Lemmons thrown at ya, make lemmonade:)

[perchhauler]

I was reading and posted in a thread on here concerning the falling timber market, and how its affecting us horseloggers.. I’m taking time working on my equipment, just bought a camper for my landings, ect… One thing I’ll never do is quit what I live for, just ask and I’ll tell ya about my redneck horsedrawn yarder, not a skid cart, already got one of those.. Steve

[Gabe Ayers]

Steve,

Yes sir, tell us about your redneck forwarder, with photos if you can. Sounds interesting and informative.

We are not quitting either, just looking for better opportunities to add value to the material we harvest when possible and keeping more of that value for ourselves. We have just been dumping junk in the conventional markets when we couldn’t do anything else with it…. which unfortunately is to often.
I think most of us will do this horselogging work until we die.

Looking forward to hearing about and seeing the forwarder…

[perchhauler]

Well, you boys will get a good laugh from this one I’m sure, but it works for me.. I’m not able to put pics on myself, however in the future I’ll try n get some of it and have my sister put em on for ya.. In a case where you have a little bit of big timber that has to come uphill out of a nasty hole, or a large tree hung my redneck horsedrawn yarder works very nice.. Its a home made heavy worksled, with an 8,500 lb. (100′ 5/16 cable on the winch) winch on the back, set my generator onboard to charge the battery, drag er to the top of a nasty steep grade in a situation where logs have to come up, and cable the sled to a tree.. Works like a charm:)! logging with horses, if you hang a big oak, sometime even a good team cant get er down, this animal gets you out of a pinch…. Ok, there it is, laugh away, but it works… Steve

[Carl Russell]

Nothing funny about getting the job done.

Carl

[Gabe Ayers]

Great idea.

Many years ago I was doing a search about something and came onto a story about a device called a “Radio Horse”. It was a winch on a sled
that had a remote control that would allow the logger to accompany a log up a steep slope with a remote. Sounds real similar to your yarder. I also knew a fellow that bought a sewer cleaner from an municipal auction and converted it to be a yarder by using the cable and boom to pull logs up out of steep holes.

On small tracts in the mountains sometimes a fellow has no other option but to come straight up the mountainside, mostly because of water at the bottom or boundary lines.

Both these approaches were faster than using the horses and a cable and sheave/snatch block arrangement. It will certainly pull a hang up down easier that hooking the horses directly to it.

Looking forward to photos. Thanks man.

[Author]

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