Tractors and wood! Show your pics

[Molalla1]

That is true for sure. What section of Oregon are you in ? I have a daughter & SIL plus 2 grand kids in Portland. She went out to work in the North Cascades as a wilderness ranger out of Marblemount WA in 93. Met Ranger-Rick and stayed. When ever we get out there I make sure we visit some of your beautiful North Pacific woods. I just love the big woods you have. So different than here. Last July we went to Silver Springs State Park. Maybe you've been there.

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gg

The Molalla/Colten area about 30-35 miles south of Portland . . . Its been quite some time but yes "Silver Springs" is beautiful.

 

[Molalla1]

A fellow on here, Mike, had one of those set up at his camp about an hour north of us a couple years back. We took a ride up to see. He didn't have a 4 way but he was splitting good sized yellow birch that were sawlog culls off a landing near his camp. Yellow birch is not easy stuff. It tends to have stringy intertwined grain that does not pop apart. You have to push all the way thru to get it to separate. I have to say I was very impressed. That Super Split is a real splitter not a toy.

I think all demos are like that no mater what the product. Conditions are always perfect. Like graders that are working on a road that is already in good shape.

gg

But Gordan, those were "little" rounds, ya know . . . on the rounds I had this year no way, could not even get them on such, just would not work, I used my old trusted horizontal/vertical splitter . . . and that was not easy . . . d@amn thing is fast though, the SS.

 

[Molalla1]

I've been to several firewood competitions and the last one I saw a Super Split at, it was parked next to a TW5 with a 4-way wedge.

Both had the same exact amount/size of rounds, all the rounds were oak and mixed with some knotty and some not so knotty, just the kind of wood the average guy gets! Both had two guys, one feeding and one bringing him rounds, or stacking them close. The splits were just thrown in a pile, not stacked.

The event was timed and had judges to watch what was going on, to see that the splits were really "split" and down to a usable size, no cheating!

When the smoke cleared, the TW5 was done and the SS guys had about 10 pieces to go!

Two times pushing the knotty pieces through he TW's 4-way and off the pieces would go....DONE with that piece! On many bigger knotty pieces,the SS was bam, bam to get through and sometimes bam again and finally, it went through the toughest sections. Not too impressive for the kind of wood "I" split!

I've run a SS, they are good splitters, but they aren't for tough to split wood!

BTW, both of these splitters were sponsored by their own factory and run by their own people...

SR

If I ever get a new splitter SR, it will be a TW. . . a lot of your info and my own experience (a friend has one), tells me this is the route to go. :thumbsup:

 

[m7040]

Store wood in a number of places. Here is one of them. You can barely see the tractor in the back with a load of wood. The UTV is needed to stand on the reach high enough to stack up 10 ft

 

[Molalla1]

Nice! :thumbsup: . . . all hardwood? out here fir is what is burnt a lot . . . hardwood is at a premium, but fir is all over the place.

 

[m7040]

Yes all hardwood. mostly oak

 

[John_Mc]

I wonder about the long term durability of even the heavy duty kenitic splitters. Can anybody shed some light on that?

The SuperSplit brand is extremely durable. I've seen 2 commercial operations doing 100s of cords per year with them (why they don't invest in a processor at that volume, I don't know).

Many of the clones that started showing up after SuperSplit's patent ran out had durability issues: TSC used to sell one made by Speeco. They had so many problems (poor steel and/or poor heat treating of their rack & pinion gears, among other things) that they pulled them off the market. DR Power had a lot of problems when they first came out with theirs, but they seemed to have worked most of them out - still not as durable as the SuperSplit models. The DRs are holding up OK under personal use, from what I hear. I've never seen one used in a commercial operation (I haven't seen any DR equipment used in a serious commercial operation).

 

[John_Mc]

Sweat, trailer logging is the best, gotta say I'd love to have that one looks just the right size for my tractor. Wonder what something like that cost? You probably got a good deal when factoring in the good neighbor discount, now show it hooked up to the tractor, after it warms up.

Those forwarding trailers are really nice, but too pricy for me, I have to buy these $100.00 versions,

They were too pricey for me as well. I had been searching for years for something that would fit my needs, but the price rapidly jumps up from the $1500-$2000 ATV forwarding trailers (which were too light duty for my needs) to $12,000 for a bare-bones model designed for use behind a small tractor, and shooting up from there if you went to larger sizes or added options. While I wanted one, there was no way I could justify paying those prices for my own use.

I had spoken to the previous owner about a year ago, picking his brain about the options he had on his. It was just the size I was considering: he had set it up for use behind his Kubota tractor, which had almost identical specs to my NH TC33D:

• Self contained hydraulics, powered by a Honda engine (so it's not dependent on tractor hydraulics, and can be used behind a pickup truck)
• A built-in winch rated at 4000# with 100 ft of cable (not as good as my 3 Pt Hitch logging winch with 7700# pull and 230' of cable, but useful for those logs that are not too far out of reach of the loader grapple).
• Electric brakes so I don't get pushed around when hauling a load downhill (wired with a 7 pin round connector, same as my pickup. He added a cheap brake controller and connector to his tractor and just ran the brakes from the manual lever on the controller - I plan to do the same)
• Knobby tires (SuperSwamper) rather than the standard smooth implement tires, so there is some traction, making the brakes useful.

When I looked in to what it would cost me to buy new ($17 or $18K with all his options, maybe $12K with no options), I gave up on new and continued my search of Craig's List and Ebay. When his came up for sale, we started talking in earnest. He estimated he only had about 50 hours on it, and it looked almost new. This is an odd size for a forwarding trailer: It's too small for most commercial use (unless you've found a real specialty niche), but new it's too expensive for a typical landowner to justify for their own use. The price he was asking was reasonable, and I knew I was unlikely to see something similar, so I jumped on it.

 

[Oldpath05]

Those forwarding trailers are really nice, but too pricy for me, I have to buy these $100.00 versions,

Throw some bunks on one and you can haul one he!! of a load of logs!

SR

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The biggest draw back to those $100.00 trailers is there's no side stakes to hold the logs on, which would be ok if the tractor was included.:thumbsup:

 

[Oldpath05]

They were too pricey for me as well. I had been searching for years for something that would fit my needs, but the price rapidly jumps up from the $1500-$2000 ATV forwarding trailers (which were too light duty for my needs) to $12,000 for a bare-bones model designed for use behind a small tractor, and shooting up from there if you went to larger sizes or added options. While I wanted one, there was no way I could justify paying those prices for my own use.

When I looked in to what it would cost me to buy new ($17 or $18K with all his options, maybe $12K with no options), I gave up on new and continued my search of Craig's List and Ebay. When his came up for sale, we started talking in earnest. He estimated he only had about 50 hours on it, and it looked almost new. This is an odd size for a forwarding trailer: It's too small for most commercial use (unless you've found a real specialty niche), but new it's too expensive for a typical landowner to justify for their own use. The price he was asking was reasonable, and I knew I was unlikely to see something similar, so I jumped on it.

In other words you dont want to tell what you paid, everyone here will promise to keep it a secret.ath:..