moving wood...

[tuckermtn]

may be opening up a can of worms here, but...

I have seen older photos of sugarhouses that have rail carts or overhead rails to move the wood from the woodshed to the evaporator...anyone know where to get these set ups?

I have set up rail systems for barn doors- rollers, box rail, etc...could use this for an overhead set-up, then set up a trolley of some sort to get the wood to the evap.

or should I just stick with the wheel barrow?

we only burn 5-6 cords a year- small by some folks standards...but is anyone using any type of rail system?

-tuckermtn

[Fred Henderson]

I never have but I have seen pics of a rail system. I am going to have to use more than 6-8 cords before I will put one in.

[Big maple]

The over head rail we use is out of an old dairy barn. We took the old manure dump box off and refit it with a meta pallet. It is very handy and most of the bark and junk stays in the woodshed

[peacemaker]

johnny wialliamson has a nice rail system and a amzing splitter has a fiesta motor on it and a picker he has made it himself

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

Airablo makes a rail feeder for big round bales to be used in a barn. The system is way too fancy and complicated for moving wood in a sugarhouse but the basic concept could easily be adapted. It uses an overhead I beam with a suspended car. I think the components for the car could be purchased from them and the I beam at any steel fabricator. Shouldn't be too difficult to set up. Maybe slant the I beam track slightly towards the sugarhouse so it pushes easier when loaded...

[Haynes Forest Products]

The idea of the rail system is good just make sure that you can get the car into the sugar house and close the doors. make the doors open out so you can close them when the car is in. As far as the rail set up its easy. Dont think of RR tracks the new and improved method is what they use for wood kilns to move big bunks of wood. Look for a good steel supply Co. that sells wrought iron and fence hardware. They make wheels that roll on angle iron. I use the wheels when i make air hammers for blacksmithing. They are cast iron and have roller bearings and they cost about $6.00 for a 4" wheel. They use a 1/2 bolt as the axel shaft. A good steel CO will have 22 to 24ft long angle iron I would recommend 3" wide 3/16 thick. The nice thing about this set up is you can lay the angle on the floor and put the cart on it and it will track on the angle and you can remove it every year. You can build this set up cheap The steel will run you about 90.00 and the wheels 40.00 and you make the cart and mount the wheels. Make a good strong cart! GIT R DUN

[peacemaker]

williamsons has a winch mounted and he just fills it goes in hits the winch and bam there it is the cart is big and holds alot or wood

[tuckermtn]

Haynes- thanks for the suggestion...might be just the ticket with the cost and the ability to pull it up when not in use or for cleaning...also like the build your own cart set-up....am I foolish to try and pitch it slightly toward the evap.?

-tuckermtn

[Haynes Forest Products]

Dont worry about the pitch. put all your energy into making it level. Steel on steel rolls easy. put stops on the ends to keep it on the track. If you try and pitch in you will be chocking the wheel all the time a real pain.

[lmathews]

I went to an auction and bout an old uebler gas powered feed cart took off the auger and chain left a flat deck and it has forward and reverse.$100.00 all together, had a honda 5.5 motor.Works good.

[tessiersfarm]

I have an overhead chain fall in my shop it was made with a 30' 6" I beam Bolted to the roof framing. We use a trolley from northern tool (www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_18557_18557) and chainfalls to ride on the beam. I built a hoist out of some square tubing to lift pallets. That set up could be used to move wood pretty easily.

The other thing that works pretty good Is I have a pallet jack that I use around my shop. If you have a hard floor that would be real easy and quick, just build a box with skids on it.

I personally stack my wood on pallets and use the pallet fork on my tractor loader to move them into the evaporator.

[DS Maple]

Our firewood storage is about a quarter mile from the sugarhouse so essentially the firewood handler is a 115 hp tractor. The front bucket will hold about a cord of wood, which is good enough for a day's boiling. Once at the sugarhouse it gets stacked onto rolling racks which hold about 1/2 cord each. We roll them right inside and position them about 5' in front of the evaporator. If they get in the way, no problem, just push them. At the end of the day we grab another tractor bucket of wood, refill the racks and we're ready to go all over again. It's nothing fancy, but it works well.

