TODAYS SEAT TIME

[dragoneggs]

Day 2. winching logs to make firewood

http://s613.photobucket.com/user/to...5-4ffd-b49f-e2d91cc2aa8d_zpsparwzw17.jpg.html

Yes beautiful! Playing in the snow already? Whereabouts are you in Norway? I have most of my relatives there.

 

[daugen]

gosh I think we will all raise our hands and say more please! More pics of that forest in snow.
Winter Wonderland.

 

[Larro Darro]

Lots of work going on on this thread. I've been off line for a while, but I have got in a little seat time. I cut up the garden earlier this week with the 3930 and disc. We didn't have any rain in October, so it was pretty dusty.

 

[sixdogs]

A friend of mine went to Norway a while back for a forestry management conference and he said their forests were the best managed and utilized on earth and that the people who owned them took meticulous care. He said they were a beauty to walk through.

Yes, more pictures if you have them. Equipment. practices, landscape, trees, swamps, whatever.

 

[widefat]

Not today, but earlier this week - working on clearing some saplings. I drove through and a small branch hit the valve stem on my front tire just right - sheared if off.
A trip to town and $15 later, a lesson learned about paying better attention to whats around me.

 

[2orodd]

Yes beautiful! Playing in the snow already? Whereabouts are you in Norway? I have most of my relatives there.

hi, i live in the south of norway very close to the sea. usually we don't get snow before january. This early sow has been very destructive for the trees in the forest, very vet heavy snow. The snow will disapear this week because it is getting hotter again.

 

[2orodd]

A friend of mine went to Norway a while back for a forestry management conference and he said their forests were the best managed and utilized on earth and that the people who owned them took meticulous care. He said they were a beauty to walk through.

Yes, more pictures if you have them. Equipment. practices, landscape, trees, swamps, whatever.

Here is one close up picture off the tractor and winch

 

[amarsh64]

Not a lot of seat time but I did get in lots of rock raking time ! Not the most fun thing to do but better than running into them this winter when clearing snow .



I had 8 or 9 times this amount so I dumped it at the end of the driveway . Every little bit helps when you can use more yard space.

 

[daugen]

amarsh, nice tractor. When do you use the hooks inside the bucket? I've never seen them installed there, though I have ones welded on the rear like you do.
My understanding is that we should limit pulling heavy stuff with the FEL vs pulling with the heavy tow bar in the rear. Of course I do it all the time, and feel guilty about
abusing my cylinders...

 

[amarsh64]

amarsh, nice tractor. When do you use the hooks inside the bucket? I've never seen them installed there, though I have ones welded on the rear like you do.
My understanding is that we should limit pulling heavy stuff with the FEL vs pulling with the heavy tow bar in the rear. Of course I do it all the time, and feel guilty about
abusing my cylinders...

They are shackle backer plates that ken's bolt on hooks have . I use shackles and straps on the inside plates for lifting more than pulling . And you are right . Better on the drawbar. And yet I do drag wood with my chains on the fel sometimes . Hmmmmm. I'm guessing a lot of us do it sometimes !

 

[VroomVroom]

 

[hayden]

After some serious brow beating by a neighbor, Fairpoint Communications has finally brought DSL to our part of Vermont. That's the good news. The bad news is that it's still about 3000' from the nearest pole to my house. I'll be paying for 2 new poles to get the line across a field and a road, then it will drop below ground for the remaining 2500' to my house. Fairpoint will set the poles and pull all the wires, but I need to bury the conduit with stations every 500' for splicing and pulling.

Yesterday I flagged the route that I'll be taking through the woods. About 3/4 of the route is along existing trails and clearings, and about 1/4 through virgin woods.

Today I cleared the full path, or at least most of it. I cut back with the excavator mower head, but the last 100' or so I need to go back when I have the bucket on so I can pull a few saplings that are too big for the mower head. This clearing took the morning.

This afternoon I started trenching and it actually went faster than I expected. I got to the first junction station (500') in about 3 hours, including plucking out a few small trees along the way. There is no required depth for communications lines, but I'm trying for about 2'. In Vermont that's easier said than done. There is tons of ledge, and in some areas I can't get down more than about 8". But the vast majority is between 1-2'.

Based on today's progress, I figure I should be able to dig a station's worth in the morning, and another in the afternoon, so 2 stations a day. That means 2 full days to get it all trenched. Tomorrow I need to see about getting conduit. I'd like to lay and bury it a station at a time as I go. then get it back filled. Between the trench and spill pile, the trails are largely blocked, so the quicker I can get them re-opened, the better access I will have and the faster the whole project will go. As long as the weather stays relatively worm I should be able to get this done before the ground freezes.

I'll try to get some pictures tomorrow.

