SPEC S IFICATION

TIGERCAT 635H 6 WHEEL SKIDDER – SPECIFICATIONS

ENGINE

Tigercat FPT N67 Non-certified 6.7 Litre, 6 cylinder

Peak power 212 kW (285 hp) @ 2,200 rpm (rated)

TRANSMISSION

Single-speed mechanical

Variable speed hydrostatic (2) Variable displacement motors.

HYDRAULICS

Main pumps Piston, load sensing (Machine functions)

Gear (Cooling)

Drive pump Piston, Load sensing.

TYRES

Front 35.5Lx32

Rear 30.5Lx32

Optional tyres for rear 780/50-28.5

AXLES old logs that it climbs over.

Tigercat OB17, outboard planetary, barrel differential +/- 15° oscillation. Independent diff lock.

Rear Tigercat WOB17 wide-spread bogie, outboard planetary, barrel differential. Independent diff lock.

Locking and unlocking the seat is also the easiest I have encountered with just the push of a button and hold it until you have swung round to where you want to be. Let go and it’s locked in position until you push it again.

Visibility has taken a step up as well. The 19% window area increase was

Hydraulic filtration speed 23kph

(4) Spin-on, 7 micron full flow.

Enclosed, oil cooled immediately noticeable when I climbed in the cab. Everything is big on this machine but it is really well proportioned so you can see where you need to go.

Enclosed, oil cooled spring applied, hydraulic release.

They have definitely made some neat changes to this model. The cab jack and quarter turn release locks make tilting the cab a lot quicker and easier. There’s a massive amount of lighting too, including a new pair right on the front edge of the bonnet overlooking the blade so the bonnet camera can show you what is going on under your nose. I think Phil summed it up well when he said a 4-wheel skidder will really struggle here in the Douglas, and with that monster 6-wheeler life will be easy. NZL

PROVEN COMPONENTRY WITH ISUZU ENGINE + KAWASAKI PUMPS

SUPPLYING NZ’S MOST PROVEN LOGGING ROPE

6 CONSTRUCTIONS TO SUIT APPLICATION

This photo essay by historian, Ron Cooke, has been extracted from his book Logging the Punga which he co-authored with Audrey Walker and the late Ken Anderson. The 390-page book covers a detailed history of the Manunui branch of the enterprising King Country sawmilling operation of Ellis & Burnand. Serving as a follow-up to Trevor Coker’s feature on ‘How Steam Haulers Opened up the Bush’ (NZ Logger, May 2018), the focus here is on some of their steam haulers not previously mentioned by Trevor Coker. All photos have been sourced from the Taumarunui & Districts Historical Society.

Photo 1

AS THE CLOUDS OF STEAM SHOW IN THIS 1911 VIEW BELOW, a lot of development had occurred in the seven years since JW Ellis, Harry Burnand and Henry Valder, along with Frank Moore of the Pungapunga Timber Company, had begun planning the building of their sawmills. Geo Gardner & Sons was now operating Moore’s mill, the first mill the lokey would arrive at when returning across the Punga bridge with a load of logs from the bush. Next was Ellis & Burnand’s sawmill with the new box factory partly constructed beside it. A fire had claimed the first factory some months before. The steam rising between the Mill and Box Factory pinpoints the “Woodpecker” lokey is on the job. Further back, the Ellis Veneer factory is nearing completion and Manunui School can be detected behind it. A locomotive on the Main Trunk Line is contributing to the dramatic scene and across the line farmers had been busy.

Photo 2

Some family members had joined the No 1 Foote hauler crew on the Kapakapanui Tram on 23 November 1910. Horses, held by a

Manunui rugby player by the look of his black and white striped jersey, had arrived with logs at the skids. The hauler was pulling logs from the same direction from which the horses had come and the comparative tidiness of the skid site suggests the hauler had only recently been set up here. The adzed logs beside the line, left over from bracing the hauler against the pull, made a convenient seat for the bowler-hatted visitor. Photographer, A W Bathgate, had regularly visited Manunui and at this time was in partnership with a Manunui-based photographer with the surname Morton. These may be some of the last photographs taken by the partnership, as a note in Harry Burnand’s diary two months later says the partnership was dissolved with Morton moving away.

