[Traveling Woodsman]

The horse is located in southwest Virginia. I am selling because I’m looking at moving to a larger horse, which is useful in logging. I am asking $6000 for him.

[Traveling Woodsman]

Maybe similar in material, maybe not, but different in a lot of other ways. Wallingford style hames are heavy duty pulling and logging hames, with double bottom hame strap loops, and heavier construction throughout.

[Traveling Woodsman]

Mitchmaine,

You wouldn’t have any more people to call about some Wallingford hames, would you? I really need to find some 16’s and 12’s.

[Traveling Woodsman]

Once again, technology has failed me. I was not notified again of all these replies, and am just now seeing them. Mitchmaine, that’s very interesting info. So you knew him personally, I take it?
Did he stick with using scrap metal for them? or did he end up buying commercially?

There was an aluminum hame made in the 20’s, but it was aluminum, not aluminum alloy, which would be much weaker and not really suitable for this application. It’s available in the patent records. There is (or was recently) an amish fellow in PA who made aluminum hames (not alloy), and I’ve heard of them breaking while pulling a plow. Not really what you want.

I’ve done some research on alloys and have chosen a high strength alloy with self aging characteristics. Should work good.

[Traveling Woodsman]

Well shoot Carl, I don’t know how I didn’t see your post until just now. That’s totally understandable not wanting to part with them. I do have a lead on several pairs of 16’s.

Who is Earle Mitchel, and how would a body go about contacting him?

[Traveling Woodsman]

Yes it was definitely an interesting read, and I agree that seeing it’s shortcomings can help us clarify our own positions.

To address the efficiency question/point.  Efficiency is strictly a ratio, of input to output.  You can use any values you want to: human hours or horse hours, or you could address other issues such as the inherent inefficiencies of the tractor as a power source, like the fact that with, for example, a 50 HP tractor, you only end up with actually maybe in the 6-10 HP range at the drawbar.  There are many other values you can put into the efficiency ratio, all very interesting studies.

[Traveling Woodsman]

I’ve never used any horse drawn size, although I have seen some in use.  I know there are several sizes available, but compared to the ones I saw, the loader on my forwarder is significantly bigger and faster.  It’s about a 20′ boom and I have handled 400 BF oak logs comfortably.

[Traveling Woodsman]

While it is an interesting study, It’s definitely not a good comparison of horses and tractors at all.  To do that properly you would have to compare two completely separate but similar operations, one with only horses, the other only tractors.  Even then it would be hard to totally compare, because the types of operations where horses are most efficient are different than operations where tractors reach their peak efficiency.   And it’s not only about efficiency, it’s about the big picture of the effects ( or lack thereof) on the environment and local farm system.  Of course if you only use horses two hours a week and use the tractors to help grow their feed you would come up with results like this.  I would also guess, as suggested in a previous post, that teamster experience was a big factor.  I’m not quite as familiar with farming as I am logging, but I do know that the difference in efficient use of time between a beginner and an old hand can be quite large.

So, interesting study, but not very realistic conclusions as far as comparing horse and tractor efficiencies.

[Traveling Woodsman]

Well we’ve forwarded about 55 MBF with it now, it’s working out decent.  I had to do some unexpected work to it, specifically replace the front chunk/differential.  Wasn’t too big of a deal, but it was unexpected and as usual the parts take longer to get in than you plan.  But we’re moving wood, and I have another maybe 80 MBF lined up to move with it at this point.  It doesn’t help you get any more wood out than you could on a good job (short skid) with just horses, but it takes a job such as the one we’re on now, with maybe 2500′ uphill skids and lets you still average 4MBF per day with two teams.  It has a leveling effect on production.  As far as details, it has pretty good power, and is very good on fuel, maybe 1 gallon/hr or slightly more, which is nice.  I do have some work I need to do on it once I get to a job where I won’t be using it, but the good thing is that it’s paid for and it’s starting to make money.

[Traveling Woodsman]

@Baystatetom 40266 wrote:

Ben I am curious how are you handling those 500 bdft oak logs now. I see them occasionally and always wonder if my oxen would be able to get them to the header. Down hill on snow I suppose but for some reason uphill in the mud seams to the more common situation.
~Tom

I skid them out with my team and 2 wheel arch with either a cradle hitch with grabs or a large set of tongs. I have started using tongs a lot more recently and they work really good on hard skids, because the harder the horses pull the better they set. If I’m in an adverse skidding situation such as uphill, which is not uncommon, I will hook my second team in front and the log will go. You can pull a 500 BF log out of an incredibly tough spot with 4 conditioned horses, in fact I move quite a bit of wood in different situations and have yet to find one I can’t move with my 4. Of course I am talking about log length. I have had jobs where I did a 4-up hitch for many days, even a few weeks at a time because of the size of timber and the hills it had to come up. On most of my jobs I have started using 4 horses every day now. I usually use one team at a time, and make one or two skids without much rest, then switch out and use the other team while the first team rests. This allows me to spend more time skidding and less time resting horses. Or if I have the manpower, I will just run two teams and skid all day with both, or do 4-up hitches all day, depending on the timber. I just adapt however I have to/can, to be the most efficient for the specific site I’m on.

And of course if I’m in a situation where I have to pull longer than log length on really big timber, I just call my buddies and we have a big ol’ logging party with 6 or 8 horses. Although that doesn’t happen very often.

