farmi winch?

[mitchmaine]

anyone ever consider mounting a farmi or fransgaard winch (or something similar) on a powered forecart? i know we cross the line often powering balers and mower conditioners, forwarders and so on for use with animals, but i’ve never heard anyone mention a powered winch, and there they are, already made. i borrowed one today to pull some fir in across a peat bog that i didn’t dare send my single horse out on to. it seldom freezes. i never thought too much about them, and considered them a kind of toy until i used this one today. pretty slick. i pulled about a dozen clear of the muck and then tranfered over to the scoot. just a thought. mitch

[Does’ Leap]

Mitch, I own a farmi-style winch and logged with it for years. It would be pretty burly to be lugging it around in the woods with a load of logs. I thought briefly about mounting a atv winch to my logging arch – it would be a lot lighter and easier to attach to an existing arch. Here is a 15,000 winch: http://www.google.com/products/catalog?pq=20,000+atv+winch&hl=en&gs_nf=1&ds=pr&cp=6&gs_id=p&xhr=t&q=15,000+atv+winch&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1280&bih=681&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=11877985647875461351&sa=X&ei=lVVPT8-VMojl0QHcytXoDQ&sqi=2&ved=0CGcQ8wIwAQ
That should snake out most of what a team of horses could pull…

George

[Ronnie Tucker]

and after the winch how about a bigger motor and then some big tires.less is more.try to stay with the k. i. s. s. methods.this bog sounds bad but how often do you have that to deal with.in animal logging you have to plan things out and overcome these problems without always thinking more gezzmos.

[Baystatetom]

I had thought about mounting a ATV winch run off a car battery to a scoot as well. Just in case. Kind of like having a credit card in for emergencies though pretty easy to get in over your head just because you can.
~Tom

[mitchmaine]

i used to own and operate a clark ranger. you could hook on to the back of a woodlot and tow it up to the front. amazing power. too much to put in the hands of a man. maine only makes two dollars. one from the woods, and one from the tourists. everything else is there to shore up those two. in the next ten years, we will probably chip the whole of the state off for $17 per ton. we are giving away all our wood and keeping none of the money. i can feel a lot of old loggers rolling in their graves. anyway, i looked at that farmi winch and it didn,t impress me much. i have changed my mind. its ok. a scoot is pretty light and fairly simple tool. a twitch chain is lighter. keep it simple, right? i agree.

[Does’ Leap]

@mitchmaine 32974 wrote:

i have changed my mind. its ok. a scoot is pretty light and fairly simple tool. a twitch chain is lighter. keep it simple, right? i agree.

Cheers to that. I still own the winch and have only used it twice in the last 4 years (since I got horses) to pull down a couple of hang-ups my horses couldn’t get a hold of.

George

[Gabe Ayers]

Mitch-
I have thought about the winch idea as well. I have used a powered capstan winch in the woods along with horses, and that tool is pretty slick, but takes time to lug around and set up. I think if I were to move to a powered system for logs I would lean towards a powered arch similar to what Elmin Mitchell used to run. It is quite a rig but really allows you to move some wood. I think Jimmy Cornish also used to run something similar, but I never saw it. I do know what Elmin’s design took the right team that could really lean in as the winch cable was pulled in and then logs were lifted. That is some heavy work!
-Brad

[mitchmaine]

hey brad, hows it going? jimmys twitch cart was very similar to elmins. size shape and so on. his horses were smaller, but learned to lean into the load. either way, the hitch comes or the cart goes, but sooner or later they come together somewhere. jimmys cart was stolen. he thought it would show up somewhere, but hasn’t yet. it was too good a machine to chop up for iron. i hope. elmin used to load his cart in the horse trailer using the winch. right up to the headboard and then load the team standing on either side of the pole. pretty slick. as i recall, charlie allen had stan wheeler, my neighbor, build jimmys rig. late eightys or early ninetys. brian mitchell built one and there were two or three others. fairly expensive at the time. used a winch with a high reduction gear to hold the load. with a clutch mech. allowing free spool. i started a couple times luke warm, but never finished one.
best wishes, mitch

[Lanny Collins]

ATV winches which are 12 volt would work well. They are fairly light weight and they free spool out to attach. You wouldn’t have to totally depend on your horses holding the load if you would use a scotch behind each wheel and chain the scotch to the forecart, similar to how wreckers work when they are pulling something from afar. To make the winch more lightweight they are now using a fiber instead of metal cable. Have not used one but suspect it is aramid fiber like what is used in bullet proof vests. Pound for pound it is stronger than steel but much more lightweight.