Photo 3

Also taken on 23 November 1910 when the photographer had an extended tour, travelling up on the “Woodpecker” lokey (pictured) to points of interest. Each hauler was supported by a crew of 10 or 11 men and, at the Manunui School 75th Jubilee in 1982, Tom Rowlands, second from left, and George Bennett, fifth, were identified by Tom’s son. He also identified the location of this No.2 Foote hauler as being in the Whangapuroto Valley on the Hohotaka Block. One of the young men could well be Dave McCracken who worked in the Manunui bush with George, marrying his daughter Ellen in 1911. He later managed Ellis & Burnand’s Waimiha mills before taking over at Ongarue in 1938 and managing that operation for 19 years. Jack Williamson related that Bob Taylor, the bush boss, would come up each month and say it cost one shilling and tuppence, or one and three to get the logs to the mill. “What have you been doing?” he would ask and invariably got a typical answer like: “In a rough corner you know!” Jack found if it went over one and three you got stirred up then quipped, “With five pence royalty there was not much to play with.”

Photo 4

It has been very difficult to identify specific manufacturers of steam haulers because, in a number of cases, the business end looks very similar. They all have a winch drum for the main hauler cable, while below can be seen the tail rope drum which drags the main rope out to the log. They all have large spur wheels and small pinions to gear down the speed and pulling power to both drums. The moving parts facing the outside is where the differences are found. The big, heavy casting supporting the main rope drum has unique features as do the casings of two horizontal cylinders driving through connecting rods to crank discs. The name of the engineering firm is usually cast into the disc and, if lucky, can be easily read. This hauler has a horizontal boiler and is mounted on large, heavy skids. The caption given for this New Zealand Forest Service photo said it was a Vulcan hauler (made in Napier).

Photo 5

Easily recognised as the Cable hauler from its narrow drums, the identity of the crew is another matter. An attempt had been made to colourise this old image, hence the obscured top corners and uneven density. However, with careful photo editing, details of the scene can be made out as the 10 members of the crew oblige the photographer. The big hauler first operated a short way from the Three-Mile Junction after the Hohotaka main line branched away from the shared tram and this is probably the location of this photo. No specific mention of where else the hauler worked over the next seven years is recorded but it could have been kept busy in this vicinity harvesting both Whareokumu, Hohotaka and Crown timber that later became available. A candidate for the identity of the man on the right is Alf Henderson who arrived in Manunui about the same time as the Cable hauler was being set up and was later in charge of the hauler logging crew during 1908. However, Bill Hooks or bush boss Bob Taylor are also possibilities. The number of men on bush work had more than doubled to 22 by the time the hauler arrived in July 1907.

Photos 6 And 7

When Harry Burnand first saw the photo of William Cable & Co’s suggested hauler it was not at all what he had in mind for Manunui. He had imagined only a single shaft, not two. They needed to use a tail rope at Manunui and this hauler seemed to be designed for horses to take out the rope and for two logs to be hauled at once. “We need the tail rope to run out at speed but Cables has only one speed.”

He especially did not like the drums in line with each other as the potential for the ropes to foul was high. So Harry set to and made changes. The new customised hauler arrived in pieces at Manunui and these two photos were used in its reassembly. Cables wrote, “We are sending photos which will give you a good idea on how she goes together. You require to be careful as everything has been carefully adjusted and marked but there should be no trouble putting it together.”

Photo 8

The business end of the Washington (known as “Big Yank”) was impressive and “grunty”. It was the most powerful unit that Ellis & Burnand owned and while the technical specs are mentioned in the text, it is how the hauler was set up to retain control and to withstand its considerable pulling force when winching, that is worth explaining further. Graphically shown here are the two logs in front of the machine, called “toms” that butt up against a “deadman” being another log buried in a deep trench at right angles to the hauler to prevent the unit from moving forward. The man in charge of this monster was Boggs Matthews, pictured here appearing to show an air of superiority, but it was his respect for machinery and his skills from his earlier days of engineering that allowed him to get the best out of his machine. Experience counted too, as did the skills of his crew of three (sometimes four); a “breaker-out” who prepared the logs for hauling; a “ropey” who followed the log out from where it was felled and changed the wire rope over to different logging blocks when a change of pull direction was required; and the “whistleboy” who signalled the out-of-sight hauler driver on a thin whistle wire connected to the hauler’s boiler whistle – one toot to go ahead on the main rope; two toots to go ahead on the tail-rope; three toots to slacken off; four toots to stop pulling but to hold the weight; and five toots meant that somebody was dead.

