, or save up and get it.
We do domestic works , so speed isn’t as important to us.
I have a Hywel Evans log grab on my Avant and it works great.
I’ve just upgraded my old tin body 528 to a 2019 635, haven’t used it properly yet, but been impressed with the power just pushing up chip

[spuddog0507]

Experianc and knollage are two big players in a lot of industries and more so in arb and forestry OK we all have to learn and as the saying go,s every day is a school day no matter how old you are, i lernt a lot of a old guy i worked with back in the late 70s80s and i still do some things he taught me as i havent come across a better way of doing that particular task yet, i now enjoy passing my knollage on to the younger lads and when some one who is at Myerscough collage doing a 3 yr course and they come working with us and at the end they say i have lernt more here on 6 months than i have at collage in 3 yrs it makes me think what are they teaching them in the 3 years at collage ? Machines and attachments have come a long way in the last 30-40 yrs some have been vastly improved and a some are basically the same as they where years ago as they cant really be improved, i have just bought and sold on a Kreman 122 mini loader, machine would be some where late 80s early 90s OK a bit rough n ready but function,l it wont be a lot different from your Avant but your avant will be more of a machine than that one was, so some thing are the same concept but improved over time,

[dumper]

Hydraulic rotation or not. It depends on what you are doing and how good you are on the machine, The bmg on a boom is good for loading the chipper if it’s got rotation but very poor if you are skidding or dragging logs out, however it can only carry the log horizontal so making the machine with load either wide or long, if you use a Klou style grab you can also carry the log vertically good in confined space and you can also grab standing trees shrubs and posts etc these are manual rotation with a locking pin, with hydraulic rotation when you break a pipe you have a mess to clean up.a good operator should be able to nudge the grab into the right position without hydraulics, plus you will also need to have two services to the head stock or a electric switched valve and wire something else to catch, snag or go wrong, mini loaders pick up far less than you want them to so the closer to the machine the grab the more you pick up, personally I like the Klou grab but your machine your choice.

[John Shutler]

I went through all this 6 or 7 years ago when I had a boxer skid steer. I ended up going for a non powered rotator in the end. Perfect for dragging brush behind the machine as you can concentrate on where you are going not what the brash is doing as it follows you. Easy enough to knock the grab round on a log to line it up when you wanted to pick something up and absolutely perfect for feeding a chipper as you'd track backwards towards the chipper, turn 90 degrees then drive it in forwards. I ended up getting a BMG style one fabricated and it was great

[s o c]

I’ve been toying with the idea of fitting a “float valve “ to allow rotator to follow when dragging long stuff.

[dumper]

2 hours ago, s o c said:

I’ve been toying with the idea of fitting a “float valve “ to allow rotator to follow when dragging long stuff.

I asked about this and was told the valve would be in permanent float unless the leaver was pulled or pushed to operate the valve, 

[s o c]

14 hours ago, dumper said:

I asked about this and was told the valve would be in permanent float unless the leaver was pulled or pushed to operate the valve, 

On my machine (microbull) I could fit valve just out from hyd couplings and would be within reach. (I think)