Logging Arch

[Carl Russell]

Yes Mike that one is great.

Donn you are right. It is the tip of the pole that is most critical, but it is most effective if the evener hitch point is on, or next to, the pole. Primarily for holding back, but also to maintain a taught hitch. If evener and pole are offset, and the is some flex or give, then they can come out of sync…. I can’t really see how that would happen, especially with a cart, but I think that is the basis for the convention. In fact you can run into this with a two-way sulky plow where the evener is down by the plows, 12″ or so below the pole, and when shifting bottoms there is a discrepancy between line of draft and pole.

The main point with pole height is forward stepping with the front legs. The horses need free movement without hitting the neckyoke. I know for rigs like mowers and plows there is a conventional height, from which the mechanisms work best, but I think that was because the pole tip height was already a convention, and they worked back from there. I figure that around 30″ is pretty good. When you start to shorten the pole and tighten the hitch length, knee room become very important.

I think it is also important to note that as the hitch point is raised, so can the heel chains be shortened. My cart is set on one link, which on the ground would never work. As the evener is now close to 24″ off the ground, corresponding to the log hooks on the back, the hind legs can easily travel freely below.

Pulling in the neckyoke, and shortening the heel chains will create a shorter hypotenuse of that triangle with the same angle at the D. This will actually make that hypotenuse higher off the ground, which in turn raises pole tip height, as pole tip is one point in the triangle.

I just want to say that you can pick up history books, coffee table books, family albums, or travel down gravel lanes all over the country and find photos after photo, and living operators with all variety harnesses and equipment getting good work done day after day. I happened to have two mentors who were adamant about the physical nature of working horses, who were also both dedicated users of the D-ring harness. These things I am covering here may seem like minutiae to some, and they may be, but these two men never knew each other, but could have written the same book chapter and verse. They both had worked horses their whole lives, both taking on small mechanical operations during the 60-70s, but returning to the working horse because of the inherent efficiency. They both had machines, but did their work with horses because they knew how to get the most out of the animals. A very big part of that for both of them was the D-ring harness. This harness fit fundamentally into the other aspect, which was the way equipment provided mechanical advantage. They both designed log/farm carts around the harness, and they both used sleds, one a scoot, the other the bobsled. The principles of the biomechanics of horses, transferred through the D-ring harness, into simple and sturdy equipment was all based on a study how these layers overlap.

This is all to say that while I am detailing these components of the hitch, pole height, D-ring location, and biomechanical geometry, I realize that there are many who get plenty done without such attention to detail.

I in no way intend to portray that because there is so much thought behind this that it is “The Way” to do it. What I am trying to do is answer to FAQ’s of the D-ring harness that tend to escape people, which in turn makes the harness system seem to be inferior, or not as effective as some of us would have you believe.

Anyway, I’ll be hitching up Monday morning and I’ll get some specific footage of some of what I have been trying to describe.

Carl

[wild millers]

Responding to a question Daniel had asked a few posts up in regard to the adjustable axle forcart. I believe the cart your referencing might be the White Horse Machine cart? In which case you could say it is the axle that adjusts but more to the point would be that the deck and draw bar adjust in relation to the axle. Chuck has both that cart as well as the I&J ground drive cart.

I would just throw this out there because it might not be immediately obvious unless you were in the situation to utilize this feature. Chuck uses this adjustment more to alleviate tongue lift rather than offset tongue weight and I believe that was the intent of the extra engineering. The picture attached shows a setup that Chuck has used often when all the other hay wagons and trailers are full. As you can see this arrangement puts a lot of weight on the forcart draw bar. (The weight of the manure spreader forward of it’s axle plus the weight of all the hay bales forward of the axle as well.) By adjusting the drawbar closer to the axle it eliminates the extreme amount of lift that would be generated in the situation. The hydraulic brake feature on that cart really helps in this hitch setup when the animals are holding the load back while going down a hill. After the cart is unhitched from the heavy drawbar load, the adjustment is cranked back to take that extra weight off of the tongue to ease hitching and unhitching.

Kind of a neat feature, but we only ever really utilized it in this scenario. I can’t remember the whole apparatus well enough at this point to imagine if it could be a design feature that could possibly be worked into a logging arch or not. Hope that helps.

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[Carl Russell]

Here is the link to a clip I made this morning. I didn’t have time to get into the details I covered above, but you should be able to see that with a reasonable resistance trigging the wheels, and with the horse stepping back, I can press against the outside end of the single tree and lift the pole end to hitch tightly. When I sit on the end of the pole you can see that the market straps are still slack even though I am well over two hundred pounds. With three out of four traces hitched, you have a 3:1 reduction when pushing against that last unhitched hook, so you can lift a pretty heavy pole…..

