to connect the "T" to the rear of the front sled there is a piece of steel with a hole for a pin similar to the one that attatches to the atv. It is attached to the front sled bunk with bolts/rod that go all the way through. You could use one of those tie rods for the connection here.
In this pic sled you can see the front sled has small square with a hole in it. If you look at the pipe on the rear sled you can see the remains of the "A" hitch that I cut off and replaced with chain.
We had a big dump of snow here today with high winds creating huge drifts. If we get a bit more snow it should be good for the snowmobile.

 

Well, I finally hooked up with my welder buddy on Thursday and we got the rear sled "T" bar assembled. He has been sick for a while so no welding got done. I just put the first coat of grey primer on all of the new metal and will add a second in the morning. Then a top coat of flat black and the paint will be complete. I will screw on the plastic runners and then off to try them out. We started cutting in a trail to the downed trees that we want to harvest last Sunday and hope to work on it more tomorrow. We have lost a lot of our snow over the last week but I am hoping that the woods will still have enough for the sleds. The next project will probably be adapting wheels to the sleds. LOL If I can figure out how to get my pictures small enough to post, I will try to add some tomorrow night.

 

The trial run was conducted today. The sleds worked great however, the cheap plastic that I bought at Home Depot to screw on the runner bottoms did not fair well. The rear runner on the right side must have hit a rock or something and I lost a 14" section. I thingk that I will definitely have to look into somehting more substansial for the runner bottoms. Hauled 3 loads of logs off the hill with each load being 10- 15 logs. Most of this was laying or standing dead wood, so some was fairly light. The last load was the heaviest and I think did the most damage to the plastic runner. All in all it was a great day and most of the logs have all ready been cut, split and stacked. Some guys took pictures and I will try to post them as soon as I get them.

 

sounds good, too bad about the plastic looking forward to seenig those pics. my father and I hauled 10 loads with ours on saturday conditions were great 4 loads would fill the pickup and trailer.

 

well, unfortunately the one picture that I got was taken by a cell phone and is so small that you can't really see anything. I was in Maine on Thursday and had been told about a company in Saco that sells plastic. I stopped by there on my way further north and was able to pick up a roll of 3" wide teflon for $60. I plan to remove the old plastic from Home Depot and install strips of the new today. We are camping out next weekend so we plan to cut more wood today. Maybe I can get better pictures this time. If anyone is interested, call Charlie Garlund at Garlund Manufacturing in Saco, Maine and he can hook you up with some teflon.

 

Don't have much snow here in western Washington usa. Was wondering if the creation I built on skis would fix you up. Just an idea, you can built it to suit the size rig you have. It is posted in the farming part of this forum under dumptrailer/arch. Would be east to build a set of skis to bolt on after taking the tire off.
For that matter, wouldn't be to hard to form a channel to the tire and chain it with the skid attached to it. No drilling for hub that way. And you get the hieght of the tire without having to build the ski up.

 

That is a very neat looking rig. Did you weld it all up yourself? Where did the wheels and axle come from? We are losing our snow here rather quickly and I see the need to switch over from skis to wheels shortly. Does the log swing front to back or side to side when you are dragging it with your arch? Perhaps you chain it in place, but I could not tell from the picture.

We tried out the sleds again on Sunday with the new plastic runners installed and they worked great. The only problem was that it started to rain fairly hard and the snow and the logs became very slippery. One of the guys fell into the rear sled horn/pipe while carrying a huge log and the torque split the 2 x 8 cross member where the hole was drilled for the pipe. We decided to shorten the pipes from 40" down to 20" and that will also make them easier to get through the narrow winding trails and less likely to split the 2 x 8 again. We reinforced the end of the 2 x 8 with a 1" band of steel wrapped around its end and screwed in every 4" or so. The pipes/horns only need to hold the bottom log of the pile, so they really do not need to be that tall for our needs. I usually only haul 7 to 9 logs at a time, so they stack fairly well in a short pile. Like everything else, this is a trial and error process. We hope to get them out again for another run mid week. Hopefully, we will now have all of the bugs worked out and can concentrate on hauling wood.

 

It is free to move around as you go around corners and such. I have used this type of arch from this size to D8 cats. Back in the day 8ft fir were pulled in this fashion with catapillars. Haven't had any problems with this setup so far. One thing I would do to the next build though is make the tongue so it can lay over on it's side without twisting the hitch. I watch carefully for sidepulls so I don't tip the arch. Keeping the load between the wheels keeps it fairly stable.

The tires and wheels came from northern tools. I built a trailer and the axle wasn't stout enough so I cut it up and used it for the quad.

Yes I did all the welding. I do a lot of tinkering in my shop. Used to build skidding winches for tractors. Growing up and working in logging country I have operated just about everything man can take a tree to market with.
I built one of these for my tractor back in the 80's. It was hooked to a pintle on my winch of the 3pt. The winch had a blade that would keep the tractor from slidding back when winching. Once the load was in would just pick the winch and on my way I would go. In this scenario, the winch has to be on the arch. You could put an electric unit on for dumping the trailer or pulling a log in. I would use a chain though with a few hooks on arch to hook them to. I wouldn't want to be pulling a log putting jerks and strains on the electric winch gears.
This is the prototype for a quad. I have a few improvements if I build any for marketing.

 

Well, work got in the way again and by the time I got to the woods Thursday night, there was only enough time for one trip. The sleds worked great and we hauled out about 10 very nice standing deadwood logs. We had a primitive camp out over the weekend and although it was almost 60 on Friday, the temperature dropped for Saturday and Sunday. Sunday morning it snowed a couple of inches and then overnight and into Monday we got about 8 more inches. So I guess that there will be no need to switch over to wheels quite yet. LOL Need to get back up there today and make sure that the snow did not take down the tents. It is supposed to stay cool for the rest of the week so we should have snow on the ground and the access road for a while. I am still working on getting pictures and will post them as soon as possible. You can go to (www.SRGCLUB.COM), my gun club website and look under photos. If you click on <span class="FTHighlightFont">2005 Rendezvous </span ft>you will get an idea of what I am talking about.

 

Just wondering how your sleds worked out. The snow is pretty much all gone here sleds put away for the next big snow, you may find enough to fill a shovel in the shade deep in the woods lol. Plenty of frost though bogs and most ponds still good 16" hard ice. I had a few days in cutting & stacking wood to haul out next winter.