Small scale timber extraction

[woody paul]

how about this set up.you tube human powered log extraction. Sorry have work out how to add on another site??

human powered log extractor.

[Ty Unnos]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzRg-ijWz5s]Human Powered Log Extractor - YouTube[/ame]

[skyhuck]

 

:lol:

[TimberCutterDartmoor]

 

Speechless.

[Chris Sheppard]

 

Still not quite sure what I think on this one - I quite like the quirkiness of it but do keep thinking "why?" Think there's got to have been more efficient ways to do it for similar outlay (time and materials etc).

 

I'd have thought a small two wheel tractor with arch would have been better and would go anywhere the pedal skidder would I'd have thought.

 

For what it is though, it does seem to have been fairly well thought out when it was built and it did seem to pull it fairly well

Edited June 8, 2012 by Chris Sheppard

[MikeTM150]

not sure i'd wanna pedal that up too many hills loaded!

[Big 'Ammer]

not sure i'd wanna pedal that up too many hills loaded!

 

I wouldn't want to go down hill with it loaded either.

 

Which is the biggest crank?

 

The pedals or the inventor?

[b101uk]

Having gone to the extents of putting chain and sprockets to peddle with, it would not have taken much more of a leap to have put a saw mount on it, so you could then use a saw to drive the contraption using old saw chain with the teeth ground off.

[Kevlaney]

On 01/06/2012 at 11:43, Chris Sheppard said:

This week's forwarding - shelter belt round a big farm, fairly long extraction from one side but generally not bad (40 min turnaround averaging). 4 days so far 8-10 loads per day but not really been going for it and rippign a valve off stopped play for a bit.

 

Photos don't do it justice but stack is just over 40m long averaging about 2.5m tall and is all 3.75's

 

last photo was driving out last night.

What would consider to be the productive limits of using your set up Chris? As in tonnage /m3.Is it productive enough on say a 300 tonne hardwood thinning site with reasonable access if you were selling roadside?

Atb

 

[Chris Sheppard]

Sorry for the late reply Kev, only just spotted this.

 

Most of what we used to use it for was on sites where we'd bought standing and were selling at roadside and generally smaller sites with a few wagon loads in total rather than huge blocks.  We did use it on a 1200T job once and whilst it wasn't exactly ideal, we were getting the timber out fast enough to make it work. 

 

Whilst it didn't have a huge capacity (from memory I think we used to roughly work on 3T of 12ft sofwood sawlogs per average load and 2.5T of 12ft firewood when gauging what was coming out), and it's top speed was hopeless (about 8mph) it would float in and out of places where a bigger machine might get stuck or need more room to get in and out.

 

That crane was only 3.2m long, which was a hindrance at times, I reckon 4.5 would have been ideal and a bit more hydraulic flow would have made a big difference to production I think. 

 

Also, a newer tractor with a better road speed would probably have been a good move too as everytime it needed moving from site to site it meant loading the forwarding trailer onto a trailer with the tractor, having another machine at the other end to unload it, then go back for the tractor - On more than one occasion the time moving it to and from a site was longer than the time it wass needed on site.

 

I would say though, that it worked much better on sites where we were moving timber that we'd felled ourselves as it was more inportant to present everthing a bit neater when cutting than you'd maybe need to with a bigger machine - the short reach and lighter build meant that playing pick-up-sticks in deep brash wasn't a fun experience.