Skidding winch-- to skid, or not to skid?

   / Skidding winch-- to skid, or not to skid? #31  
   / Skidding winch-- to skid, or not to skid? #32  
MossRoad said:
That's one of the reasons I don't want an electric winch and am leaning toward hydraulic, should I decide to get one for my needs.... duty cycle. Electric would be fine for getting a stuck vehicle out, but, man, it would not be ideal for pulling log after log or long hauls.
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Are you guys talking about winches like a Warn, Milemarker, or HF Badland winch, or a dedicated logging winch (Fransgard, Farmi. Wallenstein, Uniforest), that are generally a 3 point hitch attachment? The latter are generally PTO driven, or some of the larger ones are available as either PTO or hydraulic. I've never seen a dedicated logging winch that is electric. Duty cycle and speed are a real problem with those (though oversizing an electric winch can help with the duty cycle: it will run longer if you are doing a 3000# pull with a 10,000 pound winch). Those large electric winches may be a problem for your tractor's electrical system to keep up with. Alternator output tends to be small on tractors, and the batteries are not designed for deep-cycle applications.

As for a winch blanket, I was always told to put it in the middle of the cable run.
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That's what I've always heard as well - or maybe just a shade further out than half way, so if the end doubles back, it doesn't reach you. However, having said that, I have NEVER seen a logger use a blanket over his skidder cable, nor have I ever seen anyone with a 3 Pt Hitch logging winch use a blanket (including me).
 
   / Skidding winch-- to skid, or not to skid? #33  
MossRoad said:
That's one of the reasons I don't want an electric winch and am leaning toward hydraulic, should I decide to get one for my needs.... duty cycle. Electric would be fine for getting a stuck vehicle out, but, man, it would not be ideal for pulling log after log or long hauls.
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The problem with hydraulic winches is, they are too slooooow... It takes a big pump to get speed out of them, and the pump on tractors is too small to make a good logging winch...

SO, that puts us back to pto power...which is the BEST option in the first place...

SR
 
   / Skidding winch-- to skid, or not to skid? #34  
The problem with hydraulic winches is, they are too slooooow... It takes a big pump to get speed out of them, and the pump on tractors is too small to make a good logging winch...
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My hydraulic driven logging winch has a max speed of 2.4 feet per sec., about half speed of a comparable pto driven winch.
IMG_1557.JPG IMG_1473.JPGIMG_1485.JPG
And I intend to use it this afternoon. I usually run the tractor at 1500 rpm while using the winch.
 
   / Skidding winch-- to skid, or not to skid? #35  
Sawyer Rob said:
The problem with hydraulic winches is, they are too slooooow... It takes a big pump to get speed out of them, and the pump on tractors is too small to make a good logging winch...

SO, that puts us back to pto power...which is the BEST option in the first place...

SR
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Remember, I have no PTO. My machine is all hydraulic. And if I get a winch, I want to be able to move it back and forth between the machine and the trailer. The trailer will have a gas powered pump for the hydraulics.

My situation is that I live about 9 miles from our rural property. I can't leave the tractor there. And I can't haul the tractor and firewood logs on the same trailer at the same time. I currently use the tractor to skid the logs out of the woods to a landing. It takes me about 4 hours to skid out a year's worth of wood. Then I take the tractor home and come back with the empty trailer, saw up the wood into 16" pieces, throw them onto the trailer, take them home, throw them off. Pick them up again to split them. It becomes excessive handling.

So I'd like a winch on my trailer to parbuckle the long logs onto the trailer and take them home whole. Then I could cut them directly on the trailer and roll them off the end to the splitter.

An electric winch on the trailer would not work well for this. Its duty cycle would slow me down and it would require an extra battery, isolator, etc... whereas a hydraulic could be moved back and forth between the trailer and tractor. I wouldn't have to be concerned with duty cycle. I have a spare 8.5hp gas motor for the trailer. All I would need is a pump, a reservoir, filter and some hoses.

Anyhow, hydraulic would sure beat electric for continuous use. :thumbsup:
 
   / Skidding winch-- to skid, or not to skid? #36  
MossRoad said:
Remember, I have no PTO. My machine is all hydraulic. And if I get a winch, I want to be able to move it back and forth between the machine and the trailer. The trailer will have a gas powered pump for the hydraulics.