Photo 10

Apart from its tidy and grunty appearance, this Washington hauler with its distinctive vertical boiler was actually brand new in this view and the second to be purchased by Ellis & Burnand. It was known as “Little Washington” being rated at 59.9hp. Its first boiler test was on 6 June 1921 and served the bulk of its life at Ongarue until it was shifted to Mangapehi in 1938. By the way, that’s hauler driver Jim Cameron on the right, also looking quite smart. Its history is fully covered by Ken Anderson in his book Sparse Timber Sawmillers but there are two reasons for including this particular photo with this coverage. The first is to graphically show readers how to identify the “Big Yank” from its little brother. It’s as simple as comparing the length of the smoke stack. And secondly, this is the only photo found that clearly shows most of the winch parts that can be seen and compared with identifying the parts shown on the railway wagons in Photo 11 over the page.

Photo 9

Ellis & Burnand experienced some “ups and downs” with their first attempt at aerial logging during the late 1920s but it was not as successful as hoped and did not last a year before being discontinued.

Photo 11

Ellis & Burnand’s “Martha” (the Price 16-wheeler), has brought across from the railway station a good number of wagons loaded with enough parts to put together a brand new Washington hauler for use on the Punga. The order from Washington Iron Works had been for two sets of logging winches but only one boiler. When Richard Stratford sent Ken Anderson this photo in 2004, Ken’s response was, “I wish I had never seen that photo you sent of the Washington haulers at Manunui! I will now have sleepless nights trying to figure out why they were both at Manunui at the same time.” With the information provided on the ordering of the haulers we can now surmise that these are the two sets of logging winches arriving on wagons in Manunui in 1917. Ken was right – there were never two complete Washington haulers intended for Manunui, the smaller logging winch being intended as an extra drum of rope for the “Big Yank” hauler. Whether this ever eventuated is unclear. It will be noticed “Martha” is not yet wearing her Burnand spark arrestor so prevalent in later photos. Richard Stratford’s sharp eyes could also see someone had scribbled her name in the dust on her tender. Martha herself had recently had new steel-tyred wheels installed and instructions to Prices had been to keep the old wheels handy as Ellis & Burnand intended to use some as a carriage for a heavy log hauler coming from America.

Photo 13

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Photo 12

Ellis & Burnand founder, Harry Burnand, is instantly recognisable and ready for action.

Photo 14

Smoko break for the bush gang at Whangaipeke when the Auckland Weekly News photographer paid a call in 1938. Len Cornish stands at the back with Fred Berg, fourth from the left, sitting in front of him. The other men are unidentified but hopefully their families will recognise them.

Photo 15

Here Jack Williamson has discovered one of the creative pieces of practical engineering used by bushmen to guide hauler ropes. It consisted of two tram bogies welded together face to face with the flanges to the outside to form a grooved roller. The unit was fixed vertically to a handy tree stump with the shaft running smoothly in well-lubricated dead-eye bearings. Jack said a big hole was cut in the stump to clear the drum.

Photo 16

All aboard for the trip home after a day of fun at Ngapuke. Harry Burnand took this photo of Pukuweka’s Climax 1203 and unfortunately with all his glass plate negatives no date is given. Despite this, these picnic trips up the valley were very much enjoyed by all and having a photo taken at the big pumice bluff was a tradition. Later, concern about children falling off the lokey or wagons put paid to this treat.

• To see other books of historical interest visit: www.rollbacktheyears.co.nz NZL

Rob and Nelson Bird of Tasmanian Native Timbers own a boutique familyowned sawmill and timber supply business based in the Northwest of Tasmania. With their Wood-Mizer sawmill, they turn logs into profits by producing lumber, slabs, and practically anything made for the love of wood. Start sawing your way to success. Call today!

Contact: Conrad Swart 0493 364 773