- This topic has 11 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 9 months ago by
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The wagon is designed and built by Swedish engineer Morgan Andersson of Österby Smedja http://www.osterbysmedja.se/ . Below is the description from their website.
A multipurpose wagon intended for forest work first hand but can also be used as a working wagon with a bed. Maximum load in terrain is 2000 kg. Tires are kevlar reinforced. This wagon has been customized in various ways through the years. It’s your own imagination that sets the standards to what this wagon can be. SV5 has floating disc brakes on all four front wheels. The brake system works with two master cylinders and can be operated both with regular brake pedal or by hand.
Sv5 Wagon Russell is now being prepared for shipping to Vermont. This will be the initial step in bringing the high quality Swedish forestry equipment to the U.S.
This wagon will make its U.S. Debut at the 2015 Draft Animal Power Field Days in Cummington, MA, September 24-27. We will put it into use in the forestry demo on Thursday, and will have it, and the designer/manufacturer on hand to promote and explain this ultimate piece of equipment for the small scale horse-powered forestry enterprise.
Russell Forestry Services will serve as the U.S. Distributor and will be promoting the equipment through use in our ongoing operations.
Here is a picture of the wagon being used in UK logger Simon Lenihan’s Celtic Horse Logging operation
Carl B Russell
Russell Forestry Services
earthwise@hughes.net
802-234-5524 (H)
802-353-1086 (C)Standard equipment is quick hitch shafts for single horse. This wagon is coming as the basic unustomized unit, so no pole.
So far I am reasonably certain that the D-ring harness can be easily modified to accept the hardware designed for the Swedish Military harness.
I will modify a set of my traces today, and post some photos.
This will be one of our first hurdles in merging this equipment into our working community. We cannot expect folks to completely retire their preferred harnessing styles and methods, so we are hoping that great minds will come together at the Field Days to help brainstorm ways to make the use of this equipment a reasonable transition.
Carl
Josh, I haven’t had a chance to use this commercially yet. I have used it around the farm to move some wood. The fact that it is so light, maneuverable, and smooth in operation lends it easily to many different situations.
It is currently set up for use with a single horse, so that is limiting to some extent because I have more horsepower than that. I have several other devices used with the team that I can eaily move large volumes of sawlogs and tree length firewood, but there are always small logs and odd shaped and small pieces of wood that I just can’t afford to wrap a chain around. These pieces are also difficult to bunch together into quantities that make it worthwhile to transport using my hitchcarts or sleds.
I have theorized that a rig like this could make loading and transport of these very lowgrade products more feasible because of easy loading and the incredibly efficient way that it travels across challenging terrain. My kids and I cleared an old log landing to use for a shooting range. It had been 30 years since I had it open for logging use, and there were many hardwood saplings 2-8″dbh. Since I wanted the area cleared I decided to try out the wagon per my theory. These stems were 12-20 feet long when delimbed, or cut to that length if larger and longer. I couldn’t see wasting animal power to twitch them around, so I used my hand-held tongs and bunched them by hand into thre or four piles. I may have pulled them 20-30 feet at the most, but many were just a simple reordering.
Using the single horse I was able to park the rig close to each pile and hand load 1/2 cord quickly and easily. I transported the loads down to the house which was about 1500 feet away in a matter of 5 minutes. Turn time between loading, unloading and traveling both ways was about 30 minutes. There is a steep hill that we go down loaded, and the disc brakes worked great to hold the load back. The horse hardly worked at all, and the pieces were very easy to load and unload by hand.
In all I cut about 2 cords of wood which some would argue was marginal firewood, mostly Grey, paper, and yellow birch, and soft maple, limbwood sized, but it will burn. It could be said to be worth $75/cd log length where I landed it. I didn’t count the exact time for the entire project, but there was a few hours of saw work, a few more hours of hand bunching, and similar for transport…. So 5-6 hours into $150 is $25-30/hr which is commercially viable as a compliment to more lucrative products like sawlogs.
There are plenty of limitations, not the least of which is cost. At $10,000 delivered to USA, it would take a lot of wood to cover that. The upside is that it has top of the line world class workmanship and will last for a long time. It is easily modified to fit the use by lengthening, or shortening the main beam, and the amount of exertion that it relieves from the horse can go a long way in making animal power more effective.
Another issue in my mind is fitting it into the typical operation. I am making a pole for it to hitch the team up, as I rarely work singles separately, which is where this would ultimately shine. A chopper twitching with one, and another person running another single on the wagon could move a lot of wood, but I do not have, nor do I know many horseloggers who have an operation that has more than one person on a regular basis.
This spring I am working on a small job, 20 MBf of hemlock and pine for a custom timber frame. We are pulling from three fairly distant locations. The longest skid is about 1/2 mile. Currently there is good snow cover, and I intend to use sleds, but I don’t see much resilience to this winter, and if the sledding gets tough, I will be using the wagon with the team, and loading it similarly to the way we use the bobsled and scoot.
I’ll keep you posted, Carl
Here is a picture of my single on a 15MBF post and beam log job. Spruce and fir for a milk house, and a small side barn.
That is the one ton pioneer wagon gear. Loaded off ramped bunks on the main trail.
That job was at the tail end of mud season.
Nice clean logs.
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