Double Drum Winch Technique - Booklet No 12
This Forestry Commission booklet is courtesy of Dave Stewart whose father George was a forester for many years in the Forestry Commission.
This early booklet fills in a niche between many reports on attempts to extract timber by various type of powered winch or ropeway and the later introduction of skyline type double drum winches. At some point in the 1950s Professor Samset (who had developed the double drum winch mounted on an agricultural tractor at the Norwegian Forest Research Institute) visited Scotland to advise on timber extraction on some of the steeper slopes rapidly coming into timber production stage. About 1962, or earlier, the first winches had been imported and were on trial certainly in West Argyll at Inverliever Forest. There is mention of three sizes of Isachsen manufactured winches.
The report’s authors are Richard Crowther and Stan Forrester who certainly have been recorded at Inverliever in George Dey’s diaries around the early 1960s.
There is a detailed description and sketches of the equipment, how it is set up and maintained along with some photographs of winches in operation. There is, unfortunately, no information on the photograph locations.
Note that this is a double drum winch in high lead set up and operation and there for with limited reach into the forest. Skyline technology and conversion of the tractor equipment must have been underway very shortly after this time and certainly more than doubling the extraction distances.
Any comments and experiences very welcome. See PDF below
Groups: Forestry Records, Booklets and Reports, Timber harvesters, processors, forwarders and cable cranes