On Wed., before 10am, my top grab arms stopped working (see picture 1). We got the truck driver to try to call Brad, the repair guy and a friend of Pat's. Until we got a hole of him we started taking all the oil valves in the head out to see if there was anything wrong. We found an o-ring the was in 3 pieces but we couldn't find where it came from. When we eventually got Brad, he said it was the cylinder (it controls the arms). So Pat and I pulled the cylinder out, which was indeed busted in two, and had to wait for Brad to get there with the new one. We got that put back together by quiting time. By this time there was a lot of wood backed up...
So, this morning I went in to work with Pat (5am) to help catch up. The machine tells you what the diameter of the log is that you're working on... After we changed the cylinder, the diameter measurement was completely off. Brad came back today to help fix that. There is also a cable on top of the machine that is attached to a cylinder and the cable was all twisted and not in good shape. Brad checked the pressure of the cylinder and it was 2000lb instead of 900, so it had been pulling the heck out of that cable, stretching it out.
Whew. All we need now is a new cable. Hopefully nothing else breaks....
-Miranda
picture 1. It's an old picture, but I left me in it cause I thought people would appreciate it.
picture 2
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Well, we started moving to a new jobsite today. It's further down the highway, but the gate we drive in through is very close to the highway. So, less driving time on dirt road.
We finished up the job we were on within a couple hours this morning and then started to get stuff taken care of to move. Pat and Dennis (he runs the clipper which walks around on the hillside clipping trees) went to the new jobsite where the clipper already was while Jesse, Tom and I started to move the yarder and delimber. Unfortunately, during our walk the yarder lost its track in the middle of the road. It came off the front guide wheel. Fortunately the truck driver was up loading logs so we called him on the radio to tell him to use his phone to try calling Pat. We tried to put the dumb thing back on from at least 2:00 to 6:00. They finally got the yarder off the road in a nearby widespot and are going to work on it tomorrow when there's daylight to help.
During all this, Dennis was at the new jobsite and apparently ended up having a problem with his machine. He was stuck there doing nothing from 2:30 until I picked him up at 5:45ish.
Fun, exciting day.....
-Miranda
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Last Thursday we had a nice mess in the cable that goes down the mountain. Pat got to try to straighten it out, which didn't go so well. They ended up having to unroll the entire drum of cable.
We have gotten some snow up at the job, but it hasn't been staying very long.
-Miranda
Pat messing with the cable on top of the yarder.
View of a nearby mountain with snow. The road down below is what we take to get into the job.
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Today we spent the day moving the last three machines (the yarder, delimber, and loader) to the next job site. It is part of the same job, but it's about 2 miles from where we were. Yesterday, one of the guys spent the day walking the clipper throught the 'goat trail' we drive through every morning (its just wide enough in parts for the pickups) and he made the road wide enough for the 12 foot tracks of the yarder. The road was really rocky and we had to park one of the pickups at the end of it to prevent any hunters from meeting us on the road and freaking out. (hunting season started Oct. 22 here)
Everything went smoothly and we're all ready to start hooking on Monday.
-Miranda
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The site we're working on right now is called Bitterroot View. It has a beautiful view of Bitterroot Lake. Many mornings there is fog covering the lake that eventually burns away (when it's a nice day). Yesterday morning there was about an inch of snow on the ground, but that melted by lunch time.
This week has been easy for me. I've been keeping up and even though there was a problem with the delimber that Pat and I had to fix for about an hour, I still mostly caught up in the hour before quiting time. Joe has been home all week working on his project and doing some Rangenet work. He'll probably come to work next week to help us move to the second part of the job we're on.
-Miranda
Joe, Tom, and Jesse eating lunch by the yarder and a fire that Joe built.
Bitterroot Lake.
Look at the cool cloud inversion.
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