Small yarders in Norway

[TorkelH]

If someone should be interested it is, and have been, some yarding in Norway, mostly with pretty small Igland and Owren yarders, but also with austrian equipment like Steyr K15 and K20 (which was a downsized versions of the 046) and Syncrofalke. My friend runs two austrian Konrad yarders today, made for gravity-yarding.

I start with the one of my two Owren T3 yarders, here logging as close as you get to old-growth in Norway, but very small wood, like 3 to 4 trees pr cubic meter. The yarder is a running skyline all hydrostatic double main yarder with a 3-section drum carriage. The system consist of one pump and one motor for each drum, and it is said to be hydraulic interlocked, which I doubt both from a theoretical view and from experience.

 

[TorkelH]

Pic's from Verlandet

In front of the Volvo self loading log truck (which is the very common style of log truck in Finland, Sweden and Norway, you see Rune and Lars representing the forest owner. We logged 2000 cubic meters over the river at this site before the government stopped us because of lack of riparian zones. (Which wasn't that easy because the big timber at the riverside had been logged some 20 years before and taken out on the ice...)

Last two pictures the before mentioned Konrad Yarder.

 

[Contract Logger]

TorkelH this is really cool! Is that 1st yarder mounted on a Volvo BM? Looks almost like it is. And that is some serious yarder ground- awesome shot of the river! Keep posting for those of us who havent seen logging in your neck of the woods.

 

[Murk100]

TorkelH this is really cool! Is that 1st yarder mounted on a Volvo BM? Looks almost like it is. And that is some serious yarder ground- awesome shot of the river! Keep posting for those of us who havent seen logging in your nech of the woods.

I'm with contract logger thanks!!

 

[sawmilleng]

Very interesting!!

TorkelH,

Impressive photos! Is that a Timberjack forwarder in one of the photos? It looks just about identical to my TJ 1210.

It looks like the roads they make you use are barely wide enough to be able to be called roads. Do you fill them back in when you are finished logging?

Also, is all the wood "cut to length"? Here in BC, at least in my part of the province, it is avoided because the wood is more efficiently bucked at the sawmill. Makes for some interesting hauling!

Keep the pictures coming!

Jon.

 

[Per Eriksson]

Just about everything is cut-to-lenght around here, only special items like trees destined for telephone poles and such are full lenght

The harvesting heads have length and diameter measuring and the onboard computer gives a suggested cut lenght based on a pricelist that are updated regulary from the mills in order to give the best pay/usage at all times.

Depending on which mill the land owner has contracted the harvesting to, the machine computer is loaded with the corresponding pricelist and then the operator basically gives the computer a go ahead on each suggested cut.

 

[TorkelH]

Volvo BM

TorkelH this is really cool! Is that 1st yarder mounted on a Volvo BM? Looks almost like it is. And that is some serious yarder ground- awesome shot of the river! Keep posting for those of us who havent seen logging in your neck of the woods.

Yeah, for sure, it is actually an old forwarder, an SM969. My other yarder, which I'll post some pic's of later is mounted on a Volvo BM SM971 forwarder, both made in 1978. Yarders are made around 1992, they sold actually 6 to BC of them and maybe 8 to Scotland. The last years they have licence-built 25 to east Russia. The old Volvos must be about the last ones that still exists.

 

[TorkelH]

TorkelH,

Impressive photos! Is that a Timberjack forwarder in one of the photos? It looks just about identical to my TJ 1210.

It looks like the roads they make you use are barely wide enough to be able to be called roads. Do you fill them back in when you are finished logging?

Also, is all the wood "cut to length"? Here in BC, at least in my part of the province, it is avoided because the wood is more efficiently bucked at the sawmill. Makes for some interesting hauling!

Keep the pictures coming!

Jon.

It's a 2003 1710, it's a 17 ton machine and a lot bigger than the 1210. It's a very bad landing, and it was almost useless for the forwarder because the operator had to take most of the logs from back of the machine. It was really steep here so we had problems building more roads. This road is permanent, most of it is blasted out of the rocks. Everything here is cut to lenght, and 99% of all logging in Sweden, Finland and Norway would be that. This winter we have been taking out some pine that is hauled full-tree to the mill and cut there, but it is very unusual.

 

[TorkelH]

Owren T3 #2

Here's some pic's of the other yarder I have, or more right had, because I am more or less out of business now. Harwesting machine is a Valmet 903-500 from 1992.

 

[Contract Logger]

What a neat yarder mount those old Volvos are! Makes me imagine something like a Madill 071 or 171 mounted on a new A40E!

