What I did Next summer.

Sprucegum · December 12, 2011, 09:31:22 PM

Now that the dust has settled from all the neat upgrades to the Forum I am starting a thread to document some upgrades to my campsite at the woodlot. Since we bought the place six years ago we have had a summer project to work on; first the clearing itself, then an outhouse, then a group firepit, more trailer parking spots, and finally a small cabin last summer. Next summer we are going to redo the firepit/cook area and have it done in time to spit roast a pig August long weekend! It'll be the next best thing to going to Harrison.
Our first firepit was a collection of rocks covered by a large teepee type tent.

The teepee works pretty good; I have the tarps on two poles that can be rolled up easily and quickly unrolled again when a shower hits us. The disadvantage comes from teepees not being designed to stay in one spot year after year. The poles are getting bowed and saggy and can no longer handle a snow load. The cheap tarps I use are only good for two or three seasons at best so its time for a post and beam structure with a tin roof.
You won't see any plans because I can't draw worth a hoot and my plans always change anyway. The general idea is a central roof 12 feet wide by 26 feet long with an 8 foot wide lean to on each side. I will buy the tin roof and any necessary hardware but all the wood is coming out of my trees. I just have to find which trees it is hiding in.

Magicman · December 12, 2011, 10:51:31 PM

We always need a plan. I have not completed my Cabin Addition and in my mind, I am already building a bunk log house.

Don_Papenburg · December 12, 2011, 11:20:13 PM

Mind plans are a lot easier to change than the ones on paper.

Magicman · December 13, 2011, 07:54:36 AM

Change and e x p a n d. ;D :D

isawlogs · December 13, 2011, 08:54:30 AM

I do a lot of the same type plans . They are easy to work with ;D

Keep the pics coming. !!!

Sprucegum · December 13, 2011, 09:49:24 PM

I have a nice little stand of spruce about 500 yards from the sawmill so I cleared a trail to it and sized them up. The lumber inventory I need consists of six 8x8 x 14, six 6x6 x 12, eight 3x8 x 12, a bunch of 2x6 rafters, and a whole whack of purlins. Some of them are hiding in these trees right here.

Well, thats the trail in. Let's see if we can find the trees:

This phase of the operation took place in mid-October. The days are getting short but the weather is perfect for playing working outside. The forks on the three point hitch work great for lifting the majority of the log off the ground. The part getting dirt ground into it is probably going to be firewood anyway

SPIKER · December 13, 2011, 10:17:38 PM

Quote from: Sprucegum

Boy that is one smooth AX cut there :D

looks like some great project work going on there...

Mark

Coon · December 13, 2011, 10:48:19 PM

Looks like you got a nice dry skid trail to use. Looks a whole lot better than mine. ;) Mine are now frozen though with a bit of snow. Hopefully enough snow to keep the logs somewhat clean. Starting to get the wood out later this week. ;D

That axe sure makes some nice fine chips too... :D

thecfarm · December 14, 2011, 06:09:00 AM

What kind of tractor is that,hp? My woods are wet. My tires are dirty all the time now. Been a kinda wet so called winter. Nothing dries up now,short days and not much warmth form the sun keeps the ground wet and weekly rain does not help either. Looks like your ground is good to work on. Mine is a challenge to do anything on in most places.

Sprucegum · December 14, 2011, 09:35:19 PM

The tractor is a Mahindra 3525; 35 horsepower two wheel drive, made in India. Its a knock off of the Massey they used to make. A basic little utility tractor with a manual transmission - suits my needs just fine and the dealer threw in an old Ferguson plow. Learning how to use that is a whole other story.

The first job I had in the woods we had to supply our own ax. I bought this one in a Hudson Bay store in Peace River in 1969. I still like it for limbing but I have gotten modernized for felling and use my Husky 359.

I made an executive decision and changed the 8x8 x 14's to 7x7 x 14; easier to fit in the log, and they still look beefy enough to lean on if you can't find a chair.

Sprucegum · December 14, 2011, 10:07:12 PM

That last picture shows the first dusting of white powder. The county was hauling sand out of the pit my road goes through that weekend and made it slippery. The the good old West wind blew away all the loose stuff so now my road has two strips of glare ice down the center and bare gravel in the shoulders!