 

[Gordon Gould]

That is quite a project. I am familiar with digging in VT :laughing:. But you will like DSL. We changed from broad band off Burke Mtn to Fairpoint DSL when it became available - much better and faster.
Must be you are off grid ?? How does that work out for you ??

gg

 

[hayden]

That is quite a project. I am familiar with digging in VT :laughing:. But you will like DSL. We changed from broad band off Burke Mtn to Fairpoint DSL when it became available - much better and faster.
Must be you are off grid ?? How does that work out for you ??

gg

Yes, off grid. It's an interesting place because the house is over 200 years old and is on one of the original land-grant lots, yet it was never electrified. The first time it had lights was in the 1990s when I installed the first solar system. All in all it works really well, and was way less expensive than clearing a path through the woods and running poles and power.

Today was consumed by some other projects, but I was able to get the conduit and other supplies that I'll need. Tomorrow I'll probably lay the first segment of conduit, then continue digging.

 

[hayden]

More progress today, but not as much as I had hoped. It always seems to work out that way, doesn't it?

Here's the measuring wheel showing the total distance



My wife helped with gluing up 50 sticks of conduit for the first 500' run. We would glue on a piece, and shove the snake down the trench, glue another stick, and shove it further. After about 200' we couldn't push it any more, so started another snake and pushed it down the trench. We then terminated on one of one snake with an elbow and capped it off at the building, then turned our attention to dragging the second snake down the trench so it would be end-to-end with the first. That proved to be harder than expected.





Part of the challenge is that anywhere the trench runs through the woods, or down a trail, all of that length becomes inaccessible by machine due to the trench and spill pile. So I can't run the tractor, gator, or excavator along the side of the trench and tow the snake along. There are a few stretches where the trench runs through a larger space (a log landing and the yard from a former camp), but that's the minority of the run. We ended up rigging a long rope to the snake, pulling it by hand for about 50', then were able to reach the gator and use it as a tow vehicle to drag the segment the rest of the way. With that glued up, we then finished the last 50' from the far end and dragged it back to the connection point. The lesson learned is that 100' is about the longest that can be reasonably handled by hand by a couple of old farts like us.

This took the morning, so my new time estimate is 1/2 day to trench 500', and 1/2 day to assemble and lay the pipe. There are various alternate access paths to the trench, and we will be using those to bring in the pipe, then assemble 100' segments and deploy from there. I also got tracer tape to bury in the trench so it can be located in the future with a metal detector. So that needs to be laid out before back filling.

After all that, I went to start the tractor and it went click click, buzz, buzz, but no start. Dead battery. I swapped with the excavator battery to confirm, so now need to go get a battery. But I'm amazed to realize that I've had the L5740 for 9 years now, so that battery owes me nothing at this point.

 

[DieselBound]

That's some project, hayden!

If it ain't one thing it's another. Look at all that dry ground! Yeah, rocks and all... Here I dig and I'm digging in clay and water (some rocks and sand; rocks only if you're digging a post hole :laughing. Just hand dug about 30' long and 2' deep (with a mattock) to run some conduit for my generator. Nothing like the sense of dropping electrical stuff into water!

 

[hayden]

Yes, it's very dry, and that's part of why I really want to finish this project this fall. I've got one wet area that I need to cross, and this time of year that's easy to do. Come spring, forgettaboutit. But other than the wet spots, we are high enough up that you would never hit water with a trench like this. Ledge is the biggest challenge. Rock I can pull out, but ledge I just need to cross over and the deepest point I can find. So far I've been able to stay 1' down worst case, with most of it 2' or maybe a bit more.

 

[daugen]

hayden, remind us what "ledge" is please, flat outcroppings of shale and granite? Sort of flat boulders?

a more or less flat shelf of rock protruding from a cliff or slope.

 

[hayden]

hayden, remind us what "ledge" is please, flat outcroppings of shale and granite? Sort of flat boulders?

a more or less flat shelf of rock protruding from a cliff or slope.

It's when you are digging and the bucket goes "clunk". And you dig around to see if it's just a big rock, but realize it's attached to China.

In this part of Vermont, and perhaps most of the state, the "top soil" is very thin. Anywhere you dig you will hit solid rock somewhere between 1' and 6' down. And plenty of times the rock is exposed above the surface. If you can dig 6' down anywhere, you have done really well. My knowledge of geology is poor, so I can't tell you exactly what type of rock it is, but it does vary. Some is very hard - probably granite. In fact there are lots of granite quarries in the area, and places on my land where it has been harvested. In other areas it is like half-baked rock. Not yet hard like granite - you can scratch and claw groves in it - but it's not going anywhere and you are not digging through it. The really hard rock definitely runs in veins, and sometimes you can get around it enough to get reasonable depth. And sometimes not. And sometimes chunks can be separated out. In the past I've pulled out chunks the size of a car, and so heavy that my old Cat D5 dozer struggled to push it.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

When i was at a scout camp in maine, the water lines were ran above ground. Too many rocks. I'm sure they drain them in the fall..

My seat time was unloading my first ton of wood pellets. Will pick up my other ton saturday.