What is a Spar in logging?

What is a Spar in logging?

A spar tree is the tree used as the highest anchor point in a high lead cable logging setup. A “high climber” is the member of the logging crew who scales the tree, limbs it, and tops it.

What is a spar pole?

A spar is a pole of wood, metal or lightweight materials such as carbon fibre used in the rigging of a sailing vessel to carry or support its sail. These include yards, booms, and masts, which serve both to deploy sail and resist compressive and bending forces, as well as the bowsprit and spinnaker pole.

What is butt rigging?

Butt rigging is installed where the two lines join and the logs are hooked to the butt rigging with chokers. The procedure is to wind up the main line and the logs are pulled in, wind up the haulback and the butt rigging is pulled out for more logs or another ‘turn’.

What is Highlead yarding?

Highlead. The highlead method, where chokers are attached directly to the mainline, can provide no more than partial suspension of logs as a consequence of tower height and topography (Figure 4.2). The method has no lateral yarding capability79 beyond the length of the chokers.

How do loggers cut down trees?

Loggers use a chainsaw to cut down each tree and remove its top and branches. These pieces, called “slash,” are left in the forest to provide nutrients to the soil and protect the ground from the weight of a cable skidder, which drags the logs out of the forest to the landing.

What is a Hooktender in logging?

: a working foreman in charge of a crew yarding logs.

What is a load of logs called?

Turn—A load of logs.

Why do Loggers have whistles?

The whistle punk’s job was to sound a whistle (usually at the Steam donkey) as a signal to the yarder operator controlling the movement of logs. The choker setters attached steel cables (or chokers) to downed logs so they could be dragged into the landing by the yarder.

What do lumberjacks call themselves?

Other terms for the occupation include woodcutter, shanty boy and the colloquial term woodhick (Pennsylvania, US). A logger employed in driving logs down a river was known locally in northern North America as a river pig, catty-man, river hog, or river rat.

Can a spar tree be used for logging?

The use of spar trees in logging is now rare, having been replaced since the 1970s by portable towers, called yarders, which can be erected on logging sites and moved as needed. This technology-related article is a stub.

Why was the spar important to the early loggers?

A “high climber” is the member of the logging crew who scales the tree, limbs it, and tops it. Selecting a tree as a spar is a particularly important task, so the strength and importance of the spar came to hold symbolic meaning for early loggers of the West.

What does it mean to top a spar tree?

Spar (tree) Once a spar tree is selected, a climber would remove the tree’s limbs and top the tree (a logging term for cutting off the top of the tree). Block and tackle is then affixed to the tree and cabling is run. A “high climber” is the member of the logging crew who scales the tree, limbs it, and tops it.

What are the undercarriages of a logging tower?

Guyline drums are considered part of the tower and the guylines and raising or hoisting lines are generally provided with the tower. Undercarriages for steel towers are designed for efficiency in yarding but they also have to be designed to meet highway load limits and to traverse steep, narrow, winding logging roads.