Nicholson Manufacturing Company

Thomas W Nicholson

A rotating cutterhead projects forward from a tractor or other suitable vehicle and fells trees as the tractor is moved over land to be cleared. The tree-felling cutterhead rotates in a direction such that its leading face moves upward and then rearward to kick the butt of a felled or falling tree upward and then move it rearward onto an apron. The apron forms the bottom of a flared throat leading to a chipping cutterhead. An overhead live feed roll or a swinging feed rake positively feeds each tree rearward along the apron to the chipping cutterhead. Upright cutterheads may be carried at the sides of the flared throat to delimb a tree, or at least to crush the limbs inward, as the tree is moved rearward by the upper feed roll or rake.

Land clearing machine

Chain type log transports are located at the infeed and outfeed sides, respectively, of a rotary barking ring and are constructed to be positioned as close as possible to the barking ring to transport logs of minimum length through the barking ring. The transports include flights with centrally depressed portions, which flights are mounted by their tips on spaced conveyor chains so as to minimize the radius of the arcs traversed by the flights adjacent to opposite sides of the log-barking ring to enable the flights to be placed as close as possible to the log-barking ring. The radius of the arcuate flight paths is further minimized by the flights being tapered in cross section away from their log-cradling sides to avoid interference between adjacent flights as they turn through their arcuate paths adjacent to the opposite sides of the log-barking ring.

Growing community of inventors

Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Thomas W Nicholson