Labor-Saving Firewood Handling System

Labor-Saving Firewood Handling System WOODLOT EQUIPMENT Miscellaneous “I’m a machinist by trade and use an outdoor wood burning furnace to heat our home I wanted an easier way to handle our firewood so I built this labor-saving collection of equipment for less than $2 000 ” says Wes Newman Beaver County Alberta     He uses his Deere 318 garden tractor to pull the equipment which starts with a wagon running gear with uprights on each side It’s followed by a 2-wheeled swiveling crane which was fashioned out of a commercial crane originally designed to fit in the bed of a 1/2-ton pickup The crane is equipped with 4 big telescoping outriggers and has a 5-ft reach that can swing a piece of wood in a 360° arc A hand-cranked bottle jack is used to raise or lower the boom     Newman pulls the equipment to the woods and cuts logs into 8 to 9-ft lengths then uses the crane to load them onto the wagon Once 4 or 5 logs are loaded on the wagon he uses the crane at home to unload the logs onto a big home-built steel sawhorse where he cuts the logs into 16-in lengths He rolls the pieces onto a nearby wood splitter with his wife running the controls     “It’s an inexpensive system that almost makes handling firewood a fun job again ” says Newman “We had been cutting logs in our woods into 16-in long pieces We had to load them by hand onto a trailer then drive home and split them Now we hardly have to pick up anything I crank the winch handle to raise or lower the boom and release it to swing the boom around by hand ”     The crane rides on new 15-in wheels and an axle that Newman shortened to 4 ft “The tractor wagon and crane are all the same width which makes it easy to maneuver them through the woods ” he says     The crane swivels on a round 3/4-in thick plate which Newman bought at a scrap yard for $200 “The plate just happened to be the right size ” says Newman     A short telescoping hitch that he mounted on front of the crane keeps the end of the boom positioned over the center of the wagon “By extending the hitch I can use the tractor to tow the crane separately ” says Newman     He used 4 and 3 1/2-in square tubing to build the telescoping outriggers and then built an understructure to support them Each outrigger is fitted with a pair of big screws that are used to adjust the outrigger’s height     “The number and location of the outriggers I use depends on what I’m doing ” says Newman “When loading logs I keep the front two outriggers in the extended position and the back two in the collapsed position The outriggers can be adjusted up to 4 ft horizontally and 20 in vertically in case the ground is uneven ”     He bought the wagon at Princess Auto for $300 “I bought the crane on sale for about $300 and paid $49 for the axle and $40 apiece for the wheels ” notes Newman     Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Wes Newman No 20 52210 Range Road 192 Beaver County Alberta Canada T0B 4J5 ph 780 993-2094; wesnew@live com

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