Tractors and wood! Show your pics

[Jstpssng]

^^^ very much so. The Doug fir tree's firewood I am burning now (120 years old) is much heavier than young trees with wide wide growth rings.

You raised the point that I was going to mention. Sapwood from faster growing trees is much lighter... also not as strong structurally as wood sawn from the slower growing trees.

 

[Molalla1]

It’s a weird softwood, it’s hard dense but still is a little flexible till about 50 years old once they start hitting 60 they start hardening up good. We have hardwoods out here like Oak, Maple, and Ash, but I’d rather burn Doug fir it’s a much nicer heat heck you don’t see hardwood pellets out here or even firewood it’s Doug fir.

You are right Skeans, the older the harder it is and when they reach as you stated 60 or so they really start hardening up . . .

 

[goeduck]

You are right Skeans, the older the harder it is and when they reach as you stated 60 or so they really start hardening up . . .

That's not what wives say.

 

[Molalla1]

That's not what wives say.

. . . . . .

 

[Loaderman22]

Yes if you look at a structural wood span chart, Doug Fir is a lot stronger than your typical SPF. Around here we request Kiln Dried Doug Fir, it shrinks a lot less after you close in the house and get the heat on. Less shrinkage is better!! .
I'm sure if any of you have been to the home center and looked at the racks you will see the difference in price too. A guy down the road works at a mill, occasionally he will bring home a pickup bed full of off cuts. Most is Doug Fir, so I buy a load, it usually very dry since they are milling it, and he cuts them to a decent length. It does burn great.

 

[Jstpssng]

A friend told me about this youtube video on the Uniforest winch, which Hud-Son posted a couple of days ago. It doesn't cover everything, but gives hints on some of the maintenance items required.

 

[John_Mc]

A friend told me about this youtube video on the Uniforest winch, which Hud-Son posted a couple of days ago. It doesn't cover everything, but gives hints on some of the maintenance items required.

I just got an email from Hud-Son about that. I've owned a Uniforest 35E winch for about 12 years now. (It's the predecessor to their current model 35M.) Some of it I had already picked up over the years, but I still found it helpful.

I just had to have mine repaired. A few of the "sealed" bearings in it had frozen up - probably from too many years sitting outside uncovered. (And possibly related to a bit of abuse since I ran over the control rope a few times, pulling it so tight I snapped the rope.) Not a cheap repair, but a whole lot cheaper than a new winch.

 

[Smokeydog]

The place I got the Douglas Fir beams was a specialty mill shop for post and beam construction. German folks with highly specialized CNC cutter/notchers. A unique deck sideways forklift that could load/unload trucks and carry beams long ways. Some huge beams longer than semi truck flat bed. Pacific Northwest tarps on trucks. They ship half of their work by truck, rail, barge internationally. Japan a big buyer. I was buying a donnage rate of $3/bdft of useable 18’ from 20-26’ beams extra or miscuts(?). Left some interesting drops for shop blocks.

 

[Gordon Gould]

A friend told me about this youtube video on the Uniforest winch, which Hud-Son posted a couple of days ago. It doesn't cover everything, but gives hints on some of the maintenance items required.

Thanks for posting that Jstpssng - a good morning to watch it. Had to pause a couple times to refill the stove. I never saw a UniForest and that was a pretty thorough run thru of it's features and how it operated. The part on measuring and cutting the pto shaft would pertain to anything. Some might be interested in just that part. It looks like a very nice winch. I like the stay they put on the lower pulley to keep the cable from falling out if it goes slack. I'm going to add something like that to my Farmi. The only thing I didn't care for was the automatic brake so that the cable did not go slack when you stopped pulling. There are a lot of times when I want to be able to release tension immediately. Like when pulling a near vertical tree leaning against it neighbor off the stump and the top starts to come over. Having to handle two ropes at a time like that makes it to easy to get things mixed up. Can you lock the auto brake out ? I am pretty sure I could get used to that if I owned one. They are very nice.

gg

 

[Skeans1]

The place I got the Douglas Fir beams was a specialty mill shop for post and beam construction. German folks with highly specialized CNC cutter/notchers. A unique deck sideways forklift that could load/unload trucks and carry beams long ways. Some huge beams longer than semi truck flat bed. Pacific Northwest tarps on trucks. They ship half of their work by truck, rail, barge internationally. Japan a big buyer. I was buying a donnage rate of $3/bdft of useable 18’ from 20-26’ beams extra or miscuts(?). Left some interesting drops for shop blocks.

