Crychan Major Double drum Winch

Date Added: 14 February 2018 Contributor: Norman Davidson Year of Photo: 1970 Picture No: 3883

Photograph is courtesy and copyright of Forestry Commission, Forest Research, Roslin, and provided with help from Glen Brearley. FR Photo number No B6228 taken by T K Evans and JBE.

One of a series of views of a double drum winch extracting pole length trees from Crychan Forest, Wales. The text reads ‘Extraction by direct haul with winch opposite extraction rack and the cables running straight along it’

There are four other images in the PDF but little information is given on this machine and how it operates. As it is a double drum winch one assumes that it works on the high lead system over short haul distances with a spar tree and return pulley at the far end of rack. There is no mention of a carriage or hooking system to wire but only needs to be a simple link between haul in and back lines. There is no mention either on the winch maker or how it is driven.

The long arm in front of the winch will assist with wire spooling onto the drum and on pulling up slopes help keep the wires from digging into the road edges. It looks as if the chains used to drag a load to the winch are left on until extraction of the rack is finished and then the tractor is repositioned and the individual loads are then dragged parallel with the road.

Any information on this machine and it operation would be very welcome.

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Groups: Forestry Areas, Forestry in Action, Timber harvesters, processors, forwarders and cable cranes

1 Comment

Just noticed this..I used a Crychan double drum winch at Cardrona in the late 1960’s.It was already in use in 1967 at the Howford end of the forest dragging out good quality clear fell Larch.However it was not tractor mounted.The winches and rollers were attached to a petrol driven ‘donkey type ‘ engine which you pinned to the forest road with metal spikes.It did have small detachable wheels,but when you moved it to the next drag road you simply put a spike in the road and dragged it along using the winch. You set it up at an angle to a spar tree and got the double pulley as high as your wooden ladder (made from Norway Spruce at Cardrona) would allow�I would then set off with the trailing rope found the wood to find another spar tree at the bottom of the drag road,pulling the wire through the pulley and joining it to the main drag rope with a carabena �which is where the drag chains were also attached to. A great piece of simple kit..where we used to heat our chain saw gloves on in cold weather�it struggled a bit at the Howford end of the forest dragging trees up a very steep hillside..it was retired in the early 70’s when the Ford Ploughmaster and the Ford 4000 with a double drum winch arrived.All the trees were dragged point first, and we would angle the ends off with the chainsaw or axe at 2.5”..to assist when dragging through the roots etc Comment left on 23 October 2021 at 13:05 by Ian smart

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