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Posted by David Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Monday, January 24, 2011 at 23:36:55 :
Suppose you wanted to build a small log cabin up on a hillside at a spot that was 400' above the road, and 1000' from it horizontally. It's a forested hillside, and building a road up to the site is too big of a project due to the amount of rock blasting that would be needed, and not having a very big dozer and not really wanting to tear the hell out of the hillside. Plus it would be kind of neat to have a little cabin up there that nobody could drive to.
Even though it's a "log cabin", there is a certain amount of materials that you really don't want to pack up there on your back like concrete for the footings, a certain amount of milled lumber for various parts, tin for the roof, window sashes, a wood stove, etc. You don't have a mule, and you don't know how to throw a diamond hitch anyway. So, how do you get a variety of shapes and sizes of heavy stuff up the hill?
I'm thinking there's probably a somewhat practical way to winch it up, but what's best? Skid it up on a something like a stone boat, which requires clearing a path of all rocks, brush and logs? Build some sort of aerial tramway like they used to use for mines? That seems like fun, but is probably way too elaborate. Try to do it like an old-time logging setting with a single spar tree?
The other part of the question is what to use for a winch. Presumably whatever it is can be mounted on skids and can skid itself up the hill like a small donkey engine. Once up, it could be turned around and tied to a stump. Whatever it is needs to hold 1000' of cable, which is quite a lot. Perhaps 1/4" or 3/8" cable would be strong enough for what I need to drag/lift, but 1000' is still a lot of it. A capstan winch would seem to be out of the question since it can only deal with rope, and that's a lot of rope to hand coil and uncoil each time.
I think the 1000 lb garwood winch off an M35, of which I have a spare, holds 250' of 1/2" rope, so it ought to hold 1000' of quarter inch rope, although that might not be strong enough. The other thing is I can probably get lots of 1/2" for free from the mines, but nothing smaller than that because the guys who work there snag it for their pickup winches. Still, a big PTO winch driven by a very geared-down small gas engine (5 hp or so), with the whole thing mounted on a skid that can clear most rock and bull its way through brush seems like a possible approach.
Anyway, I'm just sitting here on another rainy winter day in Wallace thinking about what might be next summer's fun project. I'd like to think a PW could just drive straight up the hill, but a 40% grade is too much hill even for a PW. Plus, this hill is basically a gulch in the spot where I'd need to go straight up.
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