My situation is that I live about 9 miles from our rural property. I can't leave the tractor there. And I can't haul the tractor and firewood logs on the same trailer at the same time. I currently use the tractor to skid the logs out of the woods to a landing. It takes me about 4 hours to skid out a year's worth of wood. Then I take the tractor home and come back with the empty trailer, saw up the wood into 16" pieces, throw them onto the trailer, take them home, throw them off. Pick them up again to split them. It becomes excessive handling.

So I'd like a winch on my trailer to parbuckle the long logs onto the trailer and take them home whole. Then I could cut them directly on the trailer and roll them off the end to the splitter.

An electric winch on the trailer would not work well for this. Its duty cycle would slow me down and it would require an extra battery, isolator, etc... whereas a hydraulic could be moved back and forth between the trailer and tractor. I wouldn't have to be concerned with duty cycle. I have a spare 8.5hp gas motor for the trailer. All I would need is a pump, a reservoir, filter and some hoses.

Anyhow, hydraulic would sure beat electric for continuous use. :thumbsup:
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I didn't notice that you didn't have pto power... Man, that really limits the usefulness of those machines!!

You are right, hydraulics are for you! lol

I just want to mention, I've been given some good logs in the past, that are too far away to mess with, with a tractor. I have a Warn 12K winch on the front of one of my pu's, along with a trailer hitch. At times, I turn my pu around, hook up my trailer to the front hitch and push the trailer along side the logs I'm getting.

Then I chain a "pulley", mid trailer and use the winch on the front of my pu along with ramps to par buckle the logs onto the trailer. It just keeps me from having to add a winch onto my trailer...

I used my front winch/trailer set up the same way, to recover/pull dead vehicles and equipment onto the trailer too...

SR
 
   / Skidding winch-- to skid, or not to skid? #37  
The Payeur's hydro winch is one of the best implement I got!P1010441.JPG
 
   / Skidding winch-- to skid, or not to skid? #38  
Sawyer Rob said:
I didn't notice that you didn't have pto power... Man, that really limits the usefulness of those machines!!

You are right, hydraulics are for you! lol

I just want to mention, I've been given some good logs in the past, that are too far away to mess with, with a tractor. I have a Warn 12K winch on the front of one of my pu's, along with a trailer hitch. At times, I turn my pu around, hook up my trailer to the front hitch and push the trailer along side the logs I'm getting.

Then I chain a "pulley", mid trailer and use the winch on the front of my pu along with ramps to par buckle the logs onto the trailer. It just keeps me from having to add a winch onto my trailer...

I used my front winch/trailer set up the same way, to recover/pull dead vehicles and equipment onto the trailer too...

SR
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The machine is hardly limited... :laughing: It'll run absolute circles around any "tractor" in the same weight category for the tasks that I do. Absolute. Mowing, brush cutting, snow plowing, firewood gathering, material handling. The tasks I do. ;) Now if we'd get into a pulling contest, many much smaller machines will drag mine around like a baby blanket! But that's just fine with me. :)

I thought about doing as you do and adding an electric winch to my truck. And I am a big fan of a front hitch on trucks. I used to work at an airport moving airplanes around with front hitches on tugs and trucks. Works great. A friend's dad had a front hitch on his truck for putting his boat in and out. Worked great for that, too. But I don't want to add a front hitch to my Suburban, and I think the duty cycle of the electric winch, the wear on my truck's battery, etc... would be an issue, and I couldn't remove the electric winch and run it off of my tractor, as the battery and charging system aren't anywhere large enough for that. I'm not putting 3-4 large logs onto the trailer. I'm putting many telephone pole sized logs on the trailer. I have to thin out the locust trees in my woods and that's what I'm dealing with. I'd be looking for one winch that would work for me in several places. Heck, if it were hydraulic, I could snap it into the log splitter to lift the occasional large rounds that I'm given once in a while.
 
   / Skidding winch-- to skid, or not to skid? #40  
Speed is not really all that much of an issue when parbuckling anyway. Where the slow speed will drive you batty is when winching logs out of the woods... but it sounds as though you've already got that part covered
 
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