Well, in the spirit of island logging, here I hope to put up some pictures and words showing how a small logging outfit gets on here on the British Isles, UK. In the south east of England, zillions of people live here, small roads, mostly small privately owned woodlands dotted about, often heavy clay where historically farming was difficult so was left or abandoned to the trees. This is our log yard where we billet up timber for drying, then re-saw it for sale as firewood to the local towns, villages. 1st picture is 2008 zero-tail Case loader (sumitomo 8t), service truck 2007 Land Rover 130, and a forest tractor Valtra 6550 with Botex roof mount loader, which is made here in the UK up in Dalbeatie, Scotland.
This is Jan 2016, the usual sort of job we see. Hardwood, natural regeneration from around the 2nd world war. 1st pic is actually not a bad piece of wood as it goes, 2nd pic is cutting a way in, 3rd pic is what passes for sawlogs if we are lucky to find a sawmill that wants odd hardwoods. There was a few cherry in that load, some ash, oak and I think a maple. Otherwise it is mostly firewood (4th pic).
Interesting, how long does your hardwood take to dry befoer it is good firewood your way? How large is your wood lot?
Hi Hank, if it's cut down before the sap rises in the spring, and billeted up before summer is too far along, the species like ash-birch-maple can be sold before winter. The log yard doesn't get much breeze, so we've ended up down this route because heaps of cut logs just turned into mushrooms. But it is labour intensive compared to the processors most folk use. In reality, it's good to have some stock and let it dry for a year, then we saw it up into boxes. This just makes deliveries smoother, even if it's raining or snowing, can tip some boxes and go.
The woodlot sizes round here vary from say a dozen up to a few hundred acres, the privately owned ones. The state owned forests can be larger, but nothing like the forest cover you have in north America. So we have to travel around every year, cutting a 1-5 acres out of lots of different blocks. Thinning can be good too, some of the plantation blocks are a better size and once we get on to the 3rd or 4th thin through a block, the trees are of a better size and we can make our tonnage a little easier as cutters. We've been lucky to get to do the thinning of a 75acre plantation locally, mostly beech, been doing the 3rd thin over the last 5years, then February 2017 we've started again at the beginning doing a 4th pass. Some of the logs should be sold as sawlogs really, but unfortunately for ecological reasons we aren't allowed in there during late summer when it'd be dry enough to get them up to the road, so... More firewood!
That's interesting. A few questions: 1. What's the gross vehicle weight rating on that landrover? (I want one.) 2. Doesn't that tractor and roof-mount loader get awful tippy with no outriggers? 3. How much are my royalties going to be for suggesting the title for this thread?
Hi Mitch, ha yes I was wondering if you would notice. Definitely this is all your fault, for sure! Lol Yes, Land Rovers are puzzles. Over here, they're about the only basic, strong, simple work trucks you could get that are 4x4 and have a useful payload. The truck itself is 3500kg plate, gross train 7000kg. When I bought this, it couldn't find any other 4x4 tipper with this kind of plating, without going to a much bigger (more expensive) vehicle. It weighs 2200kg, so I can just about put 3 cubic meters of dry logs and still sit in it, and still be legal. As long as it doesn't start raining... And now last year, they stopped making them.
And yes, roof mounts are horrible when the ground is anything other than level. Which it normally isn't in a wood. It has it's limitations on some jobs, but we can get round these sometimes if we've made sense of the job beforehand with the tracked loader, we can pile the logs on the uphill side of the access. In thinnings, sometimes have to park at odd angles to the log or drive up on a stump. But sometimes it's risky just driving it stowed, it just make your guts squirm a bit. Once you've lost the comfort of knowing what angle is too far, it can be difficult for a while, as when it starts to go you have to stop it quick. It has been over on it's side. But it advantages are it's quick, you can move along without raising legs.
A little odd thing is that some of these blocks of woods don't have an easy access, we quite often have to fill a ditch with logs first to get in and out. I suppose some of them were last logged by horses and men, perhaps? A couple pictures of the roof mount in young Scots pine thinning (for chipwood)
Your log trailer is that the common trailer that every one uses? Looks like it works well for you. I guess you get lots of rain and no snow. Kind of looks like your logging a in a park
Thanks for starting this thread. Its interesting to see how things are done and how the "rules" differ in different places. In post 4 in the first picture there is a log splitter working that is not like any I have seen. I see wood going up the conveyor and I see split wood on the rack. Not sure if the worker is putting wood in or what. Please expand on that splitter if you can. To stabilize that roof mounted loader perhaps you could pour a couple of concrete wheel weights into the tire for ballast. A couple hundred pounds or so in each wheel would make a huge difference. Is all wood forwarded from the stump or are pole skidders used in some cases?
