Mechanized Firewood on a MicroScale

I recently fabricated a unique implement to make processing my firewood 100% mechanized. After a little thought I realized that this would be a perfect tool for gathering wood for rocket mass heaters because it it is intended for smaller wood. In my case it was designed to make use of wasted wood, saplings that grow on the edge of my fields, saplings from pre-commercial forestry thinning, and from the land clearing that I do (on my farm as well as for hire).

The problem I ran into was, these small trees take a lot of time to gather up because being smaller, it takes many of them. So my idea was, make it a mechanized process. So I came up with this homemade feller-buncher. It mounts to my log loader and allows me to sever a tree from the stump, then load it onto my log trailer for the trip back to my house.

It really is a two machine process: use the feller-buncher to cut, gather and haul the wood, then build a firewood chunker (Rebak Machine) to process the wood into chunks automatically. That will make my firewood 100% mechanized. At present I have enough saplings on the margins of my fields to last me many years. Anyway, here is my homemade feller-buncher.

Do you have any videos of your feller buncher in operation, Travis?

I'm interested in video as well! Preferably short so I can actually view it..

Is it a gas saw that runs throughout while using the implement? Do you remotely control the throttle?

Personally, I do not yet mind cutting trees. I hate bucking and moving rounds though. I just got a dump trailer, starting to think about some sort of elevated sawbuck to let me buck multiple smallish logs at once with the 394xp, in such a way that the rounds fall into the trailer. Most of what I will be cutting is small to medium alder so the big saw should go through quite a few at once...

Terry Byrne wrote:Do you have any videos of your feller buncher in operation, Travis?

No I don't. I cut a few trees to see if it worked, realized I need to make a few improvements, then never got back to it. Part of the problem is lacking a firewood chunker to take the felled trees (saplings) and cut them into chunks to be burned. I have a pot bellied stove, so firewood chunks would be perfect for that.

Firewood chunks have a lot of potential:

Winter heat
Smoking meats
Biochar
Gasification

Dillon Nichols wrote:I'm interested in video as well! Preferably short so I can actually view it..

Is it a gas saw that runs throughout while using the implement? Do you remotely control the throttle?

Personally, I do not yet mind cutting trees. I hate bucking and moving rounds though. I just got a dump trailer, starting to think about some sort of elevated sawbuck to let me buck multiple smallish logs at once with the 394xp, in such a way that the rounds fall into the trailer. Most of what I will be cutting is small to medium alder so the big saw should go through quite a few at once...

No, it has a remote control on the throttle that gets routed back to the controls of the log loader. I am not a big fan of noise, so a small engine running, and a screaming chainsaw would be a bit too much.

To deal with rounds, I have a two-step process. The first step is to use my log loader to hold up the trees off the ground about waist height, then buck the tree up into firewood lengths. Since the wood is suspended, I never dull my saw, nor pinch the blade, and my back likes not having to be bent over. For smaller trees/tops, I can cut them right over my dump trailer.

But to deal with the bigger rounds, I switch out my grapple to a upside down woodsplitter with a four-way head. On back of my three point hitch is a carrier that holds a PTO hydraulic pump, a reservoir, seat, hitch and cup holder...can't forget the cup holder! In this way, I can use the hand throttle of my tractor to control the speed of the splitter, then as I sit on the fully adjustable seat complete with lumbar support, control my woodsplitter and log loader. I just swing over a round, pinch it without fully splitting it, then lift it over my dump trailer and finish splitting the wood. When the dump trailer is full, I just back it up to my woodshed and dump it. I do not even pile it. I just push it inside with the front end loader of my tractor and I am done.

There are a few problems though; the tree has to be limbed by hand, bucked up by hand, and the woodstove is automatically fed, so my system is getting better, but not 100% fully mechanized.