[JaredWoodcock]

I decided to reconfigure an old forcart that I made to accept an arch. I set it up as a three way hybrid between the piggy back arch, a barden cart, and a more typical arch. There are a lot of things that I would already change but I built it with some scrap metal that I had around. I will give it a try and then when I know how I am going to use it I will build a better design later. One issue is that after I had already welded the arch on I realized that the newer tires I was going to use would lift if a little higher than the original. Because of this I put the pole pocket about 2 inches lower than the arch. The top of the pole pocket measures 30 inches off of the ground which seems to fit my team pretty well.

My question is; should I put the double tree on the top or the bottom of the pole? I will try to post some pictures. Keep in mind the cart isnt done and I can cut it apart and reweld if is seems like a bad design?

Thanks

[JaredWoodcock]

Im having trouble uploading the photos, it acts like it is working and then sends me back to page one of the conversation?

[dominiquer60]

Our web folks are working on this and other bugs. Can you add to the bug thread, plus any other problems or changes that would make using the forum more enjoyable.

Thanks,
Erika

[dominiquer60]

Our web folks are working on this and other bugs. Can you add to the bug thread, plus any other problems or changes that would make using the forum more enjoyable.

Thanks,
Erika

[Carl Russell]

Jared, about the doubletree position and draft lines.

Ideally you want the evener to be in line with the hitch point. If it is below then the draw will tend to lift the pole which will make handling difficult. However, if you move your arch ahead of the axle pivot point the weight of the logs will come down on the pole counteracting the lift because of the misalignment of draft with evener and hitch point.

In this way you are also increasing mechanical advantage by improving the fulcrum. The draft of the log mass will pull back on the arch which will cause it to rotate upward and backward over the axle, lifting the pole, but with the weight of the log hitched forward of the pivot the mass of the log being pulled will actually help to lift it off the ground….. Putting the power of the horses into the equipment in a way that augments their exertion.

Carl

• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by Carl Russell.

[JaredWoodcock]

That makes sense but I must be a little confused, Why does the barden cart have the evener below the pole? My arch is set vertically over the axle and slightly behind due to the thickness of the tubing.

[Carl Russell]

I have two log carts, plows, cultivators, and mowing machines, all with eveners below the pole. I have a wagon and a couple of sleds that all have the eveners above the pole. I think for stepping over, a high pole front and back makes sense. If the evener is above a high pole, the suspension of the D-ring would not work. I am reasonably sure that the evener height is the same height as the hitch height on the Barden Cart…. or it should be close, even with the evener under the pole.

Carl

[JaredWoodcock]

So the trade off of having a slightly less efficient evener hitch point does not outweigh the fact that the d-ring harness needs to hold the proper geopemtry?
Carl could you measure how high off of the ground your pole pocket is on your barden cart? and how tall are your horses in the video?

Thanks

[JJK]

I hesitate to add this since others experience outweighs mine by a very large margin, but sometimes different words make sense to different people. Also writing it out and subsequent critiques help me to understand better.

The Braden cart has the evener and hooks at the same level. If the evener is below the hooks the log and horses will be spinning the axle in the same direction, and lifting the pole. Points level to and higher than the hooks will turn the axle opposite the log, lifting it. I think the evener is put level with the hooks since this is the lowest ,i.e. best draft, that will also counteract the rotation caused by the log. So from this aspect above or below the pole doesn’t matter, just the relationship to the chain hooks.
Josh

[Carl Russell]

Correct.

[JaredWoodcock]

Thanks Josh that is what I thought. Because I wanted my pole to be level and the new tires that I had for my wheels were taller than expected I ended up putting my pole pocket 2 inches lower than my arch. I will put the evener on top to try and offset the difference. If it really throws me off I will just have to chop and re-weld for plan B.

[Donn Hewes]

Josh and Jared, “If the evener is below the hooks the log and horses will be spinning the axle in the same direction, and lifting the pole. Points level to and higher than the hooks will turn the axle opposite the log, lifting it.”
I don’t think that is exactly right. If the line of draft (imaginary line that continues back from tugs and evener) is under the axle (or spindles) it is lifting the tongue higher(an example of this would be mower evener brackets that hang down and are designed to create lift). If the tug line goes over the spindles like on most log carts, it is helping hold the tongue down. The higher you place it the more it holds the tongue down. My point is it may not need to be as high as the hooks to hold the tongue down as needed. As far as log hook placement relates to tongue lift; if the tightened log chain passes over the axle / spindles (imaginary line between spindles) it is lifting the tongue. The closer to the spindles the less lift it will cause. That is why moving the hooks forward (not too much) will reduce the tongue lift and moving the hooks behind the axle will cause more tongue lift. Taller carts also usually move the line of the chain from the spindles and increase the lift on the tongue. These are all moving parts. If your log hooks don’t cause too much tongue lift you don’t need to place the eveners so high to counter balance it.

On my new cart both the evener placement and hooks are causing some tongue lift, but still not enough to reduce all the tongue weight built into the cart. I am tempted to move my evener up about 4″ just to make it so they aren’t adding lift (this would still be several inches below the pole). Depending on where Jared’s hooks are he may not need to put the evener on top of the pole.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by Donn Hewes.

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