Stand alone winches

[clasp]

Anyone use a stand alone winch unit. Seen some with 300 m of cable and thought they would be useful. Would like to know if they are used for forestry.

[Chris Sheppard]

I think the one's you might be thinking of are originally designed for installing cables if they are the same as the trailed one's I've seen.

 

I've yet to see anyone use them in the woods but that's not so say you couldn't.

 

The things that would put me off are:

 

It'll never weigh as much as a tractor and winch so might have problems anchoring it with a big pull on.

 

With it being separate, all you can do is winch to it.

 

300m is an awful lot of cable - most conventional 3pl winches won't have more htan 100m on, usually less. the chances of getting a 300m straight pull, and it also being economically are slim. Also, maximum pull on any winch is with an empty drum - with a full drum it's considerably less. You could always cut the cable I suppose.

 

I don't know how fast they are either - typically a decent PTO forestry winch will be in the region of 0.6 to 1 m/s depending on the size of it. On the whole the smaller ones pull line faster as they don't need to be so low geared.

 

Also, they generally seem to be quite expensive and if they break I bet they aren't the easiest things to get spares for.