Scrap Iron to useful tool

I had a couple of hours idle time so I fabed up another log lifter from bits and pieces. It has a telescoping handle, so easy to mount and carry on my 3pt skidding arch and has enough leverage to roll big logs. made it from old rusty 1" pipe, 5/8" rod for bail, and 1" OD tubing and some other small scraps. I bought one back in 70s from Northern Tools but it is mounted in it's bracket on my firewood processor tractor. I needed one for my skidder tractor also, because I found it more productive, sometimes, to block firewood logs as I skid them to the landings, and this one will be mounted on the 3pt arch when I do block individual logs.

Very nice ! I found a NOS Peavey Timber Jack on CL some years back. Absolutely a must have tool for blocking. They have some nice tools, they kind of remind me of Union Fork & Hoe. I'd like to get a pair of pulp hooks, still not sure which ones, thinking the one with a replaceable tip. The other tools would be a pair of the appropriate length Pickaroons and a Bark Spud. Another favorite of mine is the Lockhart log gripper from Bailey's, green one for 16" to 18" blocks, I have one, works very well. These simple tools make handling logs and firewood so much easier. I'd need a similar arrangement like you have to process in the woods, instead I just carry the logs back to the house on the heavy set of rear forks I set up for my tractor.

Billy: pickaroons are simple to make--picture shows just a few of the dozens I've made over the years. Heads are water pipe with a piece of old chopper or chipper knife welded on, handles are whatever branch or sapling was handy--preferably hardwood like maple, beech, ironwood, or similar. Hickory, ash, oak, elm, or most others would also work but aren't as easy to get locally. I put a bolt through the head to help prevent them coming off. Makes handling wood a LOT easier, particularly when it's somewhere like the middle of a pickup bed, where it's difficult to reach without one. A shorter handled one makes using a vertical woodsplitter easier also as it helps greatly in bringing blocks to you and standing them up.

Is the back hoe a new addition i remember you had a mini excavator.

Dang Loren.
I wondered where my Kubota went.LOL
Used mine today to move the wood splitter in place to split kindling.
Richard

Tim, I have 2 home made pickeroons. I use one with my splitter and one to unload my trailers like you do. I also built a block lifter for 6-12" rounds, but we found it just as easy to use our hands on them.--------------------Loren

Tim, I have 2 home made pickeroons. I use one with my splitter and one to unload my trailers like you do. I also built a block lifter for 6-12" rounds, but we found it just as easy to use our hands on them.--------------------Loren

There's certainly more than one way to do it, and a lot depends on personal preference or simply what equipment you have handy. I also made a log lifter based on the Timberjack design from an old peavey head and use it from time to time. Billy NY originally referenced pulp hooks, which are another method of handling wood, from the days when paper mills took their wood in 4-foot lengths. At least here locally a lot of that was softwood pulp--hemlock, spruce, balsam, etc. and many farmers spent their winters cutting it and delivering it to the local papermills. It made for a second income over the slow winter months between harvest and the start of maple syrup season in the Spring. A pulp hook made it easier to load the lengths of 4-foot pulp, which was typically done by hand onto a farm truck or even a horse-drawn sleigh. That's gone the way of the wind now, of course, with most papermills gone and the few survivors taking their wood in tree-length poles harvested and loaded with machinery. Still, we've got several pulp hooks around the home farm still used to handle small square bales, as we find they work better than the T-handled hooks often used for the purpose, and new pulp hooks are still available in many styles. Link below is to Peavey's page and shows what they have available.
Peavey MFG pulp hooks

Those are pretty cool ! Functional tools for this kind of work. Those look solid, no shame in having several, various lengths etc. There is something about making ones own tools, kind of satisfying to say the least !

Loren, the Lockhart log gripper works on the same principle, yours looks very useful. I find there is so much less strain when I don't have to reach to the ground or have to use both hands on blocks. I like the Lockhart because it flexes, and with your block length gauge, no worry about too long or too short. These will work on some heavier blocks too, I scoot them up along my hip, but would prefer the lift like you have or similar. For now I roll them into the ford 555 backhoe bucket, filling it with blocks, then split, discarding the split wood into gardenway carts that I roll to the stacks. It's amazing how much wood you process, and do so comfortably, there is no other way in my humble opinion.

Tim, thanks for posting, really enjoy the discussion on various means and methods for handling ones firewood, I still enjoy doing it to no end.

I'm a form-follows-function kind of guy--yes, I can make "pretty" stuff, but these are work tools and will get banged and dinged up soon enough. I coat the handles with a few coats of boiled linseed oil and send them out to work--most of the ones on the table are still being used, and I've made many more since, with only one or two still here--the rest have all been given away to friends or family who could use them, and they're being used, which is the whole idea of making them to begin with. Peavey offers several styles, and their "handy hookaroon" (the names pickaroon and hookaroon are somewhat interchangeable depending on where you're from) is the basic style I use to make the shorter ones I use for a log splitter helper, often with a handle loop to make it easy to keep it handy. Gave one to an older gent of my acquaintance who, at 77, still cuts (AND splits AND piles) all his own firewood, which is his primary heat source, and he's used his so much he wore the handle out at the top where it fits on to the head and needed to shorten it a bit to get it back to fresh wood. Volunteered to just make him a new handle but he said he's used to this one! I don't believe I've ever made one with a handle longer than about 4 feet and 3 or so is more common, but Peavey offers theirs out to 6 foot as catalog items and you can get longer on special order. I've made several of the longer ones for friends with outdoor boilers, as handling frozen, unsplit 2 or 3 foot long wood from a high pile is difficult and potentially dangerous, and the pickaroon makes getting pieces down where you can get both hands on them a lot easier. Ditto for handling the longer wood often used to fire the evaporators at a maple syrup shanty.
Peavey Pickaroons

The 580C belongs to a neighbor.--------------------Loren

I like yours way more than the one I bought. Nice job!