[Ron]

I used copper rivets all the time to do harness repairs of all kinds until my box of rivets run dry. Now I can’t find them any where. I do agree with you the rivets that you can get now are frustratingly useless. My copper rivets held just fine did a good job for me.
If you got a source let me know please?
Cheers
Ron

[Ron]

Hi Michael
In the first picture I don’t see shafts or are they just hard to see? How is the single horse hitched to the wagon?
Ron

[Ron]

Hi All
I am glad to see the different go devils and logging arches. These are really good devices when used properly they make logging small wood lots more efficient. A friend of mine was a professional logger his whole life and used one horse in the bush 90% of the time (while others doing similar work used two) and often with a go devil style device. I see a lot of videos showing people dragging logs in the mud, dirt and snow with out any aids. My experience says that the saw mill operator hates to see me coming with sand in the bark and it is hard on horses. I think people who skid this way must hold shares in chain saw file companies.
My friend made the bulk of his money supplying special wood orders from his 500 acres of bush. If he had roads he used a wagon or a truck but often he had to select and cut small orders of oak or ash etc and skid them winter or summer long distances through thick new growth to the nearest bush roads. For this purpose the go devil he believed was his best tool for the job. I usually found the same. Hope that is of some help
Ron

[Ron]

hi all
I am not very good with a computer so this may be my fault but this topic would be so much easier to follow if the pictures posted would work? Is this my misunderstanding? This is a very good
discussion but I can’t see most of what is pictorially being posted? If this was a collar or a set of traces, a chainsaw I could adjust this correctly but when it comes to computers I am lost in the woods. Can anyone tell me how to see the pictures?
Cheers
Ron

[Ron]

hi George
The go devil looks really good and that looks and sounds like it is working well
for you. You could possibly double the out put of a horse and man each day depending on length of skidding with a good system like yours. All of that with less stress on yourself and the horse.
Thanks for the pictures, I don’t own a digital camera and if I did I would not know how to use it. Grateful to you though for taking the time to send these along.
Cheers
Ron

[Ron]

Hi George
Your pictures look really good and this should work excellent. I do not chain to the bunk I let the choker chain pass under the bunk and then around the logs squeezing the logs on to the bunk. I make sure the logs are well on the bunk a good two or three feet and then put the choker behind the bunk the pull of the horses pulls the logs forward on the bunk and not back wards and propels logs and the go devil forward with ease. This also allows the logs to pivot on turns making the go devil much easier to steer by the horse. I can’t think of a time when it came off as long as the horse is moving steady forward. The drag from the log trailing the ground acts as a brake so that the load never goes to fast down an incline. The choker chain passing through the ring on the roller keeping up the slack. As the horse turns it pulls against the side of the ring pointing the go devil left or right. I have made the rings out of just about anything even old horse shoes as long as it allows the choker chain to pass with out binding. If it binds it will certainly pull the go devil out from under your load.
It is simple and works for me maybe it would not work for others. The go devil makes logging so much easier on horse and man. I build building on the farm using ash and elm for the frame from our bush using only one horse. The logs would have been a team job but with the go devil and a logging arch for really big logs I could not get up unto the go devil the work was all accomplished with one good horse and without abusing him.
Hope that makes some sense to you.
Ron

[Ron]

hi George
The front roller on our system was simply a way to keep the runners apart. The ring was welded on and simply allowed the chain to pass through it and a choker went around the log load. the pull therefore was on the logs or load but not on the ring. the ring on the roller was just nice way to steer the front of the runners. The roller as you have mentioned also allowed the front of the runners movement so that one could rise and fall some what independent of the other roller. In the bush this gives much needed stability something I felt that logging arches usually lack. I am in my sixties now and arthritis has slowed me up. I am breaking a pair of colts right now and hope to do some small scale skidding when I get them going. I would like to see your finished product I tried to open your pics above but could not make it work but as I am very challenged with a computer that is not surprising. Happy New Year and good logging
ron

[Ron]

Thanks Jelmer I have never seen or heard of a “middle buster”that was my confusion now it
makes sense to me. The idea of the “plow pole” is also new to me. Good to see different ideas.
thank you for your help it now makes sense to me. the video’s are very good and the
horses are great.
cheers
Ron

[Ron]