 

[sawmilleng]

TorkelH, (and Per)

I see that you are running a Dodge pickup! I always thought that North American gas (or diesel) guzzler pickups were sneered at in Europe! But I guess you need a truck large enough to haul a big tire out for repairs and the like. I always kind of expected that your trucks would be a Bedford or something with an engine about the size of a big chainsaw engine! Goes to show what I know about how you guys do it on the other side of the pond :beatsme...other than the EU banned Canadian sealskin.

You mentioned you're out of business...is this something to do with the gov't stopping the job over logging right to the river? Doesn't a forestry silviculture consultant recommend to the landowners how to perform the logging?

Funny, cut-to-length was all the rage in BC for a few years. In our corner of the province, we found that it cost us nearly $2 more per cubic meter than bringing the wood to the mill tree length. When you're logging 1.3 mmM3 per year, that $2 adds up. We only bring CTL wood in to help when the mill log processing equipment can't keep up with the sawmill equipment.

Jon.

 

[N.B.CONCRETE]

Varkligen kul att fa se pa bilderna !:drinkup

 

[TorkelH]

Some more pic's from Norway

My friend operating his Owren T3 yarder with a radio control from the delimbing machine. He also invested in radio controlled chokers (not Johnson) and a similar but smaller radio control for the hooktender. This have been working fine for 3 years now!

 

[TorkelH]

More pic's

More scenes of one of my T3 yarders, with Valmet 902 1986 mod delimber and ÖSA 250 1987 mod forwarder

 

[TorkelH]

Owren yarder

Third picture is dedicated to the memory of Artur Lewandowski. He was killed in a tragic logging accident in Poland in january 2008, may he rest in peace.

 

[TorkelH]

TorkelH, (and Per)

I see that you are running a Dodge pickup! I always thought that North American gas (or diesel) guzzler pickups were sneered at in Europe! But I guess you need a truck large enough to haul a big tire out for repairs and the like. I always kind of expected that your trucks would be a Bedford or something with an engine about the size of a big chainsaw engine! Goes to show what I know about how you guys do it on the other side of the pond :beatsme...other than the EU banned Canadian sealskin.

You mentioned you're out of business...is this something to do with the gov't stopping the job over logging right to the river? Doesn't a forestry silviculture consultant recommend to the landowners how to perform the logging?

Funny, cut-to-length was all the rage in BC for a few years. In our corner of the province, we found that it cost us nearly $2 more per cubic meter than bringing the wood to the mill tree length. When you're logging 1.3 mmM3 per year, that $2 adds up. We only bring CTL wood in to help when the mill log processing equipment can't keep up with the sawmill equipment.

Jon.

The pick-up was cheap and nice and very convenient for my use, that's why I bought it. I see some of the logging contractors in Norway actually drive american 4WD car's. My impression is still that those really making money seem to run Skodas.

It's actually the government's fault I'm allmost out of business, but not like you think. I just got back my old job as a governmental forester, tired of too much work for no money.

In our countries 95% of the logging is done by harvesters and forwarders, and it's undoubtly the most efficient way to log here in Finland and Scandinavia today. Harwester/forwarder systems is close related to CTL and is the result of more than 50 years of development of logging methods that fits the nordic climate, property structure, forests and mills. But maybe still a big part of the development of logging methods turning in the CTL direction have been just coincidence?

 

[TorkelH]

Yarding in Selbu, Norway now

Got one yarder in work again after the winter. The other yarder have been parked for one year, impossible to find a crew for it.

 

[Ryan Rønning]

Very awesome pictures. Thanks for sharing.

 

[TorkelH]

Problems

Last week this machine skidded off a rock and started to spin. Result you see in the pictures, not possible to get up or down. I had evaluated the rock and found it unnescecary to blast :tong. I was not there when it happened but we got a bypassing excavator operator to look at it, and he was not willing to try and push the machine back on the "road". He suggested to try a 50 ton Cat excavator parked just 8 km away (!). The owner of the Cat looked at the job, and beside machine being a big job to move there he thought it seemed risky for the yarder to tip and suggested it a much better idea to use some heavy truck rescue winches. This company went up looking at the job and was willing to do it for a pretty high price. And then he says why don't you just make a new road on the outside and back the tractor down on that?

End of story, while some locals standing there saying "wasn't that just what we said...", the first excavator operator built some road and we had machine on flat ground in 2 hours...

 

[dirty4fun]

Nice pictures, pretty country, seems a shame that you can't find enough workers to get the other machine working. Looks like the path could of been a little wider before you started up it to begin with. Throw in some wet muddy slick old rocks to get the machine cross ways. Glad the out come wasn't to costly and pretty easy.