JD 350 Paying for itself

[gcgrant]

Now that the ground is covered with snow and frozen it has been a good time to remove all the beetle killed Ponderosa pines around my yard without tearing up the grass. I am constantly pleased with what a good job my 350 is doing for me. Nothing other than a crawler could do what I have been able to do in the snow!
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[JD440ICD2006]

That is a large chunk of wood right there. Can you guess the weight? Looks like fun and you are getting the job done, can't beat that combination.

[Lavoy]

Man, if you are going to post all of the pics with snow in them, least you could do is send me some. 19 below here this morning, and we barely have 3 inches of snow on the ground.
Lavoy

[gcgrant]

I'm not sure what it would weigh. I'll have to figure it out, green Ponderosa pine 18' long and 34" diameter, pretty heavy! But the 350 lifts it without a problem. I do take it really easy, I don't want to break the old girl! I think there might be an benefit in being a dozer. I imagine with a blade there is a little better mechanical advantage over a loader.
Hey Lavoy, I sent some of that snow to you earlier, I guess you did'nt
get it! Actually we've been having a winter much like we used to maybe 30 or 40 years ago. I'm liking it, although we're supposed to be getting some thawing in the next couple of days. Guess I'd better get out and get the rest of those trees out!
George

[Lavoy]

We have not hardly had Winter, finally got cold, but still little snow. They just dropped the temp forecast again, now talking 25-30 below tonight, but no snow in the forecast at all. If this nonsense keeps up, I am going to have to move farther North.
Lavoy

[Stan Disbrow]

Hi,

Actually, there's a greater mechanical advantage with a loader for lifting things off the ground. A dozer has the greater advantage when pushing the blade downwards into the ground.

However, as long as you don't blow out the oil seals in the ends of the hyd cylinders, you'll be OK.

Stan

[digitup]

Do you have the pine bore beetle in your area .We have a big infestation of Pine Bore beetles in our area here in Ontario .They wont let the land owners log this wood and I have purchased a Grinder unit to clean up the mess .The area infested is about 35 square miles and we grind everything 6 inches into the ground .The beetle eats into the tender new growth of the tree and if he wouldn't attack the little top piece that is the trunk he wouldn't really damage the tree at all . But as it is we have found a new way of keeping one of the hired men busy nearly all year round.And the two county's that this outbreak is in just got a big grant to destroy all these trees so they are buying the trees from the land owners at market value! We are getting $750 per acre to grind them .We can do about 2 to 3 acres an hour and average 17 acres per day . this seems like a good dollar till you start feeding a 260 horse fuel eating pig of a grinder unit .I will see if I can find a photo from this summer .Digitup.

[Tigerhaze]

I'm not sure what it would weigh. I'll have to figure it out, green Ponderosa pine 18' long and 34" diameter, pretty heavy! But the 350 lifts it without a problem.

I have a materials density book here at work, and it is showing green Ponderosa pine at 45 pounds per cubic foot. For the dimensions you gave (equates to about 113 cubic feet), those logs your 350 is lifting weigh around 5,085 pounds apiece!

[gcgrant]

Thanks Tigerhaze for the weight info. That really is heavy! That was the biggest log at 34". most of them are around 24-30". If I get into some bigger stuff, I'll cut down the length a bit. 12' lumber is still pretty good.
Digitup, we've got the mountain pine beetle out here in BC and it's heading east! The little buggers are only about 3/16 of an inch long, but sure do a lot of damage! They start out attacking the mature trees but when they get into an infestation like we now have, they hit most everything except for the smallest trees. The bugs bore in under the bark and make galleries vertically up the tree. They lay eggs and the larvae start making galleries horizontally around the tree, cutting off the nutrients they also have a bacteria which makes the "denim" stain. That also screws up the trees system. The needles stay green for the 1st year of the attack, but when you knock off a piece of the bark you can seen the stain and degradation of the cambium layer. They try to do some fall and burn of the affected trees, complete with stripping bark off the stumps to below ground level. But the size of the infestation is so huge, it's not doing much good. BC is going to lose about 80% of it's pine forest before they're done! They've always been naturally occuring and were controlled by cold winters, of course we haven't had a lot of those lately. Pine forest historically are not long lived, since we keep putting out forest fires, (another beetle control) I guess the bugs are going to kill them. I guess I'd take beetles over fire. At least the beetles are leaving houses alone!
George