Wow! How different logging operations are across the globe. Thanks for posting John. Ed
OIH, that's cutting small diameter splits into shorter lengths . "drum saw" or maybe "trommel saw"?
Thanks for the interest everyone. The trailers we use are quite common amongst similar contractors, though most are fitted with the crane on the drawbar. We like the tractor mounted because we can use the crane on other work, like winching logs up a bank one person and machine can do it all, or feeding a chipper or splitter. We'd like to get a drive trailer to help us in the wet, but they can't be towed fast between jobs, are expensive, and we simply aren't allowed to muddy up most of the jobs we go to. It feels like logging in a park, sometimes! The other route is a purpose built 8x8 forwarder, but they are just not affordable for this area unless you buy a high houred one and then they just break down. So we just get on with the cutting, make sense of the chaos with the tracked loader, and if it's too wet to get it to roadside without rutting we have to come back later. The grey trailer is a Botex brand, pretty simple thing but it can take having the occasional bigger log "manoeuvred" onto it, and it's narrow enough to get down the rows of trees. The green trailer is a Farma and has extending rear bunk which is great in short chipwood, can get 2 bunks, but creaks a bit when oak logs are rattling it.
OIH, Delmer has nailed it, the dusty green machine with conveyor is a drum saw, it's a 2006 Kretzer Rotomat built in Germany. It's quite of a beast to feed, but if you feed it quick enough it can have good output. Unless it jams!
Don't know how well these photos are coming out, they look a little blurry? I'm offgrid here, camped in a wood and these pics are off my year old phone. I'll try later using a laptop, see if they less grainy.
Don't see a lot of pole length skidding sadly. A few contractors have your grapple skidders, but across the country there aren't many. We'd love to get one, but I think we'd scare the owners and dog walkers if we showed up with a Tigercat bogie skidder. Perhaps we should... So we skid the occasional job of larger hardwood butts, especially if a hill is involved. And there's the situation with Poplar. Up to quite recently, a lot of hydrid poplar was planted around here, sometimes as a pure stand, sometimes mixed in with other species. there must have been a buoyant market for it as matchsticks or fruit packaging at one time. But then it became unwanted, and some of the larger pulp mills went bust so that market went. And it didn't stop growing, so now there are these poplars getting to quite large size, and nobody wants them so often they get larger until they start blowing over. Crazy that the mills don't use them, even as palletwood. So sometimes we have to drag these about, we might be on a job and get the "while you're here" request.
Photos look good here
Thanks Mitch. Good to know. I'll have to look into putting some clips on youtube, see if it's possible for a technophobe. Delmer, that red drum saw is a newer equivalent but it's a smaller model, bit less money but easier to change length etc. Ours is an earlier version, originally it had 6 holes in the drum which were not useful size, so couple years ago we bought a 5hole drum set, this has worked well. I think having that 5th hole makes them un-proportionally quicker, if you get into a good feeding pattern you never have to wait for a empty hole, and you can adjust the drum rotation speed so it is almost constantly sawing. That red 4hole machine would be a lot quicker if they adjusted there billet length to suit it, the little small offcut pieces they're producing mean they have to wait an extra revolution for an empty hole. I think I've been doing this too long, maybe!?
Glad to see another Brit on the site. Photos look great. Looks a nice setup you have. Although I got so fed up with Landrover’s I sold my last 130 (my 4th) about a year ago and bought Ford Ranger 3.2 auto. You wouldn’t believe the comfort! I don’t need much payload, just the 3.5t legal towing. Do you do all your felling, even the small thinings, by hand? Never seen a processor like that before. Looks pretty quick though, although I guess you have had to pre split a lot. Keep the photos coming. Graham
Nice pictures, they look fine, no need to upload new. Just curious on the hitch on the trailer behind the tractor. It has cylinders and a extra pivot point in addition to the hitch pin. I'm assuming its a cab controlled just for tighter turning radius? I do like seeing how they do things elsewhere, most of the equipment used in europe seems more compact than what we use here. Old narrow roads and tight working quarters. For instance - there are hardly any cab over tractor trailer trucks in use in the US, but that's all I see in most pictures from europe. I'm sure you need the shorter turning radius there. I'm in the crane game, and I see lots of pictures of "city" cranes, and the speirings portable AT tower cranes in europe, neither of which are a US thing (there's a few here, but only special application).
Graham you are not wrong, Land rovers are a lot of maintenance, they're both loved for their simple build and permanent 4wd running gear, can work on them yourself, good parts availability; disliked for rattling and shaking themselves to bits, need regular throw of parts at to keep ahead of wear. Poor fuel economy. But that 7t plate... The pick ups now have got the 3.5t towing, but sadly not the 1.25t payload on top of the tipper. Come on Toyota, Isuzu, Ford etc! You have to expect some of this with land rovers, hey.
