DIY Fellerbuncher

[northforker]

Greetings,

I'm new to the forum but have stopped in for a look several times over the years and have picked up lots of useful information from the knowledgeable folks here. I'm not a professional logger or a fabricator, just a guy who has about 50 acres of trees and tired of harvesting them by hand. That said, here's some pics of a fellerbuncher attachment for a skidsteer I recently completed. I only had time to test it with a dozen or so trees before the snow flew, but it seems to work real well and zips right through. It's your basic hotsaw or disc saw scaled way down. The disc is 5/8" X 36" dia T1 steel with 12 Quadco 1-1/8" teeth mounted on the rim. I use my ASV's 25 gpm circuit to spin the disc at 900-1000 rpm and the other circuit for the grab arm. I'll fab a bunching arm for it over the winter. I've designed it to cut a 14" stump maximum for safety's sake. I can't wait 'til spring to use it more!

[islandlogger]

Welcome to this here forum northforker!
Say, that's some nice fabricating you done there! Nice looking unit, I can see you will have plenty of fun with that come Spring!!

[mad murdock]

Welcome northforker. That is serious skookum you got on that tracksteer loader nice job!!

[sprucebunny]

Welcome to the forum !
That is too cool 
Any guesses what it cost you to make ? What was the hardest part ?
I think I've found a winter project !!!

[thecfarm]

northforker,welcome to the forum. With a nice looking project like that one,there must be others?

[Piston]

Nice looking project and welcome.  I'd get in trouble with one of those things! 

Look forward to more action shots!

[chevytaHOE5674]

I'd get in trouble with one of those things! 

Very nice work. I too would get in trouble with that. I would have the entire farm treeless just because it was so fun to play with. hahaha 

[Raider Bill]

All I have to say it WOW!!! I like it!!!!

[northforker]

Thanks for the comments guys! Yeah, my wife saw the "Here's Johnny" look in my eyes the first time I fired it up and was very concerned for her trees. Yes, you do just want to cut everything down just for fun, kinda shaking like a junkie looking for his next fix.

I'd say the hardest part of building this thing was just figuring out how to do it. I went back and forth between building a tree shear, a bar saw feller, and the disc saw. Each has its set of pros and cons and that's why all of these solutions have been around for a long time. Because I have a relatively light carrier, weight played a big part in my decision. I wanted to build something sturdy, but have enough payload left over to actually carry a stem or two without tipping over. This ruled out a shear type of buncher as the high capacity ones (Dymax, Ryans, etc.) weigh in at around 1800 lbs. plus.

The bar saw feller is probably the most lightweight solution as there's no element of brute force to do the cutting. However, even a simple bar saw design ends up being relatively complex and requires a minimum of 3 hydraulic functions, 1 to turn the chain, 2 to grab the tree, and 3 to move the bar through the tree. Then there are the issues of oiling the chain, maintaining proper chain tension, and modulating the bar feed speed with chain speed. It's a fun to think about how to solve these little mechanical challenges, but I wanted to be cutting trees not tweaking a design until I got it functioning right. It seemed that the disc saw is the best combination of light weight and simplicity, just a big spinning disc and an arm basically. Cost-wise, I think all would end up being similar, with the shear being the cheapest and the bar and disc designs costing about the same.

I spent a lot of time just figuring out a workable design and what components I would use. Most fabrication time was spent on turning down the old truck axle. It is hard, hard stuff, probably 4140 chrome moly, and I have a cheap chinese 3-1 machine to do the work. I finally figured out that turning very slowly with carbide tool bits and lots of coolant worked taking off only a few 1000's at a time. Even drilling dimples for the setscrews in this stuff was impossible with HSS drill bits. I finally tried carbide tipped masonry bits (a few bucks at the hardware store) that worked very well.

Cost-wise, I figure I'm in the $2500 range on this project when you add it all up. The most expensive component was the hydraulic motor (~ $700) and the heavy duty type E Moline flange bearings (~ $400 for two). The Quadco teeth were about $150 at Baileys and steel was probably another 6-700 bucks or so. Throw in a few hundred more for hydraulic hose/fittings, double crossover relief valve, nuts/bolts, etc. Adding a bunching arm will cost a couple of hundred more for the cost of a small cylinder plus some kind of circuit splitter/selector valve.  Anyway, not too bad considering that a shiny new one built by real fabricators cost north of $25,000. I'd love to have one of those but, well you know...

[Coon]

That would be a nice rig to play on, however, on my land you would end up doing just as much if not more hand felling due to timber size and also due to the windfalls and such. 

Why wait for spring? A man's gotta get his fix of sawdust ya know.   

[Raider Bill]

That would sure work for me as a weekend/monthly wannabe logger trying to thin out my land. Hat's off to you northforker!

[barbender]

Very nice work! I'd like to build a bar saw dangle head for my skid steer. My problem is I only have one hydraulic circuit, and it is only 16 gpm.

[thecfarm]

northforker,if Raider Bill ask to borrow it say NO or he'll return it all burnt up. 

[semologger]

from were did you learn to do fab work that well at? Very well done.

[simplicityguy92]

did you build or by the saw?

[Banjo picker]

That is one cool build.  And welcome to the forum.  Banjo

[treefarmer87]

welcome to the forum very, very nice job

[northforker]

Thank You all again for your comments. Here's a couple more pics from the build. As you can see if you look close, I'm not a great fabricator. My goals are always simple, things that are made to stick together should stay stuck together, things should m/l work as they are designed to, and that nobody gets hurt. Anyway, as my Dad always said, "If you can't learn to be a good welder, learn to be a good grinder."

[northforker]

BB, You can do a lot with 16 gpm as long as you don't want to do it fast or do it all at once. An advantage of the bar saw design is that you grab on to the tree first. This allows you to take as much time as you need to saw through. Have you seen Danzco'z website (http://www.danzcoinc.com/html/standard_saw_components.html)? They sell hydraulic chainsaws and components that you could incorporate in a design. Their basic chainsaws are powered by gear motors using from 10 gpm up to 30 gpm. I have no idea what they charge. I think they are using Cross gear motors that will run a couple of hundred bucks new that you could source yourself. One thing I'd be interested in if I was making a bar saw is their feed and motor control valve. This stuff becomes more important with lower gpm/psi available.

Very nice work! I'd like to build a bar saw dangle head for my skid steer. My problem is I only have one hydraulic circuit, and it is only 16 gpm.

[northforker]

Why wait for spring? A man's gotta get his fix of sawdust ya know.   

I hear you on that, but most of my trees are 7+ miles off any kind of plowed road and the snow is *deep*. This is what we use to get there in the winter: