Who's logging this winter?

I'm cutting pine for a few frames this winter. Just got the skid road finished yesterday, and started cutting the first trees today. There is some nice pine at my neighbors, and I'm skidding it right to my mill. 30'x22" Easten White Pine.

Nice looking stick. Thanks for posting.

Hi Dave, I am assuming you are cutting by hand? That is a sweet piece of pine. I am hashing over some tree length stuff picking and choosing the cuts, nothing like that, though! You must have extensions for your mill?

All hand falling for me. That's a medium sized stick. I've got a few logs on this job that will make 40'x24". Sadly, I don't have a use for timbers that big right now, so they will become something much shorter. I have a 24' extension for the Wood-Mizer. I can saw 45' in one pass, but have done 47'

How wonderful it would be to have sticks like that in Indiana...

Sometimes I think I need to move somewhere with trees like you have!

Wind and record cold and record snowfall has held off logging this winter around here -no one wanted to go out their door!)

Wow -- nice stick. Don't break the mill!


It's been pretty wet down here this winter-- not a lot of stuff making it out of the woods.

We don't cut too much anymore, but I hope to get a half dozen or so good yellow pines down from a house site in order to use them in the frame -- they have to come down anyway so it would be a shame not to use them. I'd really like to get them down and sawn up before the sap rises, but we're running out of time. Maybe I should shift priorities...

If you get shifting priorities figured out, let us know how that went. Still working on that one.

The mill won't have any problem with that little guy. I've had some bigger stuff on there before:

We always seem to break something -- cylinder/hose, bend the clamp, etc -- when we saw the big boys. Usually its when we're rolling or loading.

I bent a guide roller holder on one of those big ones. I was able to straighten and weld it to keep going, but it got replaced. There are no hydraulics on the extension, so I used a Lull forklift for all maneuvering on the long ones. That one is over 47 feet, which is longer than I can saw, so there was still a lot of sliding to get it done.

Imaging rolling that by hand! That is a days work all by itself. I've been there a few times. I used to roll with my fork lift and straps, now do it by hand with a high lift jack and a chain,a pry here and there, nice and slow not a lot to go wrong.

Nice and straight, was it straight looking down the track, in both planes?

Yes, they were all straight. I cut 10 47' timbers for a new Dutch barn floor and a new purlin plate in 2011. I cut 7 42' and 46' timbers for another Dutch floor in 2012, but they weren't all as straight, but I got my timbers. I had one log that was 46'6' and 24" on the small end. Pine like that is hard to find for sale all in one spot around here. It's out there, but not too many people want to be bothered to sell it.

And trucking it is another aspect, along with handling logs of this size, from the logger to the sawyer/framer and getting them safely into the frame.

Trucking turned into a bit of a debacle. On the first bunch of long logs, there was no machine access, so the plan was to hire a truck crane and take everything in two or three tractor trailer loads. Someone decided they were going to be cheap and not hire the crane. Instead they came with a big payloader and had nowhere to operate it in the woods. They had to pick one log off the pile and back the loader into the woods, then back the TT off the road and load one log, then pull it back into the road and repeat. Only the first log rolled over the log stakes onto the ground on the other side. Then, when they finally got it loaded, the trailer slide off the woods road into the gate post, and they had to pull it back into the woods with the loader. There were more calamities related to this simple loading project. In the end, it took two weeks to get two loads home, and probably twice what it would have cost to hire the crane. Where I was working at the time we had a payloader that would lift 25,000 pounds, and a Lull that would lift 6,000. Now that I own the mill, I use my Kubota L48 for most jobs, but have access to a different Lull for the big stuff. In June I cut some white oak as big as the one the skidder is latched on to. I had to drag them in front of the mill and lift one end with the mill loader and the other with the Kubota. The timbers where no problem for the Kubota once they were sawn out.

Logging is going well so far. If you call being mired most of the way to the seat well. The skidder got itself out after I dropped the log, but wow, what a mess. I'll have to go back with the backhoe and smooth things out later. I didn't want to go in there in the first place, but couldn't pull from any other direction.

Soon spring will be in full swing and I'll be doing something else.

Dave:
The next season is MUD season....

I'm in it now.....

Jim Rogers

I'm fighting it right now. Cold today, but that may be the end of it. I've only got about six more trees I want to take, but I'm going to have to winch each one of them into skidder range. Then I'm going to switch over to milling for the next couple of weeks.

Anyone need a 68'-6" 12"x12"?

I need a couple 10x10's, 62'. Send it up this way! I will be splicing.

I'll put one by the mailbox with your address on it, see if they take it.

Do you often get access to your neighbors, woodlot, Dave? After seeing that grapple skidder, I'm assuming that you do...

I took all the good pine that was accessible. There's more back in the swamp, but I can't get to it.