I currently have a New Holland LS190 skid steer with OTT tracks for stacking on the landing and loading my truck. It is the biggest machine that New Holland makes, and I have overall been quite impressed with how well it handles the big logs. It will lift a 350-375 BF oak log to full height (11.5′), a 450-475 BF it will lift 5-6′ high, which is high enough to load when I take out my removable standards, and anything over 500 (I think my biggest to date is 590 BF of oak) it will load by picking up one end at a time. I have loaded close to a million feet with it now.

The forwarder will allow me to have loaders in two places, such as a job and a sort yard, and it will give me a knuckleboom where I can load full height log standards. My skid steer is just a little to short to load a lot of full height trucks. I can load a flatbed with stakes though, which is nice. And it will also help reduce the impact on the landing. Which is the one bad thing you could say about the skid steer if you wanted to. Although proper operation and careful closure work can mitigate that problem usually. And of course it will allow me to forward logs over long distances and long uphill situations, which is the main reason I got it. All of which allows me to keep the horses on what they do best: short skids and ultimate maneuverability.

Well there’s my thoughts, sorry if that was too much information. I guess my suggestion would be to find some others to help you if you had to move larger timber. Just make sure to factor in time for a learning curve to get everyone pulling together.

[Traveling Woodsman]

Ronnie, this is a self-powered forwarder, it’s about a 20,000 lb machine, around 100HP. For most of the jobs that I’m on a horse drawn unit wouldn’t really be practical, i.e. long and steep uphill pulls. Having the logs off the ground is helpful, but it’s still weight that needs to move uphill. We are in the mountains! And for my situation, I need to be able to handle large oak logs. Most of the jobs I’ve been on recently have oak butt logs that average 300 BF or more, usually with a few that are over 500 BF. I need to be able to handle big wood for the unit to be helpful to me. And part of the reason I got it in the first place is just to have a knuckleboom, I can see myself using it on jobs as a loader even where I don’t need it as a forwarder.

Tom, I am interested to see how this works out in regards to costs. I’m not sure whether it will change the game as far as how it compares to a completely mechanized operation, and I don’t care a whole lot whether it does. For me the purpose is to allow me to do jobs with horses that I otherwise wouldn’t, and make cooperative efforts more feasible. If it does that I will consider it to have been a worthwhile investment. That doesn’t mean that I’m not interested to see how it works out, it will be educational.

Jim, did you have a 5500 series Iron Mule? I considered them, they looked like decent machines but I ended up finding this C5D for a really good deal I couldn’t pass up. Are those Hardy units sold by Bailey’s now?

Scott, thanks for your cautions at Woodsman’s Week in regards to machinery. I really appreciate thoughts from experience. I guess we’ll see how this works out. Part of the reason I felt good about this particular unit is that it was a really good deal and I was able to pay cash for it.

I have been thinking about getting a forwarder for about 10 years now, looking forward to finally getting it in the woods.

[Traveling Woodsman]

http://www.sinkingcreekhorselogging.com

[Traveling Woodsman]

The method we use here in the Appalachians is a little different. The short version is that we go straight down and try to create more draft so that the horse (always use a single) has to pull, which gives you control over the load. The way we do that is to drop the trees either up or down the slope and create log trains using trail grabs. The goal is to create drag which we do by cutting the trees into log length and then fastening them together with trail grabs (some people call them dogs) and using header grabs to hook to the horse to the leading log. You put as many logs in the train as you need to create enough drag, using more than one tree if necessary. Depending on the slope you may have anywhere from 3 or 4 to 10 or 12 logs behind you. One horse pulls a lot of wood this way. One fellow in particular down here does a lot of this and has the kinks worked out of it. I’ve done enough to know (maybe 15mbf) that it’s not a good idea to try without hands on instruction. This is also the historical method, the way they did it back in the day. J-grabs were another addition that allowed you to quickly unhook from the load if you did lose control of the logs, but we don’t really use them.

You can’t do it when it’s muddy or frozen and one of the keys is having your skid trail clear of sticks and other trash that could cause the logs to lose their friction.

There’s lots more you could say about this, gotta get the morning started.

[Traveling Woodsman]

Yeah you could but then you would sacrifice having a short jack, because the collar would have to have something to fit over, which makes the whole rig taller. Most of the time I cut the smallest notch I can fit the completely lowered jack in, which helps cut down on the effect it has on the butt log. And I always use the plate, it’s not in the way for anything else I use it for, like jacking vehicles or buildings. I’m sure there might be some situations where the plate might be in the way, but I keep a number of jacks around with different capacities, heights and speeds to match the situation. I need a jack optimized for trees.

[Traveling Woodsman]

Yeah that’s pretty much how I do it. I think the plates I use are 3/4″, definitely need thick so it doesn’t bend. The other thing I am looking into is making a pivoting plate with some kind of textured/grabbing surface so that when you have to jack a long ways it won’t try to break the plate off, which I’ve had happen several times.

You definitely need shims, I usually use 2 wedges stacked on each other. My 20 ton lo-profile jack also has the screw-out head on it with 3-4″ of stroke.

The pictures pretty much show how I do it, except maybe a few details. I always have the jack as far into the the stump as I can go to reduce the effect it has on butt log length, like George mentioned. That is also why I like the low-profile jack. In the one picture it shows the jack entirely in the butt log, which I try to avoid, and it may have been necessary on that tree. But usually you can get by with less than that.

And you do have to consider the effect that the notch would have on log value. Like George said, unless it was on a hill, you would probably not want to use this jack method on a veneer log. It’s just another little trick that is not used in every situation, but is really handy where it can be applied.

Have fun jacking!

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