Homemade Feller-Buncher

BrokenTrack · Feb 23, 2018

I have been working this past week on a homemade feller-buncher head for my Wallenstein Log Trailer.

I am not 100% there as I had some set-backs. Silly me I fully welded up some mounting brackets without cycling the feller-buncher head through to see if the geometry would work. I thought sure it would, but found out while it withdrew the feller-buncher head all the way back, it would not push it to the horizontal position to allow me to load felled trees onto my log trailer. That is the main purpose.

My first attempt at using a principal to the Perfect Tree Shear also failed in part because in its front-shovel configuration, all the controls are now backwards to me, a guy used to having my controls for a back-hoe configuration. This made it hard to drive the saw through the tree straight, and instead it "raked" up alongside the tree. While I did cut a tree down, it was clear, it was not going to work well.

My short term plan is to go with a chainsaw mounted on my boom, but as my record for smashing chainsaws with bulldozers, skidders and excavators is not great; 2 chainsaw with all three machines. That gets expensive after awhile. Imagine a chainsaw bolted to a boom of a log trailer swinging through a woodlot...that is the definition of crazy. But it would prove how well this feller buncher head will work in the short term.

In the long term, I plan to go with a hot-saw configuration. I am not a big fan of shears, and it just seems easier with a hot-saw. I am thinking using an electric motor instead of hydraulic, but that is yet to be determined. I still have to think that through though fabrication wise.

The overall plan for this feller-buncher head is to cut and place onto my log trailer, saplings. I want to build a firewood chunker so that I can go to fully mechanized firewood. I use a pot bellied stove to head my home so I only need small wood. Why start with big wood only to break it down really small when I can just start with small trees to start with...saplings? I am thinking 4 inches maximum diameter.

Here is a picture of it thus far. I will try to get a better picture of it soon; swung out so its features can be distinguished from that of my log trailer. Naturally I have to get longer hydraulic lines so that my buncher will gather up the trees I cut.

oldnslo · Feb 23, 2018

On four inch trees I would think a shear would be much easier to design and build & require much less finesse to operate but I could be 110% wrong.

Oldpath05 · Feb 24, 2018

The trouble I see with saws is the rocks but shears are good to 8", and yes swing that boom out from trailer.

Gordon Gould · Feb 24, 2018

Sounds like a interesting project for sure. I can't offer any advice but I am glad to cheer you on.

gg

BrokenTrack · Mar 12, 2018

Well I keep plodding along with this project for lack of anything else to do. It sill needs a little refinement as the trees kick when they are severed off the stump so I must coral that, but other than that, it is far more productive than I thought.

Here are two updated photos.

farm boy00 · Mar 12, 2018

Got one question. Why are you going to harvest all small trees?? Seems like you will run out of them fast and will not have a good woods for many years afterwards

BrokenTrack · Mar 13, 2018

farm boy00 said:
Got one question. Why are you going to harvest all small trees?? Seems like you will run out of them fast and will not have a good woods for many years afterwards

You actually have that backwards. Here in Maine anyway, a mature forest may only have 250-300 trees to the acre, while open areas may having stocking rates of thousands of saplings to the acre. Good forestry means thinning out the forest, what is known as Pre-commercial thinning, or put another way, cutting wood that has no commercial value...because it is too small. This does not mean cutting every sapling, it means selecting the best ones to leave so they grow faster and healthier...the equivalent of weeding a garden. This feller-buncher head could potentially create a market for such small wood.

The problem with small wood is, it takes a lot of them to add up. That means handling everything via machine to make it viable; in other words, it needs 100% mechanization.

This feller-buncher is part of a two machine process. The feller-buncher to fell, and then load onto my logging trailer, and then a firewood chunker to cut the wood into 4 inch chunks. Because all my stoves and boilers can burn wood as well as coal, my house is poised to handle this type of wood well; called Rebak in foreign language. Do a YouTube Search for that and a host of homemade implements come up. Why cut big trees and work them up into tiny pieces to burn in my pot bellied stove when I can just start with small trees from the beginning? Keeping the margins of my fields will keep me in firewood for many years, not to mention land clearing and pre-commercial thinning.

This will be the next machine that I will build. Onto its own, my feller-buncher head is not that valuables, but coupled with this machine, I can process my firewood without even touching it.

Redlands Okie · Mar 13, 2018

Keep posting, interesting to watch your projects.

polemidis · Mar 13, 2018

Broken track, I am in Winthrop Maine. Can we meet? I am designing a firewood processor a plasma CNC and I have a grapple ready. Can we exchange knowledge, I am interesting to your project! I am logging my 65 acres woodlot, and I use a Igland log winch which works great for the biggest trees, but it is totally waste of time for the smaller ones. Your project could share a part of the firewood processor and a part of the grapple!

Any way I will sent you a PM with my contact info i you wish to talk more!

BrokenTrack · Mar 13, 2018

Sure, not sure what exactly you need help with, but I am all about sharing and helping others. My experience has always been fabricating and welding so I have an knack at looking at something complicated, breaking it down into something buildable in the home-workshop, and making a go of it. I will warn you though, I am more adapt with working with cardboard and hot glue guns then I am with computerized drawing programs.

I am not sure how you feel about your neighbors, but I do a lot for Teen Challenge Maine located in Winthrop...so I know where they are located! I never got into that lifestyle, but had a lot of friends that did, and have two friends and a brother-in-law who are under the sod because of choosing the wrong path. I am all about helping someone change their life for the better. Either way, I am 40 minutes from Winthrop, but drive through it every other Friday and Sunday.

As for logging, I understand your frustration. I am in the midst of clearing 80 acres from forest into field, and this feller-buncher is part of the answer. Some of the trees could be pushed over, but a lot of them makes for a huge mess after the bulldozer goes through: a tangled up mess. Why not use them to heat my house instead? Add in 100% mechanization on a micro-scale and it only makes double-sense.

I am working with our Regional Forester now to do a Micro-Forestry Equipment Demonstration Day, most likely at my farm here. We have done forestry workshops in the past with the Maine Forest Service and it was nice. We talked about doing a land clearing class too, as around me there are tons of farmers clearing land. It just is the way it is; loss of income from forest products (1/3 in 3 years time), and increased property taxes; a landowner just cannot afford to stand still and wait for forestry to come back. I teach a class on raising sheep, and it shocked me the people that wanted to clear their land of forest; people with 10 acres all the way up to 70 acres.