The last weekend in October I took a walk in the woods behind the camp and found this blow-down mess.

The ground is real soft in here; waterlogged sand that is slowly moving, glacier speed, down the bank of the valley. I can probably get within a couple hundred feet with my D4 cat though. I bet y'all know what's going to happen next...

thecfarm · December 15, 2011, 07:27:12 AM

Nice tractor. I keep looking at those tractors. I have 2, but I'm always looking. They look like a beefy tractor. Sand you have,that explains the lack of rocks,the rocks are all ground up.

isawlogs · December 15, 2011, 08:03:26 AM

Sand is a comodity I don't have here, I do though have rocks that you could hide a tractor behind :

Nice set up, I also have looked and keep eyeing those tractors, one will eventualy follow me home, I am really hopping that it will have a front diff on it though :D

Coon · December 15, 2011, 01:00:09 PM

Ahh, I see you do have some wetter land. ;) You have much the same mess to clean up as I have. :( We have over a hundred acres of timber with wood scattered about just the same with most of it being WET.... I guess it's just the nature of the beast. :

Sprucegum · December 19, 2011, 09:54:04 PM

Another weekend in the woods. I drive up Friday nights after supper and get there in time for a hot toddy before bed. Up again at the crack of dawn, about 8:00 AM this time of year. Down in this little valley the winter sun doesn't hit me until 9:00 AM but I am up and out way before that. This is the first weekend in November and the ground is still not frozen enough to hold me up. I drove the cat as close as I dared and by the time I said to myself "Far enough" I was already one cat length too far.

I tried stuffing small trees and branches under the tracks with limited success. One side finally got a grip on some hard ground but the other side wasn't going anywhere so I got out my long chain. A wrap around a good solid tree and hook onto the track; it came out pretty slick then. So I am back on solid ground 20 feet behind where I quit and only half the day gone; I might get something done yet!

I spent some more time limbing and found the resident Ravens secret stash. He must be stealing from the coyotes that have been yipping around here.

The first tree that fell broke off the second tree about 16 feet up then wedged the tops in between two others. There is lots of stress in the trunk and will be an interesting bit of work with the saw. It jumped sideways about 5 feet when it cut loose, that's a lot of weight flying around. I bucked it into 2 fourteen footers and a twelve.

I will show the skidding pictures in the next post. The speed I type I may never catch up to present day

thecfarm · December 20, 2011, 06:46:22 AM

You have the rest of your life. ;D How are you getting the logs out? Hooking them onto the blade?

Norm · December 20, 2011, 07:32:53 AM

Great project, thanks for taking us along.

isawlogs · December 20, 2011, 08:13:33 AM

Theres a hitch on the back side of the dozer for a pin, he must be hooking the chain to it.

I have hooked a small round in front of the tracks with chain and drove it under to get out of holes like that too. I remember the first time I had to do that with a wheeled tractor, I never thought it would take me out .

Sprucegum · December 21, 2011, 09:53:50 PM

We got a little skiff of snow since I was here last. It will help keep the logs clean as I skid them and its not deep enough to keep the ground from freezing. Still not frozen enough to gamble again so I will drag out the cables. I have 3 fifty foot cables from work; the customer decided he wanted sixty footers after these were built so they would have landed in the dumpster. A lot of these young fellas with their nice cars don't like to park beside the dumpster ;) but I don't mind. The cat is sitting on the smart side of the divide between hard and soft ground.

I had to change direction a bit a the start of each pull and since I am using three separate pieces of cable rather than one long winch I had to pull 50 feet, back up re-hook, pull another 50 feet, etc, etc. By the time I got four logs out I had pretty well used up my allotment of footprints for the day.

Those four logs were just the right size for this trip; any more and I would not have made it up the hill. That white strip in the woods is the lower road and in the upper left-hand corner is the hairpin curve that is immediately followed by a very steep stretch of road. The chain has to be set the right length so the logs will come around the curve without dropping off the road but they must be far enough back so the cat can straighten out and pull with both tracks before the full weight of the logs hits the steep part. Working 3 levers and 2 pedals and watching the bank leaves no time for action photography. Made it to the mill.