[Ethan Tapper]

My gut reaction to this thread is to say, like Ronnie T. said, keep it simple, don’t go crazy on this winch stuff. But thinking about how much I want to see horses in the woods, and how valuable I think they are as a resource for really high quality forest management (not to mention the livelihoods of high quality people), I think that anything we can do (within reason) to put teamsters and their animals in a place to get wood out in a way that benefits them, the landowner, and the forest is worth while. John Plowden uses a small winch with a skidding cone on the log in very specific situations, like Mitch’s peat bog, getting logs out of a big hole, etc. and I think that in that context it was a good complement to his work.

We shouldn’t be trying to use this technology to compete with mechanized logging systems – we shouldn’t have to when the application of our technology can and should be 100% different from their’s – but I think that on the small scale; a couple logs here and there, it’s perfectly acceptable and can be a good part of an animal-powered harvest (unless we, like Ronnie implied, wake up one day with a skidder parked in the box stall).

[Lanny Collins]

I sure don’t want to tempt any of the loggers or forestry horse users to technology but for myself, since I don’t log, I haul my forecart and team in a 24′ stock trailer. I use aluminum ramps (please disregard my use of modern technology. I really should use wood slab that I sawed out) to load my forecart. I usually take a little run at the ramp and have been thinking a winch may help out. since i load the forecart in the front it would be hard to use a horse to drag it in and then get my horse out. Also, it is probably sinful not to back up to every implement to hook up but sometimes it would be nice to drag that piece of equipment over to the forecart and sometimes use a winch to lift it for hook-up. I guess if you are a real teamster you should just quit when you can’t do these things without some foreign assistance.

[mitchmaine]

Don’t we all make personal choices how far technologie comes into our lives? Its here. The genie is out of the box. I don’t hear that anyone is chopping with an axe and a bow saw, and I don’t, but I expect someone does somewhere and I would appreciate that choice. Hauling horses to the woodlot in a stock trailer is a compromise of a kind, but who cares, right? So how far the gas engine wriggles its way into the woodlot isn’t a failure of any kind the way I see it. We all make choices and that’s that.

With that in mind, George, you said that you logged with a tractor and winch for a spell. How do you compare it to yarding with the horses? Pros and cons? I tried it (the winch and tractor) for two days, and I really didn’t make much more wood with it. But I was on the sharp end of the learning curve. It is nothing like a skidder. I must have got on and off that tractor a million times, with a single horse or team and scoot, we are always on the ground. Anyway I really want to know what YOU think about it. mitch

[Carl Russell]

I have moved a lot of logs with horses, from some pretty frigged up situations. There have been many times when folks suggested I put a winch on my cart. In my case I just haven’t needed to, AND I have felt the expense would not be justified.

I admired Elmin’s cart. I would suggest against electric winches. They use a lot of energy, and unless you have a recharging system on the cart, you’re apt to find you’re out of juice just when you need it…… also, they really aren’t that powerful (certainly not as powerful as a horse).

I saw a clip on you-tube of a cart with a chainsaw winch on it that seemed to work really well.

When I have needed to reach logs a long way out of reach I have used ropes and pulleys. Certainly these things are not nearly as easy to move around as a winch mounted on your cart or sled, but I already have them for other work, and when I’m done using them, they aren’t in my way on the cart or sled.

If I was going to move a lot of wood out of a swamp, I think I would set up a spar and use a block and tackle. When I started out I bought my first horse from an old horse logger who logged off some steep slopes along the white river like that. I’m talking STEEEP. The team worked on the level in a field at the top of the slope, and he and his dad worked the rigging to draw the logs up to the top of the bank. Then they loaded them on the sled and took them to roadside.

I think Lanny’s comments about having a winch for convenience is interesting. I’m sure a boat winch could work in those cases for equipment hook-up.

I back my carts right up into my trailer with the horses.

Carl

[Author]

Posts