The terrain that Sharples Logging encounters in Canterbury is particularly challenging with volcanic rock so hard that it snaps grousers off and will send a machine skating if you go over it in the same place more than once without a tether. 

With many Canterbury forests sharing a boundary with farms, there are also many more fences and edge trees to contend with than in larger plantations. 

It was with this in mind that Dave Sharples and his wife, Jill, eyed up John Deere’s new 959ML with factory fitted John Deere FL100 felling and shovelling head. With dual tilt rams and dual rotator motors on it, this felling head is surprisingly tough and gets busy tilting whole stems on angles we are not used to seeing.

When the Iron Test team arrived, regular John Deere 959ML operator, Carl Erceg, was busy gripping the heads of two big edge trees and pushing them up a ridge, while Sharples skidder operator, Royce Sheffield, had the butts in the grapple of the John Deere 848L skidder. 

It’s a beautiful thing to see two skilled operators working in concerted effort to make the job succeed, says Iron Test writer Tim Benseman.

To read more, get your copy of the August 2023 edition of NZ Logger magazine, on sale from 31 July. Check the link on this page to subscribe to either a printed or digital copy (or both).