Mounty Gets Its Log
BC's hills are alive with more than the sound of music, as a new cable system from Austria gets tested in the Interior.
by Jean Sorensen
Cable logging has not really changed much in North America for decades, but a demo machine brought to BC is challenging old concepts and providing new ideas for skylining into smaller sites. The demo machine, called the Mounty 4000 is a combo steel spar, boom, and innovative processing head known as the Woody, all wrapped in one package. It can multi-task, allowing two men to work a side hill. Mounted on a six-wheel Man truck, the fold-up unit rolls into a cut block and backs onto the road edge. On site, the sides of the truck unfold into a platform, the 40-ft tower is raised, the boom with the Woody head unfolds and its operator cab is activated. Rigging up the lines for the tower takes longer.
"It only takes about two hours to set up," says contract logger Craig McIntyre, of Mass Industries in Prince George, who brought the unit over from Austria, where a company called Konrad manufactures it.
The unit uses four tieback trees upslope and a back spar tree. Before arriving in the Okanagan to work, the unit was working for Kalesnikoff Lumber in the Kootenay area, where harvesting foreman Robert Giesler placed it in a clear cut. Giesler says, "We were sorry to see it go." He considered buying a machine but when searching for a used one, found there were none available and the manufacturer sells out the plant's yearly production in a few months. "That's really a testament to the machine," he says.
Giesler, who has studied cable yarding systems and European models, feels the latter are more innovative than those in North America. He adds that he is a little frustrated that local manufacturers have not opted for more progressive cable yarding designs. "Machines such as this have the potential to save the cable industry in BC in terms of the manpower and productivity issues," he says, adding that it is another tool to help alleviate some of the stress that companies face today in bringing their costs into line.
Productive Features
In the Kelowna area, project superintendent Dick Gillman found the machine had some unique operating features. One problem in long-lining a steep, down slope in a cut area is that often the tower unit has to be pushed way back onto the road to provide a landing so logs do not go bob-sleighing back down onto the crews after the chokers have been released. Yet moving the tower back from grade reduces the angle of deflection and the back-end of the turn, especially if the tower is only 40 feet high. The Mounty, which is used for logging the European Alps, has the ability to grasp the cable-yarded log with the Woody head, thereby eliminating any safety concerns such as rolling logs, and still providing good sight lines, operator-ground crew communications, and tower stability.
Gillman says deflection became an issue on a down slope area with rolling ground. There was also some concern about the impact of yarded trees in what was essentially a thinning and selective harvesting operation. As the turn with the wood arrives by the Mounty's platform, the boom with the Woody "allows you to scoop and grab the log while you release the choker." The choker is manually released by the cab operator who returns to the cab and using an on-board computer with preferred log lengths, is able to process the log to mill standards. The grabbing arms on the head also allow the operator to stack debris near the landing for burning later on.
The contract area that Gillman was working was a 180-ha private site owned by diamond mine mogel Charles Fipke (whose northern BC mine Dia Met is one of the largest in Canada). This area is located approximately 15 km south of Vernon on the east shore of Kalamalka Lake. The property is bordered to the east by Kalamalka Lake, to the north and east by the Kalamalka Lake protection area and Cougar Canyon Ecological Reserve, while on the south side is privately held land. Two RPFs, Art Stock and Julie Castonguay, prepared a management report. The objective was not thinning for commercial value but to restore an area to good forest health to preserve land for several unique area species that relied upon the Interior BC's grasslands for survival. The stand was overcrowded and stressed.
"The stand was suffering and there were instances of root rot, beetles, and drought stress," says Gillman. Much of the beetle infestation (several kinds) was situated in clumps of trees, where trees were most stressed and less exposed to the elements. Gillman says the plan was to open up the area, by reducing the stand density by approximately half and thus presenting a more hostile environment for the beetles. Infested or dying trees were removed to reduce fuel loading (in the event of a forest fire) but some rotted stumps were left as critter condos.
"We basically looked at two logging methods. We were reluctant to use the skidder on steep slope ground, over 50%, so we decided to look at an alternative logging method," says Gillman. Cable yarding was decided upon, and as Gillman was looking at different operations, he heard about the Mounty.
It had the ability to work 800 m out, but in Kelowna it would only be 100 m or so to the backend. "It lent itself nicely to what we wanted to do," he says, as it provided for optimum deflection, minimized the amount of equipment required on site, and the unit ran with only two men, a cost saving for smaller patches of wood.
Invisible Logging
One of the features that impressed Gillman was the carriage corridor's narrow 15-ft width, and the remote controlled carriage, which had the ability not just to move forward or backwards, but also will allow an operator to control the load line to move the wood up or down at the same time. Gillman said this was particularly useful in the operation he was planning. The load line from the carriage could be hauled out to either side of the corridor (as far as 75 m (240 ft)). Since both the carriage and the load line are independently controlled through remote controls, the load can be guided as needed.
"The guy on the ground can use the carriage to zig-zag through the stand and avoid damage to the stems. That is a major feature. Especially, when the operator (up above) has no idea where the turn is going and the guy on the ground is able to direct it," says Gillman. From the highway on the other side of the lake, the narrow corridor and the fact the area has been logged is not visible. "I defy you to pick out the corridor," says Gillman.
