How to mount small (2500#) winch to FEL bucket

Smokeydog · Jan 2, 2020

Having a hitch mounted crane has come in handy. The base allows additional jacks to stabilize. Particularly the older I get. Modified a -$200 truck crane from Northern Tool.

davedj1 · Jan 3, 2020

Save yourself a lot or grief of the cheap winch and just buy about 80' of 1/4" cable at hardware store, get yourself a snatch block, put hooks on cable and use it to go down into the ravine, use tractor to pull log up to top of hill then back tractor up to it and haul out with tractor. You can put the snatch block up as high as you want in a tree.
I use this set up all the time, I try to skid a few logs with the same setup before moving it to another section to be "logged"

dfkrug · Jan 3, 2020

davedj1 said:
Save yourself a lot or grief of the cheap winch and just buy about 80' of 1/4" cable at hardware store, get yourself a snatch block, put hooks on cable and use it to go down into the ravine, use tractor to pull log up to top of hill then back tractor up to it and haul out with tractor. You can put the snatch block up as high as you want in a tree.

I do that, but with 3/8" cable. I keep 2 of them, one 100' long, and one that is 50' long. The snatch block from HF is actually pretty good. I also have a homemade one. Generally, I pull logs out of my creek and swales by pulling backwards, with cable attachment to the tractor frame.

As for the small HF winches, I like them, but not for this application. The 2500# unit with wireless remote has been very useful, but I use one mostly to pull loads (like dead ATVs) up ramps into my pickup. I have another mounted to the front of my dually trailer.

farmalldx33 · Jan 5, 2020

Weld a piece of square tubing on the top side of your bucket. When you buy your winch be sure to get the attachment to hook into a Reece hitch. I made long cables to hook directly to my battery and it works great.

Spiros · Jan 5, 2020

DL Meisen said:
You are probably not going to get enough height to make winch practical... Probably need a skidding cone (I know has other names) to keep cut ends of logs from digging in....

THis is my issue, can't get close to tree, and can't get tractor in because creek is about 3 feet from where picture is taken...

Dale

DL not to hijack the thread but, Micro-blaster or Sierra Blaster will solve your access problem.