There’s a mill out here that specializes in beams they do both straight as well as engineered beams.

Besides doing that they do a lot of the historic gutters for back east, I’ve cut a lot of gutter stock timber last year.

 

[ericm979]

A friend told me about this youtube video on the Uniforest winch, which Hud-Son posted a couple of days ago. It doesn't cover everything, but gives hints on some of the maintenance items required.

Thanks for posting that link. I wish they'd update the manual to make it more readable but a video is better than nothing.

Gordon I don't think there is a way to turn off the automatic brake.

 

[John_Mc]

Thanks for posting that link. I wish they'd update the manual to make it more readable but a video is better than nothing.

The manual reads as though it were translated from the original Croation into Swahili by a native Chinese speaker before finally being translated into English.

Gordon I don't think there is a way to turn off the automatic brake.

You can just tie off the brake rope to something. However, I never bother with that. I do find the cable relaxes a hair when releasing the drive rope. As with most machines, you just get used to how it works after a while.

 

[Jstpssng]

Mine has never been right; I’ve always had to tie off the rope whenever I pull it out. I doubt it ever will be now, I tried everything I could think of and messed with the adjustments more than I should have.

Every time I see a newer model it has more features than before... mostly minor things which don’t make it work harder, but still look rather handy.

 

[John_Mc]

Mine has never been right; I’ve always had to tie off the rope whenever I pull it out. I doubt it ever will be now, I tried everything I could think of and messed with the adjustments more than I should have.

Every time I see a newer model it has more features than before... mostly minor things which don’t make it work harder, but still look rather handy.

My Uniforest 35E is an older model. I believe the brake engagement and release mechanism has been changed since I got mine, but I've not had the opportunity to look closely at a 35M.

On the 35E, I soon discovered that how you had the clutch adjusted affected the brake. If you had the clutch adjusted a bit too tight, the power cold still engage and disengage from the black rope. However, you had to hold tension on the red rope in order to keep the brake released while winching. This is because the mechanical linkage between the brake and power lever would only disengage the brake of the power lever moved far enough over in the "engaged" direction for the linkage to push the brake off. The tighter you had the clutch adjusted, the less motion of the power lever it took to engage the clutch. Tight enough, and the linkage between the power lever and the brake never never disengages: the clutch engages fully first and prevents further movement of the power lever. (There is some adjustment in that linkage as well, but figuring out what's going on with all of this is tough from just looking and reading the bad english in the manual.)

I suspect this is why the directions in the manual for adjusting the brake on the 35E are a bit different than what was shown in that video.

 

[Jstpssng]

^^^
That makes sense. A friend has a winch slightly newer than mine and I've been taking measurements off his adjustments to see if I can get mine back to where it should be.

 

[John_Mc]

^^^
That makes sense. A friend has a winch slightly newer than mine and I've been taking measurements off his adjustments to see if I can get mine back to where it should be.

what model do you have?

 

[Jstpssng]

Mine is an M, but an early model. Every time I see a newer version they've added more, but as long as it pulls the log to me it's good enough. I found the piece about oiling the chain to be especially interesting, although I would have consulted the manual before doing anything.

 

[ericm979]

I think that using chain lube for street motorcycles, carefully, would be the way to go. That kind of lube is made to stick to chains moving at high speeds.

 

[Jstpssng]

I think that using chain lube for street motorcycles, carefully, would be the way to go. That kind of lube is made to stick to chains moving at high speeds.

That's what he said. Also to take it off before lubing, otherwise it will throw lubricant all over the clutch, rendering it useless.

 

[Williy]

Are these a little better instructions for the hudson??

https://www.hud-son.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/NAVODILA-ZA-UPORABO-65M-in-85M-2012-ANG-29-05-2012.pdf

willy