Skagit Iron and Steel Works, Sedro Wooley, Washington

[Contract Logger]

Do any of you yarder guru's have any information about the 444 Skagit swing yarder? Buddy Matt was bucking poles under one this fall and early winter and was telling me how powerfull and awesome the thing was. Of corse he didnt take any pictures, and this being the only yarder that wasnt a 98 Link Belt he'd ever been around, Im sure a team of horses rigged up to some drums would seem powerfull!
Thanks.

The Skagit 444 was designed as a loading shovel and there were 11 total built. All 11 were on Skagit-built early hydraulic track undercarriages. (These same hyd track undercarriages were also used under some Skagit T-90 towers in the early 1970's).

The first 444's were sold to Mayr Brothers (Hoquiam), Miller Shingle (Granite Falls), and Weyerhaeuser (Cosmopolis), Crown-Zellerbach (Seaside Oregon) to name a few. They were sold with a Skagit-built heel-boom (with grapple riser) that looked alot like the TL-6 Washington boom or an earlier Young heel boom (the wider ones).

Weyerhaeuser realized they worked well as a combo loader and short-distance yarder, so the last 3 were built with a straight yarding boom (around 40') and Weyerhaeuser bought 2 of them for thinning- one at Raymond and one at PeEll. I dont know where the 3rd one went or who bought it.

If you guys can find the Mayr Brothers book ('The Cinderella Tree' by Marzell Mayr) there is a great full-page picture of a brand new Skagit IJ90 /T-90 tower with the brand-new Skagit 444 loading under it. Both these machines were delivered new (to the Lake Quinalt area) the same day.

Naturally I have some good 444 pictures as well as the sales brochure and I'll scan and post these for you when I get the chance.

If anyone is interested, there is a Skagit 444 with heel boom for sale today in NW Washington State. PM me for details and pics. (He wants alot of $$$$ but its a REALLY nice machine!)

 

[isx525]

Mayr Brothers book ('The Cinderella Tree' by Marzell Mayr) Werner Mayr wrote that book !! gotta keep it accurate !!
brent

 

[Contract Logger]

Mayr Brothers book ('The Cinderella Tree' by Marzell Mayr) Werner Mayr wrote that book !! gotta keep it accurate !!
brent

You're right- I had the wrong brother. I am getting old and was up too late. Friends came over and we had a few coctails. THEN I looked at the HEF. Bad combo!

Don't drink and HEF. I looked everything else over and am surprised at my spelling- usually I can't spell but last night I managed it OK it looks like.

At any rate, I found a couple pictures last night of the ex-Mayr Skagit 444 that I took in Darrington when Finley Logging owned it in 2001. You can see the heel boom, drum arrangement, and hyd crawlers (D7 size pitch) clearly.

 

[JTL]

The Skagit 444 was designed as a loading shovel and there were 11 total built. All 11 were on Skagit-built early hydraulic track undercarriages. (These same hyd track undercarriages were also used under some Skagit T-90 towers in the early 1970's).

The first 444's were sold to Mayr Brothers (Hoquiam), Miller Shingle (Granite Falls), and Weyerhaeuser (Cosmopolis), Crown-Zellerbach (Seaside Oregon) to name a few. They were sold with a Skagit-built heel-boom (with grapple riser) that looked alot like the TL-6 Washington boom or an earlier Young heel boom (the wider ones).

Weyerhaeuser realized they worked well as a combo loader and short-distance yarder, so the last 3 were built with a straight yarding boom (around 40') and Weyerhaeuser bought 2 of them for thinning- one at Raymond and one at PeEll. I dont know where the 3rd one went or who bought it.

If you guys can find the Mayr Brothers book ('The Cinderella Tree' by Marzell Mayr) there is a great full-page picture of a brand new Skagit IJ90 /T-90 tower with the brand-new Skagit 444 loading under it. Both these machines were delivered new (to the Lake Quinalt area) the same day.

Naturally I have some good 444 pictures as well as the sales brochure and I'll scan and post these for you when I get the chance.

If anyone is interested, there is a Skagit 444 with heel boom for sale today in NW Washington State. PM me for details and pics. (He wants alot of $$$$ but its a REALLY nice machine!)

