High lead logging

[timberfaller390]

Hey, Chris any word on those book titles yet?

[VT_Forestry]

Just to toss this is there...yesterday in harvesting class we went out and worked a small scale yarder that the school owns.  Trailer-mounted, 22ft tower, 18HP briggs motor running 2 drums.  Took about 45 minutes to set up.  Carriage operated with a stop on the skyline...when the carriage came down and hit the stop it released the chokers on the mainline.  Capacity was around 1000lbs on a turn.   Longest span it could handle was around 500' due to the size of the drums.  It was originally built by the forest service for fuel reduction purposes.  Pretty cool little machine to operate.  They said they had complete plans to build another one for an estimated $20,000.  It definitely had a "cool" factor and was a neat little toy to play with, but I wonder if you could make it pay doing small scale operations with it?  Just my 2 cents

[Tillaway]

If everything goes right, you could get maybe 1 to 1.5 loads per day that is if nothing breaks.  I can't imagine line speeds would be fast enough to get any more than that.   It would take at least two people to run the yarder.  You would need to gross around $1000 per day minimum I would think.  You usually need to average about one load per person per day as a rule of thumb for yarders to stay in business.

[VT_Forestry]

We could usually run around 1-2 minutes/turn, but that was on a 230' corridor.  Wouldn't take long to run out of wood on that, then you have to move the yarder and set it up again on another corridor.  I would think you'd be able to make it work, but you'd have to have no real mechanical failures and really be moving to do it