As for cutting, yes we are still on chainsaws. This is a constant debate amongst us. The small thinnings are not economical, there aren't enough in the area to spend on a dedicated thinning harvester, so with some woods the owner pays to have it "cut to waste" as the least cost way of improving the stand. Or if they have a chip boiler right there, we do it day rate and put the wood right in their yard without having road haulage on top, so it just about works financially. Or more often it's been left, as a lot of woodland owners can't see any gain in paying for this early thin so there is a lot of unthinned about. So then we may go and do a late thin where the value of the wood at roadside covers the cost of the work, but sadly the crop remaining isn't always of great form with this late-thin method. This was a late thin in Scots pine.
Crane op, that extra joint we call a "steering drawbar", yes it's definitely a help when turning between trees on a curve going forward, the trailer wheels follow the tractors (or even a different curve if trying to stay out of a soft wheelmark). But where they are even more useful is in a lot of our work, the route through the remaining trees or large stumps is set up like a herringbone pattern (as best as we can in natural regen) and we have to back up a lot of these lines empty, maybe up the slope all the way to the back of that strip, then pick up logs on the way out/down. And that steering drawbar allows us to do this with the tractor negotiating its own direction while the trailer steers it's own course without needing help from the tractor. It comes down to a lack of land space, otherwise we'd just cut out a few more trees at the end to allow us to swing it all around and head back. Sometimes when we're tired we just do that anyway! oh, the seat in these Valtra forestry tractors turn around backwards so we can face the trailer when we're loading.
Love the thread, learned a lot, can't believe you didn't think this was interesting enough to start it, thanks mitch! Keep it coming, thanks for sharing.
Thanks JPV, Mitch took a gamble there. Yes, pretty much all our trucks here have the engine jammed under the cab. The old roads and a lot of the access to places is very tight for space. I only know of one haulage company locally that run a Scania V8 with the engine out front, Matt Gregory Transport, he has a lowloader behind it. Other than that, see maybe one a year on the roads. They all like this. Well, this ones a log truck so it's twin drive axles, and not too much plastic round the front. A lot of the road haulage trucks have spoilers, trim, a lot of airfoils. And most are single axle drive with a liftable tag axle. Those ones turn right under themselves. This is Roy Peckhams truck moving Corsican pine earlier this year. Fairly heavy wood, doesn't look like much of a load but he's right up to road legal weight 25t payload.
While I remember it, OIH mentioned ballast on tippy roof mounts. We have some iron on the wheels, and on the front. It could use more. But- it's a trade off, because the more load we put on the wheels, the more we cut in. Sinking into the mud on one side is as much of a problem as the tippyness. Dry ground, we can raise the tyre pressures to 32psi, more stable. In the wet soggy stuff, we lower them to 28psi on the rears, they're 12ply cross ply forest spec tyres. They're under a lot of load on one corner when you swing something heavy round on one wheel. Years ago when I started, I water ballasted a couple of machines. This was excellent, got the ballast down on the ground, didn't need as much pressure in the tyre to carry it. Trouble was it wallowed about going down the road at any speed, and the first puncture made us realise the down sides. Then we had to put a lot of anti freeze in to stop it freezing solid, which we lost half of on the 2nd puncture. It made it highly unstable if you tried to carry on for the rest of the day. The 3rd time the tyre came off we put new dry tubes in and have never done it since. Perhaps we should of got some kind of pump and a barrel handy to try and salvage it but at the time I think we just gave up. It was very effective ballast though. Edit. We took the wheel off the other day to do some maintenance, we have a little oil leak somewhere on top of the transmission, can't see anything in there, no space to do anything. Is this forestry? Seems to be an integral part of it, fixing oily things!
If you ever wanted to try low cost mechanical harvesting the Menzi dealer I use, Exc@v8, hires Intermercator Tiger cut for very little money. Just suit your Case. Looking at the videos some guys are cutting 1000 trees a day with the bigger ones. If you are ever interested pm and I’ll introduce you to the boss. He’s from a timber background. Graham
The Isuzu D-max is starting to come close - 1200kg in pickup on a 4x4 truck cab. Graham
Graham, I've seen their stuff at APF forestry show but never contacted them. We have discussed getting a shear head, usually just after doing a job that could've used one, with nothing coming up that needs it. Why we don't is, the falling of these small trees doesn't take us long with a saw, and if we are saving the stem we then knock the limbs off and cut it to lengths. The shear won't help with the delimbing. If we're cutting to waste we just walk through in a gang hacking down the worst of it, we also prune any side branches of the best while we're at it (if asked to do so). It might help get hairy pines down out of the others. We should probably get one and see if it's useful. (and a grapple skidder and processor) A small thinning head might be more the thing, I called and got a quote on having one fitted and computer. About £45,000 + the tax, haulage to and from Scotland of the Case machine. A shear would be useful to trim the fuzzy stuff out of a typical job like in this before and after pics. Then we can see the trees we're felling!
