using an alaska chainsaw mill in the forest can save you moving all that nasty bark and wane/slabs.

once you get the big ol' pieces of wood onto sawhorses or bunks or whatever, you'll find that a timber won't roll as easily as a log. you may want to build yourself a timber wrench. imagine an open end wrench, with the opening about as big as the timbers you'll be working and a handle a little shorter than the height of your saw horse. the added leverage makes rolling heavy timbers a one person job.

rolling logs/timbers without a peavey can also be done using a 1" webbing tiedown strapping a 2x4 to the piece for leverage. this can also be done on finished pieces, eg twisting posts to where you want them.

i like the idea of creating a haul road of logs across which you drag your timbers. imagine, cutting down a nice line of trees, falling them exactly into place to create a near effortless route to drag your log/timber to the site. then start hauling from the furthest point, go back, haul the next one, the road disappears from the forest right into your timber frame.

the taunton press has a book called Timber Frame Homes, a collection of articles which originally appeared in fine homebuilding.not surprisingly they are about timberframing. it's pobably ten years old now. there are two articles which may offer advice on moving/raising timbers solo or just movin' 'em around.
rock on

I've been skidding logs with a 12hp garden tractor and a 'junkyard' axle assembly.


To move long timbers from the field to the house lot I use the axle assembly of the tractor's garden cart to support the leading end and my timber cart bungied in place ~2/3+ of the way down.


All my rollers are old steel pipe, either 1" OD galvanized water pipe or 3" ID 3/8" pressure pipe wall which works real well when slipping a timber out of a stack cribbed up on 4x4s.

That is what I have been looking to see, Raphael. Just a tiny little , low horse power tractor(almost like the homeowner lawnmower strength?) and a couple of junkyard axle assemblies. That is definitely in my budget. Chris, I love the idea of a timber wrench, at first I thought you were saying wench , but then I got it. Would you then have to have a timber wrench for each dimension of timber you are handling? I could not quite visualize the " 1" webbing tie down strapping a 2x4" that you spoke of. Could you possibly get a pic of this? Seems like a better way to roll timbers as the peavey seems better suited to roll logs. Raphael, any advice for me if I were to try to acquire similar assemblies ror carting timbers, any specifics to look for in the junkyard that may be more suitable or would any old axle assembly do well? Thank you very much for your help guys. I had gotten a bit discouraged for a moment when I realized that it may be necessary to have to use heavy equipment to facilitate my timber framing obsession. I would much rather it take more time , but with less noise and disturbance to my property, if that is possible. I was also playing around with ramps the other day lioke for a car, to roll the log up to a drying rack or to hewing height(hip level for me), but this is still just an experiment. Has anyone used "ramps" to roll logs up to a workable level?Thanks again. tb

I think any axle assembly without a differential will work fine. Obviously stronger is better. Since mine originated under the front end of a truck and did duty under a trailer after that the wheels have been welded into a fixed orientation 90 degrees to the axle. It'd be interesting to see if a self steering model would work (pulling from the tie rod ends or center with a welded tongue).

I've got my Logosol mill set up in the low end of a field and use shallow sloped ramps to get logs up logbed level. It works out quite well as the finished timber is already elevated and therefore easier to manipulate.


Another thing I make good use of is dry stacked concrete blocks to create pivot points and work stations for those really heavy timbers that threaten to crush my saw horses.

TB:
You have to consider the actual weight of the logs you think you'll be moving.
Here is an example of what I mean.
In the thread labeled "cutting out the middle man" you've said: "my largest timber would be the anchorbeam at around 10"x14"x24'(including the protruding tongues)." To get the diameter of the log you'll need to produce a 10" x 14" beam, I measured from 10" on one side of my framing square to 14" on the other side across diagonally and got 17 1/8". So that is the minimum diameter. And this timber would have some sap wood in it. A larger log would have to be used if you wanted to not have any sapwood in your timber, but that's another story.
So, now I've looked at my log rule scale at 17 1/2" in diameter and my scale only goes up to 20'. At 20' in length the estimated log volume is approximately 285 board feet. Using a log volume weight scale that says eastern white pine logs weigh 4.85 lbs per bdft that this log will weigh 1382.25 lbs.
An white oak log, at 9.65 lbs per bdft, of the same size will weigh 2750.25 lbs.
These are very large and heavy logs that, in my opinion, will be very hard to move with a lawn tractor. If possible at all.

Go out to your woods and cut down a small tree and try it.

Experience is a great teacher......

Jim Rogers

(From my experiences these weight charts are wrong and the actual weights are much higher.)

Thank you Jim. How would you estimate the same anchorbeam dimension with only heartwood? I'm guessing for such important members as tiebeams and posts, it would be wise to use all heartwood? I have been very interested in those future forestry products you suggested, they are great inventions for selective, considerate logging. Do you have any of their products? If so , how well do they work for you? Also do you think they would work as well with squared timbers? For larger logs it seems best to hew on the spot to reduce the weight of the timber you have to transport, but only if such tools would transport timbers as they can with logs. Right now it seems that I need at least to acquire an ATV and some of these arches to be able to move my trees. Do you think an ATV would be strong enough or do you still think that I will need a tractor and the larger tractor arch to move the dimensions and weights that you described? Thanks again Jim. Please let me know what you know of the arches and if you have any response to my proposed technique.

A few years ago I built a small log cabin using syp logs. I was on a very low budget so I built a small cart to move my logs. I made an A frame to lift one end of the log and slid the cart under it. I pulled the logs with a rope through the woods to my building site. They were all about 18' or more and probably no smaller than 14" on the small end. The calculator shows that at about 1300 lbs. An ATV or lawn mower should move that with no problem. Now, there aren't any hills where I live. I still had to move some of them well over 500'.

Just a comment about safety here, when using an ATV for pulling anything make sure you hook to the factory hitch, or near the center line of the rear axle. Hooking higher, like to the rack, will end up in a back flip.

Dave

Thanks guys for the continous ideas. Mike, I am not sure what you meant that you built an a-frame to lift the logs. One thing I have not yet figured out how to do is to lift the logs or timbers to my desired work height and it sounds like you were able to hoist them up on to the cart somehow? Even with these arches that I spoke about I still could not get them to a higher level that I would need for layout, cutting joints, hewing,etc.... I have experimented with rolling logs up ramps, but that is very hard work and works better with at least two people. I am trying to brainstorm on building a portable hoist frame on wheels that I could wheel over the log or timber ends and hoist them up to the desired height or to get them on carts to move them. Ideally, this supposed hoist frame would hopefully be useful also with some of the raising, but I really dont know if it will even materialize. The point of the matter is that I dont spend a lot of my resources on logging tools as I will need to save resources for timber framing tools and materials for the frame I plan to build. tb