Remote-controlled carriages and load lines are common in Europe, says Hans Krenn, whose family business has four of the Mounty units (with Woody processing heads) working in Austria. Krenn has been working for the past six months in BC demonstrating the unit and attempting to see where its strengths match the realities of Canadian slope logging and identifying any areas Konrad may need to adjust for the new market.
The remote control that Krenn carries - strapped over his shoulder on a harness - has a number of features. A pre-programmed stop for the carriage (with log) is set about 30 feet from the cab where Krenn sits. On the ground below, crew member John Portenkirchner (who does choking, rigging and falling) hooks on one or more logs and sends the load up. It automatically stops before arriving at the Mounty platform. Krenn takes over activating the load through his remote control, bringing it to the edge of the platform where the Woody head grasps it. Krenn is required to leave the cab to manually release the choker.
Krenn, who has used the unit to do work in Nelson, Kelowna and Vernon, says the application of the technology to terrain here is similar to Europe. "It's about the same, he says, adding that the unit is ideally suited to logs that are 40-50 cm in diameter.
Seen at Elmia
McIntyre, a contract logger in Burns Lake, first stumbled on the Woody processing head while in Sweden. He had gone to Sweden with his wife to visit friends but ended up working in the local forest industry in 2005 when Hurricane Gudrun created that year's huge blow-down. While there, he attended the Elmia Wood live logging show, where he (and CFI - See June/July 2005) first saw the Woody head. Its ability to serve as a felling tool, a processing tool, in CTL applications, and also to load, made him realize it would have potential for the North American market. The Woody H50 handled wood up to 55 cm in diameter with a claw opening of 95 cm, while the H60 used in North America handles wood up to 65 cm with a maximum claw opening of 125 cm.
McIntyre's company McMass Industries brought over a Woody processing head to use in his own operation, and he also became the Canadian distributor. It was mounted on a Volvo 210 forestry excavator in January 2006 for use in the Burns Lake and Prince George area in beetle killed wood working for McMass Industries. The unit was processing behind a skidder, doing long-logs mainly eight to 15 inches in diameter.The average yield was 400 m3 per shift, he recalls. In the Burns Lake area, the unit processed trees up to 24 inches or 60 cm.
In June 2006, the Woody head was shown at the Prince George Forestry Expo. McIntyre says he put the Woody into the show to demonstrate its versatility. There are other processing heads which multi-task, but they are often "jack of all trades and master of none" or they have some tasks they do well and others not so well. McIntyre maintains the Woody can do all functions well. He sold one of the units to Burns Lake contract logger Arlan Wium, owner of Anything for a Buck Contracting Ltd.
Wium, whose mainstay felling equipment is a Keto Harvester, picked up the Woody head because he realized it would save money in the long run. He mounted it on an older Case 1187C and has used it for straight processing or as a feller processor. "It works excellent - it can fall or process and load short logs or pile brush," he says, eliminating the need for extra machines. Wium, who has three operators using it, says that those using the Keto machine have a fast learning curve on the Case using the Woody.
"It takes about two hours - we couldn't believe it. After two hours, you are producing the same as the other machine," he says. The Woody head has 400 hours on it and maintenance has been minimal while service and parts replacement is on par with other companies, he says.
McIntyre says that in Europe the Woody head is commonly found in a total packaged unit - the Mounty - when used in a yarding operation. Arrangements were made by McIntyre and Heiko Notdurfer, Konrad's North American sales rep, to bring over a unit to work for Kalesnikoff Lumber based near Castlegar, BC, in the Kootenay area. It later moved to the thinning operation just outside of Kelowna, and just after CFI saw it was slated for a smaller contract for processing only in Vernon. The unit then heads back to Austria to help process a large volume of blow-down in Austria and Germany resulting from this January's massive windstorm.
McIntyre says the experience has shown some modifications are needed to the Mounty. The first is a more North American friendly truck base. While Man has 16% of the European truck market (road and extreme terrain), it has little presence in North America. McIntyre favours mounting it on a Volvo or North American model truck with engine and truck parts readily accessible to users.
"We also want to look at controlling the choker remotely," says McIntyre, so the operator does not have to leave the cab to unchoke every log.
In the interim, it is being mounted on a KMF trailer system and reintroduced to Canada again says McIntyre. Individuals like Giesler feel this may be a better application as the tower could be mobile, with the Woody head mounted on a companion piece of equipment beside it. Giesler says one of the problems that the cab faces is that it does not meet current WorkSafeBC requirement in terms of guarding.
Giesler has no production figures to reveal for the area the unit logged over four months as he felt they did not reflect what the unit was capable of. European crews working the machine log differently, he explains. A local crew working the machines would achieve a much higher degree of efficiency simply because today's mill requirements and forest practices are difficult for foreign crews to readily absorb.
Giesler is optimistic that this small portable tower combined with a multi-tasking head is the wave of the future. "If you can make a product like this work in an industry that is depressed, it is going to work all over the world," he says.
