LOG ARCH LOG ARCH

EQUIPMENT REVIEW
BY DAVE BOYT
T H E U LT I M A T E
LOG ARCH
There are dozens of forum threads about
home-built log arches, but one in particular
was so unique that I had to follow up on it.
B
uilding a 5-foot-tall arch out
of scrap iron is noteworthy,
but adding a fork truck loader
capable of lifting a 2,000-pound log
onto the deck ups the ante. This
innovative log arch is the creation
of Chris Euart and his son Jason,
both of Salisbury, North Carolina.
While the arch was being put
through its initial test run, Chris
posted the results of his work on
the sawmill section of
Arboristsite.com.
It is hard to imagine a better
team to design and build the log
arch. Chris is a full-time facilities
maintenance electrician at a plant
that makes corrugated boxes. Jason
is a forklift mechanic for Foodliner,
4 • Sawmill & Woodlot
a North Carolina grocery chain.
Together they own and operate a
TimberKing 1400 sawmill. The
project was a natural for the
father/son team. “My son is kind of
like me, a jack of all trades,” says
Chris. “I’ve done welding and fabricating since I was a teenager, and
Jason fell into my footsteps. We’ve
built a lot of stuff over the years.”
After looking at log arches on the
Internet, they just knew they could
build a better one out of the scrap
metal they had accumulated over
the years. “We just sat down and
started to talk about it and drew
some pictures,” recalled Jason.
“There was a lot of welding
involved, a lot of figuring and rig-
ging.” They cut stub axles from an
old Chevy pickup, and put in a pillow block bearing to support the
axles. “I had to do some machining
on the axles,” Chris explained,
“but I have a metal lathe, drill
press, and welder, so I was able to
do all that myself. We’ve probably
hauled over a ton on it. I figured
whatever you could haul on the
back of the truck, the arch could
handle.”
Since they were building from
scratch, they built the arch to handle the largest log they might
encounter. “It is sized bigger than
most of the ATV arches you see,”
says Chris. The arch itself is about
12 feet long. The top of the arch is
about 5 feet off the ground, and it
has an inverted “V” frame to hold
the front of the log. This makes it
possible for the 9,000-pound-capacity winch to lift up the entire log
off the ground. Although he has not
The cable forklift easily lifts
a ton to load logs onto the
mill. It takes about five
minutes to convert the log
arch to a forklift.
maxed out the size capacity of the
arch, he has used it to move some
pretty substantial logs. “I’m not
sure exactly what the capacity
would be,” Chris said. “I’ve hauled
24-inch-diameter by 24-foot-long
poplar logs, and it picked them up,
no problem. I’ve never stalled it.”
The arch dwarfs the 8-hp
Minneapolis Moline yard tractor.
Although it has enough power to
pull the arch, it lacks the bulk
necessary for the longer logs. “It
has picked up the tractor once or
twice and we had to stop and figure a different way to move it,”
said Chris.
To get the log to the arch, they
use the winch with 150 feet of
cable on it. Once the log is in place
under the arch, they move the
cable to a different pulley and
winch it off the ground. A separate
deep-cycle battery mounted to the
arch powers the winch. To keep it
A new addition to the arch
is a high-lift boom that the
Euarts used to lift steel Ibeams for the mill shed. In
this photo, they are moving
an entire deck. Jason says
he had to sit on the hood
of the tractor to keep it on
the ground.
July 2014 •
5
EQUIPMENT REVIEW
Chris Euart winches a log out of the woods. Once it is in position
under the arch, he will rig up the winch line to lift it into the arch
so it won’t drag on the ground when he moves it to the mill.
charged, they put a 45-amp alternator on the little MM tractor.
Chris says he usually keeps the
motor running while operating the
winch. “When I use the winch,
you can hear the motor drag down
when that alternator kicks in,” he
noted. Once the log has been lifted
into position, Chris puts chains
under the log and loosens the
winch so that he can move the log
without putting any pressure on
the winch.
forks. Jason found some forklift
forks that were being sold as scrap,
so we built a frame and mounted it
on rollers.” The 9,000-pound
winch lifts the forks through a set
of pulleys, and a second 2,500pound winch hooks to the fork
frame so they can tilt it. The forks
tilt from straight down to up 10 or
12 inches and lift to 4-1/2 feet off
the ground—just enough to get the
logs on the mill and set lumber on
trailers.
The Forks
From Arch to Forklift
If that were the end of the story, it
would be enough for most people,
but not for Chris and Jason. And
this is the innovation that really
got my attention. As Chris tells it,
“We needed a way to get the logs
up on the mill, and that’s when we
came up with the idea of using the
So far, the arch/forklift has done
everything Chris and Jason asked
of it. “I was moving a 20-foot oak
log yesterday, and the calculator
said it weighed around 1,200
6 • Sawmill & Woodlot
pounds,” Chris told me. “And I
was moving it with the little garden tractor.” Switching from arch
to forklift (or vice versa) is a five
minute job. Just pull a pin and
unhook two lifting cables. Then
unhook the cables for the tilt, and
it’s an arch.
Chris and Jason have put the
arch/forklift to other uses around
the mill yard. They built a boom to
lift a 20-foot I-beam and all the
trusses for the mill shed. Jason had
to sit on the hood of the little tractor to keep the I-beam from lifting
it off the ground. But they’re far
from finished with it. According to
Jason, the next project is an articulated, single-axle power unit to
hook to it on the arch in order to
have something a little more substantial to move it. “Maybe we’ll
use the rear axle of a truck and
power it hydraulically,” says Chris.
“We’ve got the stuff. We’ll put a
swivel seat on it so that we can use
it with the forklift going forward,
and use a hydraulic unit off a big
hydraulic drive zero turn
mower…” Dave Boyt has a BS degree in Forest
Management and an MS in Wood
Technology. He manages a tree farm
(2006 Missouri Tree Farm of the Year),
and operates a band saw sawmill.
Jason and Chris Euart show off their monster log arch.
They have moved logs weighing over a ton with the little
Minneapolis Moline lawn tractor.
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