[markct]

i realy like the railcar idea that will solve my sugarhouse problem, i am plannin to put my woodpile behind the sugarhouse due to a bunch of location factors, and there is just a narrow path on the fairly level side to the front of the building, and the other side is up a short hill. so i think i will make a railcar the can run on some pipe rails, and make about 50 ft of track and pile the wood alongside the tracks, just load it up and roll it to the front

[ennismaple]

I personally stack my wood on pallets and use the pallet fork on my tractor loader to move them into the evaporator.

Bingo - that's exactly what we use. Up to 60 full chord a year and it's never handled after it's stacked on the pallets from the pile where it was split.

[tuckermtn]

we did the pallets for a few years, but had a hard time moving them without dumping the wood off the sides...it is rough to get around the back of our sugarhouse -on my to do list to fix- so that is a contributing factor- plus my large doors are on the other end of the sugarhouse...poor planning!

[markcasper]

Has anyone used a hay carrier and track out of an old barn? Theres barns in New England and I think they had the same system as what we have here. We still use one for hay in our youngstock barn. We have an old barn that fell down a few years ago, but I don't know how much of the track is salvagable.

I like the pallet idea better, but they would take more room up to store I would think, but don't have to handle it again.

[DS Maple]

The racks we use are metal, about 6 feet long and 5 feet high. If you could build them for cheap somehow they would work just as easily as pallets. We do on occasion fill them and then move them over to the sugarhouse with a 3 pt hitch fork lift and it works great. They also take up less room than pallets and are easier to move around by hand if necessary.

[ennismaple]

We originally built our wood pallets out of hemlock 6x6's with 2x4 ends to keep the wood on. They've lasted 20 years but some are now starting to fall apart. We're now using some metal pallets that we got from a factory in town. They were used for shipping but when they are damaged they get tagged and can't be used anymore. We got about 20 of them and they can be stacked 2 high.

[maple flats]

I used a pallet I made and tried it before making more. I have a sawmill and cut the stock to make a 54" wide x 24" deep pallet with sides and a roof to keep it dry. The roof is 6' up which allows me room to reach in without hitting my head (I am only 5'6") and I put metal roofing on top. This worked well to fill and move in the summer but I need to adjust something. My tractor is only a 25 HP 4x4 without power steering. It has a bucket and I use clamp on forks to pick up the pallet. I can lift it good but have a hard time tilting with the load on and I found that during the maple season with the weight on the front I had a real hard time steering the tractor to put it in the sugarhouse. On my sugarhouse I have a double set of doors and set the pallet just about a foot inside the doors and feed the evaporator directly from the pallet. Not sure what I am going to do yet. Might only fill 2/3 for the lower weight, might add power steering, might make a bobcat type quick change set up to swap from bucket to forks (this would bring the load about 2' closer to the tractor). Need to improve something. Except for the steering aspect I like it. I set the empty pallet next to the splitter and load the pallet as i split, then I carry it to a drying area, set it on some timbers I have on the ground so it won't freeze to the ground and then carry it to the sugarhouse as needed. If i get it perfected I will make about 20 such racks and will have all my wood ready for the season. I put .3 full cord in the rack and the most wood I have ever used was this year when I used about 7.5 cord to make 186 gal. I also have wood stacked along each long side of the sugarhouse which gives me another 7 full cord. I am also looking to add an RO which will cut my wood needs way down.

[brookledge]

I have a few metal racks that were made for new unassembled New Holland compact tractors they measure about 3.5'X3.5"X7' and hold alittle over a half cord. When scrap was low you could get them free. I dont know about now or if they still use metal racks for compact tractors or not but it is a place to look.
Keith