Next weekend I will clean up the logged area and drag out a bit of firewood

thecfarm · December 22, 2011, 07:11:23 AM

I know what you mean about the walking part. I'm cutting a bog off that never freezes,I only have a tractor,no way for me to get onto it with,I would sink. It's just about all junk,half rotted wood just for the OWB. I have a couple 50-60 foot of cable too. That gets real old,real quick. Sometimes I am walking through a couple feet of snow. After a few times the wood leaves a nice path,but than it's time to move over a few feet for the next bunch of trees.Woods maybe froze up here now. But after making 2-3 trips the roads may start to break down too. Was down in the single digits a for 2 nights,but today suppose to be in the 40's.

Sprucegum · January 02, 2012, 10:59:54 AM

This trip I cleaned up the rest of the collateral damage from the blow-down. It's like playing pick-up-sticks with real big sticks. They are three to six inch DBH (diameter breast height) twenty to thirty feet long. The ground is finally frozen enough to hold the cat so one hitch does the trick to the road. I used my old home made sled for some of the shorter pieces. On the road I have my Suzuki Samurai, nicknamed "Sami", and the log trailer to take the sticks to the mill yard where I cut and split them into firewood. I waited for snow on the road to skid the big logs and now I wish there was no snow so Sami could pull a bigger load up that hairpin curve. Another inch of snow and the trailer will be parked for the rest of the winter.

Things were going too smooth, I was getting too much done I guess; so this had to happen

Usually this sort of thing happens when you are stuck in the mud or on a steep sidehill or up against a big tree. I was in the middle of the road, in two inches of snow, not a problem in sight, made a jerky turn to the left – pop! I keep a fair bit of slack in the tracks during snow plowing season because the snow packs in around the idlers and can put a lot of stress on them. That's more slack than I needed today. I have read stories about cat skinners who can put the track back on just by backing in to it so I always waste at least half an hour trying to do it before I go get the special wrench. The first time I popped a track I had to figure out what kind of special wrench was needed and go build it. You see, the big nut that loosens the big idler wheel is right behind the support for the hydraulic ram that lifts the dozer blade. Strange; I don't have a picture of the wrench, the foot is cut out of ¾" plate steel to fit a 2 5/16 nut, next there is a 5" offset and a 3 foot pipe for a handle. Another three or six feet of steel bar can be stuck in the end of the pipe for more leverage when needed.
It only takes half an hour to loosen the big idler as far as it will go but then I waste another half an hour trying to back into the track again before I go get the rest of the tools I need; a bottle jack, a come along, and more chain. Its time to get this job done, the sun is looking pretty low already. The bottle jack lifts the back end of the cat and the down press of the dozer lifts the front end so the entire track is off the ground. The come-along, the chains, and a six for bar position the track over the idlers. The special wrench tightens it all up and we are back on the road, now where did the day go? Oh well, like they say, "A bad day in the woods is still better than a good day in the office."

Sprucegum · February 08, 2012, 09:44:24 PM

Wow, its been over a month since I updated this thread even though I have been up to the woodlot almost every weekend. And what have I got to show for it? More pictures of trees and more pictures of logs :

and more tinkering ??? First of course is the tree; I found this one right across the road from the mill. When I dropped it the top was less than 50 feet from the road. It had to come down because the trunk was split right through for six feet up and there was dry rot in the center. Those rotten centers sure make me nervous but I love it when they fall right.

After I got the spruce drug to the mill I went up to my North boundary line and brought back a whack of poplar to use for rafters and purlins.

I took a break from logging and made a high tech modification to the mill - I put an hydraulic drive on the carriage 8) The location of the control lever puts me right in line with all the high speed sappy sawdust and bark bullets so there will be no more sawing until I get a guard built. I would hate to ruin my good looks this late in the game.

We don't have any snow to speak of but I still don't care for mixing it with sawdust so I doubt I will do any sawing before spring. The Groundhog said we will have only 6 or 8 weeks more winter anyway. I have a log here that's a bit big for the mill so I will split it with the chainsaw - spend 4 hours now to saw 2 hours in the spring.

customsawyer · February 14, 2012, 04:54:10 PM

I have enjoyed the story. How long is the log that you have to rip in half? If it is less than 16' I wouldn't think it would take very long to cut it in half.