Hi all
I would agree with all this discussion on communicating between horse and driver. Just like this forum, communication is a two way street based on shared values and respect over a common medium. These constraints apply to the horse and driver as well. In the example given about the horse taking some hay as you enter the stall to feed and the following discussion about rules for the sake of rules what is left out is what is the horse trying to communicate. Is it simply, ” here comes the lunch wagon and I am glad to see you,” or is it I am the most important individual in the universe and you are Late with My Feed!” The two discussions are happening over the medium of an armful of hay but they are very different in nature and should be thought about and the response communicated differently. To one horse a rebuke for a bite of hay could be soul crushing insult but to another it could be a kindness that stops a misunderstanding that in time will escalate out of all proportion.
Wendall Berry talk about us living in an Industrial Culture but I think we are living in a Computer Culture in which all answers are binary and we demand they be found in the two figures 0, 1,
To a horse the world is not just 0 and 1 (rigid rules) it is ramped vision, heightened sense of smell, survival instincts, genetic predesign, body language, nurture and nature.
The joy of great horsemanship is the ability to speak to and hear from and accomplish with, another species which has a lot to say but not the way we say it.
I think it is one of the reasons for the escalation in tensions amidst people world wide is that we want, no again we demand to think and communicate in binary code to one another when the depth, beauty and reality of what is being said is being totally marginalized.
I think if there was more great horse people in this world it would be a measurably better place to live and communicate.
Ron

[Ron]

hi George
We used a go devil quite a bit in the bush. I usually used a go devil about the same dimensions that you are planning. In this country that was the norm. We usually
separate the runners with a roller and a ring in the center. the nice part of the metal
ones that Tristan and other are using on you tube is the runners are bent in at the front to form the ring. This has two advantages in the bush one it does not catch runners on trees and it can be steered with a single chain. The chain passes through the ring at the front and back under the bunk and around the load. this keeps the load on the go devil and keeps the pull low and draft where it needs to be. Pulling on the load with the chain through the ring also makes steering the go devil so much easier. Right angle turns, snaking in and out of tight spots is easier. I also like to have the back of the runners beveled or bent up so that I can draw the go devil backwards. I used to drive out of the bush forward and then pull backward into the bush, log or pile so that I can load quick and easy. Tristan’s horse is very comfortable with this unit and is calm and handling pretty good sized loads with ease. This tells me that the design he is using is likely a good one.
Carriage bolts should not be that hard to find and it is surprising how fast you will ware runners. Metal stakes are good but My gloves were usually wet working all day in snow and a metal stake would be apt to freeze to your gloves. Just a thought. I like hard wood.
ron

[Ron]

thank you so much for sharing these two videos it is great. In the first video it is hard to see the implement up close. It does not appear to be a plow but more like what we would think of as a hiller? Is that correct or is it a conventional plow and I am not seeing it clearly?
In the second video we see a man walking one furrow over holing the plow in place with a pole is that correct?
Ron

[Ron]

I would agree it makes a big difference what you are going to do with an arch and what kind of logging? The first logging arch I made was an arch shaped wagon hitch from the back of a 14T JD baler I have also used the needle arm arch from abandoned balers. I find arches work good for big or heavy logs but a ,”Go Devil” is faster and can be loaded and unloaded much more efficiently on smaller logs.
ron

[Ron]

I agree with you that I am not going to realign things I am just to lazy and to old to do that. However I do like to think about new ideas that may solve old problems. On our farm we used to do a lot of split work with tractors one way and horses the next. Shunting wagons in hay season is a good example of a job for horses but I hate changing tractor and horse tongues. Being too easily put off I usually take the easy way out and just use the tractor. I could use the horses and fore cart but I hate playing snap the whip with a cart hitched to a wagon and the team catches me off guard. I have given up flying from fore carts for lent.
This Swedish system I suspect may have been adapted for this purpose. It would be conceivable that one could put rings on a regular short tractor tongue and using Swedish shafts simply hook on to an existing tractor tongue wagon with out changing poles. If it worked it would be a pretty good advancement on our farm. I might think about this one some more. Thanks for the input.

[Ron]

Hi all
I may not have described the pole system very well. Each horse has a set of short shafts
on the inside shaft is what appears like a ring fitted into a slide allowing some forward
and backward motion along the shaft. This ring on the slide it attached to a short tongue which appears to be about four feet maybe five feet long. The tongue stops the wagon, steers, and backs up by way of being attached to the tongue by this ring and slide. I have had good use of shafts in the past but I have never used two shafts to steer a short pole with. It is an interesting design which gives food for thought and maybe innovation if it worked as well as North American/ English style poles?
Ron McCoy

[Ron]

hi All
I am new here but by way of introduction I have been a draft horseman for more then fifty years. Having said that I still learn from all the other breeds and breeders. One of the things I have seen lately is Clinton Anderson’s horse training. While it is not new but an integration of many types of horse training it is very good. I am impressed with his emphasis on ground breaking horses and training the horse and rider/driver to work/think together solving problems together as opposed to what I would call the push button method of training which is quite prevalent. He believes and I think he is correct that good ground breaking makes most hitching problems much easier to solve. Hope this is of some service.

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