100t Crane

[glens]

That was just an exercise to let you see how it could look.

Is this one better, Mark? It's the freebsd mascot.

 

[Mark Chisholm]

Stop that Glen!

 

[sal88]

crane job in Scarsdale NY

 

[sal88]

this was the last cut

 

[Mark Chisholm]

Sal, what size boom was it? It must have been a lil on the shorter side to need that jib when it was that close to the tree. Black Oak?

 

[sal88]

i'll ask foreman but i think he put the extender so he could swing out to street so we could run right threw chipper. heres a better pic of crane

 

[TreeDr]

Are you kidding me? Did you use the tongs to pick all the wood? I wouldn't trust that, especially pulling with the grain.

Tell me you used straps

 

[Colin]

Tongs have their place, no need to be fearing em!

 

[TreeDr]

Not this cowboy.

I'll stick with a pair of 15k chokers.

 

[cory]

Do any of you use wire chokers? What are the pros and cons of wire vs. straps??

Btw, those were awesome Pics/ pix of Sawdust's job.

 

[Colin]

As long as they're sharp and you aren't passing over anything, tongs are quite appropriate.

 

[Lumberjack]

There are tongs made/proofed for lifting, however, I will chance it and say that in the last picture the tongs are overloaded. Tongs are subjected to the similar loads of a sling in a basket configuration and as such they come with different ratings for different angles.

Probably a 65-75' boom there max Mark, 3 stage boom, kinda small on a crane with a cab, but it looks like it got the job done! However I noticed that the tires of the crane were still in contact with the ground which is a pretty universal no no (excluding smaller cranes) and the cribbing on the drivers rear outrigger looks iffy, but that could be the picture.

In keeping with the thread, here is my 100T crane experiance.
http://gypoclimber.com/treehouse/viewtopic.php?t=2282

 

[Mark Chisholm]

Sorry Sal, I misread the post title. I thought that you had a 100T crane. My bad.

Carl, nice pics. In the last shot, couldn't you get a smaller crane and pull it off of the street? We usually need to go through a bit of a hassel to leave it in the road (permits, police...).

 

[RogerM]

Cory, I use both but prefer the straps over the steel chokers. 1 they are stronger and 2 getting "bumped" by a strap doesn't hurt. You can flip a strap around a tree with little risk unlike steel (sore fingers,hand,face) ALso a burr on a steel choker is no fun on our tender soft tree climber hands. One advantage of steel is you can hook up to the load with one end already attached to the crane...my 2 cents worth.

 

[cory]

Makes sense, Roger, thanks.

 

[Lumberjack]

Mark if your talking about the pine removal, no sir, leaving it on the road. That crane weighs 150k with full counterweights and that would leave me buying a new driveway. The road dead ended 1 house down so it was a non issue anyways. We closed all the roads we were on those 2 days,not a big issue, call 911 and tell them its closed (for smaller streets around here).

We had to use the 100 ton on the pine, it was 130' tall and the 100 ton has 140' of main boom. It would have been a booger to try and swing the jib at that location the crane manager told me.

If I had it to do over, having the experiance now, I could have cut my crane bill in half and then some. At current market price that log up to the top would be worth 600 bucks at least (1.5mft easy on the Doyle scale) I didnt really scale it and it should be more than that, perhaps prime logs, figure a more realistic 800-1200 bucks for the log, I gave away 3 sticks of the top, the rest went to the dump. All in all I still made good money for a 3 man crew with no expenses of hauling or wear on my rigging gear, around 1k a day, if I did it over, I could double that without much hassle.

 

[Mark Chisholm]

Makes sense to me Carl. I was just thinking that the Pecan could've be done with a smaller crane (or so it looked). Still, it looked like fun work to me!

 

[Lumberjack]

The pecan was doable with a 17 ton if you had the time. I already had the 100 ton on "retainer" so to speak. They charged me the 70 ton rate on that tree, 170 per hour.

The first pecan was my first crane tree,then red oak, pecan, pine.

Terribly unproductive as I look back, but hey, its a learning game! Just let me get a similar setup again, I dare ya!

I want to play with the 250tonner, but at 350 per hour (with full counterweights) and an 8 hour min (3k bucks) thats a steep order to find the job that requires that. He said something about the possiblility of charging it out at a 150 ton rate, but I didnt follow him on that part.

 

[Mark Chisholm]

That was your first crane job ever? If so, wow! Great work for sure. Not that it wasn't great regardless, but to be able to jump right in like that is impressive.

If you had the big crane reserved for other jobs, then do everything you can with it before it gets dark! Smarter way to go.

 

[Lumberjack]

Those were my first crane jobs, but like I said in hindsight I coulda done it with about half the crane time, it took 2 days, 4 locations, 4 trees.

I started on the pecan to get a feel for craning, got up the tree and as I said in that thread nearly blew chunks. Got moving too fast, I stopped, sucked in some gatorade, and broke an AV mount bolt by the carb in the 044. GRRR, although it was still usable, it was obviously "loose".

Get to the next tree, the red oak, and I waste time getting the crane guys to setup where they were suppose too instead of saying get the crane here now, and me getting up the tree. Go Box (the rolloffs) took some coaching as well, more wasted time (figure around 370 per hour, 6 bucks a minute, gabbing and coaching stuff already decided, I was planning on 600 per hour, 10 bucks a minute).

We spent an extra hour and a half on the third tree because Go Box was late. Oh, and the crane operators didnt listen to their boss whom I worked out all this in advance, and ran over a parking pad, turning it into 2 pads connected with gravel.

Third tree we have to wait for the thick pads to get there (hell I just realized I was charged for that!)to level the crane on the steeper incline. Not knowing how long that would take and getting another go box (3 40 yards, ended up using 2) I didnt head up the tree just yet. The thick pads get there they start leveling up, I start spiking up the tree, I get 5' and decide to rope climb it, much faster. Well I DONT have the big shot and the first limb is at 60' and best I remember the angles werent great for hitting the limbs. So I get the second or so limb up on that side, climb up, spend a good 30 miutes to get up to 100-110' or so to set the sling. Quite embarrassing really, having to advance limb to limb taking FOREVER. Note: They let me ride the ball on the third tree because the tree was a large spreading Y and it would have taking forever to set the slings at a tip tie to lift it away from the 150 year old house. I thought JK was going to let me ride up the pine, it was 130' tall for Christ's sake, the crane had just enough boom to get over the top of it, that woulda saved mondo time there! Lowering the ball through the top of the tree I wanted to be careful because the weight of the block could break off limbs. So we get it set and off it goes 10k lbs, half the cranes cap.

On all the jobs handling of the material on the ground was very poor, we needed 3 boxes on the 2nd tree and we had an extra on the 4th tree. The purpose of the crane wasnt to load brush into the box, yet thats what it ended up doing for 10 times what the highest paid groundy (abroad) would make in an hour.

Anywho, looking back, I coulda done alot better, but after all outside expenses I still made great money for the day as long as you dont count the time I spent laying it all out . Next time, I will be ready.