Wood puller

[SpaceBus]

I don't have a tractor (yet), but on my wood trailer (just a cheepo Harbor Freight with wooden sides) I put a cheap (HF again) worm drive hand winch, which I removed the handle from and use a power drill to turn.

That, plus a set of homemade log tongs does fairly well at dragging them up to the trailer's tailgate, although it needs help on larger logs.

For really big/stubborn logs, I hook a proper log chain to the hitch on my truck and pull them with that.

Can you post some photos of this setup? Sounds nice and doesn't need electricity for the hand crank winch. A member in this forum is getting/got a capstan winch for skidding logs. A skidding winch for my tractor should be here today.

 

[SuperSpy]

I don't have any pictures handy (I'll snap some tonight if I remember), but this is the winch I'm talking about. This is the base trailer.

My trailer just has about 3' tall 2x4 sides on it, and I just attached a 6" long bit of 4x4 to the top of the front section with some threaded rod (screws aren't strong enough -- ask me how I learned that) and washers/nuts on each end.

The winch is in turn attached via more threaded rod through the 2x4 on one end, and the 4x4 on the other end and it has turned out to be plenty strong. I'm actually nervous about how much torque the drill can put on the winch, and generally try to leave the drill in high gear as it torque stalls just before the cable gets worryingly tight. In low gear I worry I would break the cable, which would be less than ideal considering where I'm standing.

 

[SuperSpy]

I started out with an OSB base, but it shockingly rotted out, so I welded an expanded metal sheet to the bottom which is great because all the dirt and filth just falls through. Plus it made the trailer a lot more stiff.