Thanks for the information. As always you are a wealth of knowledge! Matt and I were just talking about the 444. Now hes cutting under another 98 and was saying how slow it was compared to the 444.
The one in question is owned by Barham Logging out of Lewiston, Idaho. He dosent know to much of the history of it, but says its got a straight boom with a Maki style gantry on it. Also Barham has stuck a 500 horse Cummins and a 6 speed Allison in it.

 

[Contract Logger]

Oh- and another thing- when this machine was new it was yellow with back trim along with the IJ90 yarder it was with. The blue/white combo was an early 1980's re-paint. Skagit didnt switch their paint colors from yellow to blue/white until the mid-1970's.

 

[JTL]

I was typing while you were posting! He said your pictures look just like Barham's, execpt it need a boom and gantry with bigger drums.
Thanks for the pics!

 

[J&R_INC.]

Cl.

I caught you on the Skagit page. Is the photo on the Ross brochure circa1994 for the 3 swing yarders (155 says Bighorn on the side) mine? Do you have that brochure in color? Mine is black and white

 

[Contract Logger]

Thanks for the information. As always you are a wealth of knowledge! Matt and I were just talking about the 444. Now hes cutting under another 98 and was saying how slow it was compared to the 444.
The one in question is owned by Barham Logging out of Lewiston, Idaho. He dosent know to much of the history of it, but says its got a straight boom with a Maki style gantry on it. Also Barham has stuck a 500 horse Cummins and a 6 speed Allison in it.

I wonder if it's one of the original straight booms or an aftermarket boom? Also- if I remember right even the factory straight boom machines did not have a gantry. I may be wrong on that and will try to find an old pic of one (I know I have somewhere but......).

The original lines were small and the drums were narrow-- but this could easily have been re-worked. And 500 hp seems huge for a machine this size! I'll bet the rigging really flies. Skagits were always simple and could be supported in parts by any decent machine shop.

If your bud could come up with some pics they would be a cool addition to our Skagit information collection here!

 

[Contract Logger]

Yes, I do have it. And yes- it's you're machine in the cover! I'll scan it today to a pdf and email it to you. (Actually, I'll try. the pdf files have been to large to email for some reason lately and that brochure I think is 6 pages.)

Funny you should ask cause I just noticed that yesterday (before the coctails started).

 

[J&R_INC.]

We just delivered it yesterday for it's repower. I spent 3 weeks totally refurbishing the cab ( rewire,replumbing,paint,& insulation). It should be finished in about 3 weeks

 

[Contract Logger]

I was typing while you were posting! He said your pictures look just like Barham's, execpt it need a boom and gantry with bigger drums.
Thanks for the pics!

This picture was emailed to me at least 2 years ago by someone asking if I knew this machine. The boom and gantry are obviously aftermarket, and I wondered where this came from and which 444 it was....COULD THIS BE THE BARHAM MACHINE???

What a strange coincidence. He found the pic on the net and new nothing about it. I had never seen it before. It looks like a nice machine.

 

[JTL]

We just delivered it yesterday for it's repower. I spent 3 weeks totally refurbishing the cab ( rewire,replumbing,paint,& insulation). It should be finished in about 3 weeks

Is the repower to make it CARB compliant?

 

[Contract Logger]

We just delivered it yesterday for it's repower. I spent 3 weeks totally refurbishing the cab ( rewire,replumbing,paint,& insulation). It should be finished in about 3 weeks

Cool! I can't wait to see it! I'll post some quik-pics right now in the TB thread of the brochure for you!

 

[J&R_INC.]

Yes. It will be tier 3 compliant. We are putting an 11 liter QSM Cummins 300hp 1050ftlbs. The repower includes all cooling systems and a tranny rebuild. It was funded by a CARB grant

 

[JTL]

I just showed Matt the pic. (We are sitting here havin coffee and telling lies! Beer tonight!) He says Barham's machine has three guyline shieves on top of the gantry and it has a longer boom. It also dosent have the log gaurd in front of the cab. The guy line drums are mounted right on top of the counterweight. It also says Maki Built on the counterweight.
Now hes kicking himself for not getting any pictures of it. Hes going back to work under it this spring so we'll have to wait till then for his shots.
Thanks for the picture!

