3pt Log winch/grapple

[CDN Farm Boy]

Similar idea to what I'm doing but I won't have anywhere near $2100 into mine....closer to 1/4 of that.

My buddy got me the full size drawing on the weekend. Good thing for plywood templates. I was 3/4" too long on my cross link and also on the pin centers of the main mounting plate. Only realized there was a problem when I opened it up and had 52" at the tips when I should have has closer to 40". Fixed those and moved the lower main pivot up to allow for tip clearance as it closes and now get 38" fully open and down to about 3" when closed and the grapple tucks nice and tight with itself.

Fully open:


Fully closed:

 

[Jim Timber]

Similar idea to what I'm doing but I won't have anywhere near $2100 into mine....closer to 1/4 of that.

My buddy got me the full size drawing on the weekend. Good thing for plywood templates. I was 3/4" too long on my cross link and also on the pin centers of the main mounting plate. Only realized there was a problem when I opened it up and had 52" at the tips when I should have has closer to 40". Fixed those and moved the lower main pivot up to allow for tip clearance as it closes and now get 38" fully open and down to about 3" when closed and the grapple tucks nice and tight with itself.

Fully open:
View attachment 459059

Fully closed:
View attachment 459060

What material are you going to make those out of?

 

[CDN Farm Boy]

What material are you going to make those out of?

I've got a chunk of 5/16" plate that I got from the scrap yard I'm planning on using. Actual specific grade of the steel, I have no idea. I'm planning on beefing up the inside edge of the tongs as looking at them in real life I think they are a little wimpy if that's your concern.

 

[Jim Timber]

That's a lot of lever for 5/16".

Maybe box them and double it up?

I'm using 3x3x5/16" tubing for my tree plucker/shear and the jaws are only 2' from the pivot.

 

[CDN Farm Boy]

My tips are 20" from the pivot with the cyl attached 5" behind that. Just a hair under 7000 lbs of force from the 2" cyl should net me only 1750 lbs at the tips. I imagine there would be a whole lot more force on your tree plucker as you try to wrench a tree out of the ground and your tractor weighs twice what mine does. If I was running this on a bigger tractor, I'd quickly agree with you. As each jaw will already have 2 "tongs" separated by some flat bar (haven't got that far yet but something around 6" wide for the inside jaw and 8" for the outside jaw), I'll likely take my chances that what I've got will be strong enough. I'll just keep an eye on it....I can always fix it later if I break it.

I might double up the highest stress part right where the flat bar section of the tips ends and switches to the single layer tongs.

Rusty, how thick is the material on yours?

 

[Rustyiron]

Rusty, how thick is the material on yours?

Prolly in mm's, but a good 1/2". I think you'll be fine, it's a pretty simple load and you could always beef things up if you see things moving around where they shouldn't.

 

[CDN Farm Boy]

I got the frame all welded up the other day and got to play with it a bit on the weekend. It's only a skidding plate at the moment but it was still way nicer to work with than any of my other options. Although I measured about a dozen times when making my hyd toplink, the frickin thing is an couple inches short of ideal. I have to watch the corners of the QA that I don't hit my tail lights, there's only about 1/4" clearance right now. If I switched my lift links to the higher lift rather than the heavy lift setting, they'll hit. :mur: Once I try my box blade and rotary cutter, I'll likely cut one end off and space it out 2". The 'truss' to hang the grapple is made from 1.5 x 3/16 wall square tubing with a 1" x 1/8" wall square slid inside. Don't analyze the welds, I know many of them look like crap. I was using my stick welder and forgot during fitup how much more important a perfect joint is with a stick welder rather than my mig.

Fully extended toplink, about 14" clearance under the blade:



Fully retracted toplink, 24" clearance under the blade.



Hung my prototype on it just to have a look




A couple action shots for good measure:

 

[Rustyiron]

Looks good! How's the grapple coming?

 

[CDN Farm Boy]

Thanks! Grapple has only made it as far as the prototype. While it worked as a skidding plate, I can easily see how much nicer it would be to have the grapple. And I'm definitely going to have to sort out the winch portion over the summer.

Today I'm waiting for the Electrical Inspector to come so I can finally put juice to the 200A panel in my shop so I can move the tools across the yard, out of the mud and away from the 400lbs propane tank where they currently sit at the end of my 'summer garage' Progress should resume shortly on the grapple. With my field now too muddy to get across, the pressure is off but want to get it done so it's ready for when it dries up.

 

[Rustyiron]

:cool2::cool2::drink: