Tractors with a Winch - just interested.

In Scotland we often had tractors fitted with a heavy duty winch and anchors when used in forestry. Models that were popular were Fordson e27n p6, International bwd6, Field Marshall etc.
Were tractors fitted with a winch popular in Canada and the US for timber extraction or did you guys use something different. We also used to employ lots of ex military trucks for the same job.
Bill

Here is a link to an old thread with some pictures of my homemade setup. I have seen lots of variations including "official" 3 point winches, some electric winches mounted on tractors and such. Most folks around here who are seriously in the logging business have skidders or heavier tractors than me, I just use what I have and can afford.
Zach
Farmall 300 with winch

Up until the mid 70s, just about everyone in the Sandhills of Nebraska had a winch. Used them to cable haystacks onto underslung hay sleds. There are still a few around, but not many. With the advent of round balers, and front wheel assist tractors, the winches have become a thing of the past.

hey zack what size cable are you using on your winch
RICK

I have some old International Harvester Movies from the 1930's thru the mid 1950's and the one movie on the old IH Crawlers shows all of them with winches. Not sure if they use them still today or not.

This old Allis Chalmers industrial is fitted with a winch.
I took this pic at the Orange Power Of the Past show last year.
It's in Dale Haymaker's collection, Paris, IL.

I like tractors with a Wench. LOL LOL

Crawlers ruled the forests for a long time over here. In some areas the farmers ran crawlers so they could hire out in the winter. When purpose built skidders came along they took over pretty quick.

1/2" as I remember. Got some NOS cable at an auction, had been sitting in a coil in a shed since time immemorial.
Zach

(quoted from post at 16:37:44 11/13/13) We also used to employ lots of ex military trucks for the same job.
Bill

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The engine driven winch on my deuce-and-a-half will either move the truck or move what it's attached to. Here, nosed into a tree to keep it stationary. I've pull lots of substantial logs, this time an oak that scaled 500 board feet.

When I winched my dead 8 ton crawler up my driveway I had to chain the truck's posterior to a succession of trees. Otherwise the winch dragged the 10 locked wheels to the crawler.

A matching snatch block is crucial.

My father in law was a drainage contractor, started out with clay tile ended with plastic tile. His digger was a halftrack with front wheel drive also.
He built a pto driven winch mounted on a trailor. The PTO ran through an old truck tranny so the slow speed could be maintained. It had a flip-over "blade"to dig in as an anchor. He would setup in low ground or muck before getting stuck, put a tractor on winch and dig the rear wheels down and just assist the trencher through. He put in a lot of tile in muck ground. It also pulled out many stuck combines and tractors.

joe

The Fransgard and Valbi type 3 pt winches are fairly popular in my area with people owning woodlots on their farms and burning wood. I know a couple of small time loggers tried running them with limited success. There are still quite a lot of crawlers with winches being used too in woods up here, horses too.

I saved these photos, found it interesting, someone may even know whose tractor it is, very nicely done, and seemingly quite useful.

Yep- here in the sandhills all the bigger "feeding" tractors had a winch to pull stacks on the haysled. Was backbreaking work to drag that heavy cable around each stack, usually through snowdrifts waist high. Several times a day all winter long.

Around here anyway, all the winches were built by local welding shops. They were built to bolt in place of the U-shaped drawbar on the tractor and used part of old truck rearends with a sprocket on the pinon shaft that was chained to a sprocket on the tractor's PTO shaft, then a small gear on an axleshaft that turned a big gear on the winch cable drum.

On ours anyway, there was a lever that would slide the axleshaft in and out of the axle tube, pulling the axle splines out of the differential carrier to shut the winch "off", allowing the cable drum to freespool so you could pull cable out.

The final part was that these winches all had what resembled a small rear-facing dozer blade with a few downward-pointing spikes, that could be lowered onto the ground for "bite" if the stack was frozen down and the winch was dragging the tractor.

I've got one of our old winches yet, and am gonna put it on my 650D one of these days to use to pull stuck tractors etc out of low ground.

Very nice looking tractor particularly as its got the fwa. The only thing it seems to be missing any form of anchor to stop it being pulled along when the winch is hitched to something big.

If seen they are rare, old and home built. Timber industry here used crawlers and then the purpose built skidder manufactured by "TimberJack" . According to Wikipedia TimberJack was owned by Eaton since the 1960"s. I would suspect earlier than that.
The mighty screaming 3-53 DD went together in the logging industry with the chainsaw.

Commercial logging with farm tractors just wasn't practical. Trees are too large , 2WD tractors don't pull on hills and in swamps. Without protection the farm tractors are rapidly trashed by pointy sticks.

(quoted from post at 12:57:00 11/14/13) If seen they are rare, old and home built. Timber industry here used crawlers and then the purpose built skidder manufactured by "TimberJack" . According to Wikipedia TimberJack was owned by Eaton since the 1960"s. I would suspect earlier than that.
The mighty screaming 3-53 DD went together in the logging industry with the chainsaw.

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Timberjack, Clark, Franklin, Tree Farmer, Deere, Cat, Pettibone, Wagner, IHC or Hough had one I think , I think AC built some skidders too. I passed once on an early 60's Franklin with a little 4 cyl Ford industrial engine (IIRC) for $1800.00. Might as well have been $18 million at the time, but I sure wish I could have gotten it. Used to be zillions of old cable skidders around, now they're pretty rare and gone for scrap I bet.