Finally got the chance to run the chipper pirate crane thing doing trees today, did a couple of small dead pines at my brothers house. About 150 foot pull with a 120 foot rope but aside from that it worked wonderfully, easily pulling the tops apart and landing them right on the chipper tray with zero effort. It doesn't really seem like it's moving all that fast (60 feet a min), but the next thing you know it's on the tray. The rope plays out effortlessly to grab the next one, simply walking back and forth as the only effort of what used to be hard work. The tire self tailer on the winch works even better than i imagined, honestly i can't believe it works at all because that was an actual original idea i had
it's a very viable way of building a self tailer for a capstan winch, I'll be adding one to my winch rigging device thing (homemade grcs).
After running it i think I'm gonna build a skidding cone because i can see now how that will really lessen the ground damage and be a super quick setup. We had a slight rubbing a tree we're gonna takeout corner setup (gonna have to have some pipe rub protectors ready to go for future jobs) and the arch didn't really wanna tolerate that, but a cone wouldn't care so i see the advantage of the cone when you can get away with it. I'm planning on it being able to be used as a full on rope yarder when the job justifies it (winching on one line while using a bollard to control the outhaul on the other line), but for most stuff a typical chipper winch setup where you walk the line to hook the next one is gonna be the way to go. I also need to get some much longer dedicated ropes for it, the advantage of a capstan is you can use very long ropes at full power since it doesn't store it on the winch drum. I used the garbage can again for managing the rope and that works great, so the limitation on length is going to be how broke i am when i order rope and not line storage on a drum. The winch setup is so cool that it literally shoots the rope off the capstan directly into the garbage can, clearly due to my awesome fabricating skills/incredible luck.
I still have to get a bunch more blocks for it yet, and now i also see the need/really really want a few of those one sided pulleys that drop the rope when the load gets to them. This thing is gonna be perfect for snaking stuff out of tight spots, and we found that working with all of the different tools at our disposal made the job go really really well. The trees we did today were small enough that the log arch by hand worked great for the trunks, nothing was big enough to need to winch the arch. We used the arbor trolley for the trimmings and shorter broken stuff, and used the winch for the larger limbs. The ability to simply and easily move the whole limb to the chipper where you can process it with lifting tools is gonna be a huge game changer for me. Since it's a chuck and duck it devours hand fed brush, but the larger branches are often best handled as wood so this will allow me to either pile up or load a trailer with the larger parts of the branches while staging the brush to chip, lowering the need to run the winch with the chipper running as much. We ran an extension cord for my drill, so I'm gonna be getting a cordless setup soon.
Today was the first time i had it all rigged up with both the log arch and arbor trolley on it, in fact i had to weld a little ladder rack to hold the outrigger before i could go work today. It has room for a ladder there too if you wanted. Once i had everything loaded the whole chipper is slightly butt heavy which is a hard no since it won't pull right, luckily i think a steel toolbox will fit on the tongue which will fix the weight distribution and yay more storage. Didn't have time for all that today so to go work i just clamped some thick steel plates up front to make it ride right, once i finish this first round of work there I'll figure out how to mount the toolbox.
So with just the truck and chipper I'll have everything i need to work trees with minimal exertion, it'll carry a trolley, arch, crane, yarder, chipper, long ladders, and climbing gear in a single trip self contained nautical themed package!
Finally everything kinda has a home now, which is really hard to do with a 1 ton and chipper setup. Also i was very pleasantly surprised to find that it's actually kinda fun to do tree work when you don't need building the pyramids levels of effort to get anything done, and it's also pretty cool to not be crippled after doing 2 trees in a couple hours. It's not as fast as a mini, but it's one less trip there and back on the smaller jobs and it cost a bit less. I'm not finished with it yet, but I'm really really happy with how well it works so far. Pics and possibly video coming if i remember to do it this time
