Oh the horror...
Wow John, you're an old veteran here. If you're like me, I don't know where the years went. You're tractor set up sounds really interesting and very appropriate for woods work. Pics would be great to see of the beast
Yeah, I've been around a while. Joined right around the time I bought my current tractor. My activity level here has been way up and down over the intervening years. I've often wondered what happened to some of the guys we considered "old veterans" back then.
My tractor is on the small side for "serious logging", but it fits my needs well. Sometimes I wish for bigger, but then I wouldn't be able to get into some of the places I can now.
Here's a few pictures of my current set-up:
Helping out on a community volunteer day to process firewood for our donation "Wood Bank". We did about 3 cords last year, plus had another 3 donated. We helped this local andowner clear his pasture to enlarge it, and he donated most of the wood. The log I'm carrying here is a beautiful American Elm. I calculated the weight at 1400#. It's all I can do to lift it a couple feet off the ground. This one is too nice for firewood. The landowner is setting it aside to get sawed up into lumber.
Here's when I first had the forestry mods done: Belly pan (which mostly attached to the backhoe sub-frame), Limb Risers, FOPS - Falling Object Protection (probably should have an extra set of posts coming from the rear loader frame attach points up to the front of the roof for extra strength - I may add them some day, but I went almost 15 years with nothing, so this is a huge improvement). I've been really happy with the forestry mods. I don't know how I got by all these years driving in the woods without the limb risers - driving through the woods is so much easier now. Unfortunately, I don't have any good pics of the belly pan. In this picture, I did not yet own the Log Grapple, and still had my box blade on instead of the logging winch, so it's not in "full logging mode".
The story behind the Forestry Mods: I had always wanted to add these, but never could justify them to myself. Most of the time I'm on prepared trails and just winch the logs out to the trail from where I dropped the tree. I'm careful about where I park and what I do with the tractor. One day, I was driving the tractor through the woods. Not logging or doing any other activity to disturb things. No wind. All of the sudden, BAM! A tree branch fell from above, bounced off the roll bar, and a piece of it just grazed the side of my head and scratched my shoulder on the way down. Six inches in another direction, and I'd probably have been dead on the spot, or at best end up with a severe concussion/brain injury. I figured my woods were talking to me, and it was time I listened.
The modifications were done by an old timer who runs a fabrication shop a few miles down the road from me. I had seen the Forestry Modification work he's done on a couple of tractors owned by foresters and loggers in my area. He puts a lot of thought into what he does. He doesn't just slap on a guard. The belly pan has holes located to allow be to reach grease zerks (on larger tractors, he'll attach a metal tube and run the grease zerk out to a convenient location). The pan is in two pieces: the main part is bolted to my backhoe subframe. There is a smaller front section with a wrap-around side to protect the oil filter. This attaches by a tongue & groove joint to the main section, and the other end is held by two bolts. I can have it off for an oil change in a couple minutes, and it's light enough (despite being half inch thick steel) that I can handle it without special equipment. When he does the full package, there are engine guards and front, rear and side "cages" around the operator station. I didn't really need the rear cage wall, since the screen guard on my winch protects most of that area. I opted not to add the sides and front or the engine guard. I'm not using this for hard-core logging, and I have the luxury of taking my time - I'm not making a living at this, and don't have a quota to fill (which is a good thing, since I'd go broke producing firewood and saw logs at my pace).