 

[Contract Logger]

I just showed Matt the pic. (We are sitting here havin coffee and telling lies! Beer tonight!) He says Barham's machine has three guyline shieves on top of the gantry and it has a longer boom. It also dosent have the log gaurd in front of the cab. The guy line drums are mounted right on top of the counterweight. It also says Maki Built on the counterweight.
Now hes kicking himself for not getting any pictures of it. Hes going back to work under it this spring so we'll have to wait till then for his shots.
Thanks for the picture!

Well then, there are at least 2 that have been converted! The emailed pic will stay in my 'mystery machine' category for now. Any information will be helpful. Funny how 11 small machines built in the later 60's can spark conversation in what will soon be 2011. I never thought the 444 was as big as an LS98 but maybe I'm wrong.....? We will have to do some research!

 

[furpo]

Sj7r

Here is a photo of the SJ7R driving over a bridge made from two old railway wagons. This was near the end of Waimakarari rd, Putararu, circa 97 - 98. The machine moved about 50m after this photo was taken. It sat there for about 10 years and has recently been cut up for scrap.

The machine was one of two brought downunder new buy KLC in 65 and 66. KLC sold them off in the late 70's. I don't know how owned this machine until it was pulled out of a forest behind Wairoa in the early 90's to be rebuilt.

Sad story

I also have photos of some RB22 cranes. Is there a thread for logging cranes?

 

[Kiwi Logger]

I remember seeing that machine parked in Patanamu Forest early 90s then it disappeared . It looked fairly tidy from memory back then.

 

[jcurtis4082]

Dear catdw21e ... ,

I was scrolling through here looking for BX 500 photos...maybe I can help.

I have connections to two BX 500's and a BX 2000.

In 1975-76 my father, brother and I operated a BX 500 in Fairbanks, AK in a grave pit off Peger Road. This machine had been owned by the Reddicop (sp) brothers out of Ketchikan and was bought by one of the owners of LTI and rigged on a wooden spar on Peger lake to drag gravel with a Sauerman bucket.

We took the machine over in '76 and pulled 200,000 yards of gravel out of that lake. We had purchased a square Berger tower and set it up. This was powered with a D 397 Cat that had a 6 cylinder Chrysler for the starting engine. We spooled 2200' of 1" haulback and 1200' of 1 5/8" main, though we seldom did. Gravel is quite different than logs. ;0 We spent an inordinate amount of time and money to make this work and needed a 'seed' machine for spare parts. This is where the other BX 500 came in. We purchased another machine from Ross in Chehalis and parted it out for the gears; mainly low on the main shaft. We also broke the main drive chain, a 12" wide Morse "Silent" chain, and had to have new sprockets hobbed to accept the newer Morse "Hy-Vo" (high velocity) chain as the "Silent" chain was not available and had apparently been special made by Morse for Skagit.

Dad had friends in Woolley at Skagit and was told that this machine was built for Deep River Logging. I believe it was SN 15.

In the winter of 1976 I was contracted to oversee the building of a Sauerman for a construction job in Anacortes, WA. This was to move bay dredgings and level them out. The base machine was a BX 2000. Mostly just like the BX 500 but with water cooled Wichita brakes. I powered this with a 16V71, Allison Transmission, 988 planetary unit for additional reduction and mounted it all on a 190D Northwest to be portable, similar to a dragline; but the cost of operation was much more than a dragline ... This machine was later put on the Toutle River after the eruption of Mt. St. Helens on an Army Corps of Engineers job. After this it was sold to some folks in Fairbanks Alaska and I believe that both machines are still there.

I punched this machine for many hours and worked on it for many more. One night, while in a particularly hard pull, I broke the main. I have operated cranes to 400 T, but the parting of that 1 5/8" line was one of the most memorable events in my life. The 16V was horse, but the D397 was a very different horse indeed. (;

I have some photos to scan that have recently been brought out.

Kind regards,

jcurtis4082

 

[Contract Logger]

I am currently in Juneau and Nate Reddecop has a bunch of pictures of this machine yarding both logs and gravel on the Mendenhall Valley near and under the Mendenhall Glacier. Nate is currently digging out pictures of all this, including the delivery of the machine to Juneau when it was purchased from Munn Logging out of Granite Falls apparently. Nate also tells me Mr Munn came up and helped them set the machine up. Nate was very young at the time but remembers everything vividly! Fortunately as well- he says many picture were taken and still exist!

It will be intreresting for sure- and the coincidental timing of all this is just crazy!