I think I pm'd you graham, I'm not sure.
Thought I'd put these up to show what it looks like after felling. Picture 1 is same view as the fuzzy picture above, then 2 & 3 the machine has made sense of it all and also here a lot of the brash (tops) have been used round the perimeter to make a wall to try keep the deer browsing down on the regrowth for a couple of years, it works well sometimes but is a tedious job to do effectively.
A shear to fit the Case would be £3850 plus VAT. Bit of difference. Won’t do the sort of processing a £45,000 head will, but it will put them on the ground probably quicker as less fiddly and a lot less to go wrong. I’m only mentioning it as I was in their unit recently picking up one of my walkers and looking at attachments. The Tigercut seem to have pretty good write ups. Graham
Good stuff! Seems like logging over there is done on a much smaller scale than here. Some outfits here in Western Canada cut over 500,000 cubic meters a year. How much does a typical logging outfit over there cut per year?
Looking good. In US agriulture we use calcium chloride (used with cement for below freezing conditions) to prevent freezing in the ballast. It is corrosive and stings painfully if on the skin. "Rim guard" a sugar beet by product is taking over. Some claim it helps stop thorns from causing leaks. How vulnerable is your firewood business to environmental banning wood stoves and fireplaces?
Really enjoying the thread and the pics John, keep them coming. Love seeing how other folks do the same job around the world.
That split wood processor is different for sure. It looks like the person feeding it can dress light on a cold day keeping that one humming along. Is that leaning tree you are pulling out a hy-bred popular? It does not look like ours at all. They are almost white here and only get to about 40 ft tall and 16" maximum diameter before they fall over. Maybe 25 years life span at the most. They were expected to be cut about every ten years or when 6" diameter with a combine type total tree chipper for pulpwood chips. It never worked out. The stuff they harvested with tried and true methods had to much percentage of bark for use to make decent paper so the combine phase never made it past the dream to my knowledge. There is hardly any standing anywhere anymore.
Just a thought. They tried installing hot saws and processor heads on excavator booms around this area. They all failed as the processor and hot saw booms are designed for opposite direction stress. Just something to consider if you are looking at modifying your machine. Or maybe its built for them already?
Great thread!!! Love the pictures Keep em coming. Like OIH I was curious how you split the lengths of timber... not by hand I would think.
This is interesting! Keep them coming.
It's Monday morning and I'm just about to step out into the dark wetness that is the woods this time of year, but I thought I should say something quickly. There are forestry contractors at different "steps" in the UK, and we're on our step which is work and stay as local as possible, don't go bust trying to buy equipment beyond what jobs are available for it. I would say we're held back by the lack of larger contracts locally, and our unwillingness to commute for hours in dense traffic The next step, there are even in this area (SE England) contractors with one purpose built harvester, one 8x8 forwarder. I don't recall ever seeing one being lowbedded around in this area but occasionally we see or hear of a wood where one has been. Then in the South of England there are companies with more than 1 pair of machines, a pair may cut 20,000 m3 a year? Then up in midlands, north England, wales, Scotland, the people thin out gradually as you go north and there's more room to grow trees; some of these companies have machinery line ups of 100 machines. I guess they will be cutting 500,000m3, they must be. But I read that the competition now to keep these machines in work is driving prices way down. Also, often the drivers live out of a caravan (trailer home?) quite often completely on their own, as the harvester runs ahead of the forwarder often. So, our mob down here, I guess we like chainsaws, and seeing our young families, so we are perhaps held back a bit on how far we can develop the business, but we're not lonely! Sometimes when we're cutting rubbish for days on end and getting nowhere on tonnage, we're tempted to up sticks and head to where there's more trees to go at. There's a guy nearing retirement working in the SE like us but a couple of hrs north, I hear he's finally bought a new harvester and a new forwarder and he drives them both himself. Apparently he averages 1000t a month doing it this way, driving both. And that's about what a handcutting mob like us can realistically hope to attain, working in the kind of woods we do. And now, I must go and sharpen my saw, and shiver for a while til we warm up! Cheers all.
Keeping it small and local is a good way to go if you can make a living. Volume can be all ego, making a sustainable living for the long term is what it is about. I think some people are going down the machine route because they are getting too old to be out with a chainsaw all day (looks way to much like hard work to me!) and more importantly they just can’t find good, reliable guys to employ. Round by us a father and son have spent months living in an old caravan whilst harvesting from the local estate. Not much of a life and from what I hear you are right about the prices being pushed down by too many people buying high performance machines on big loans which they need to keep up the monthly payments on. Graham
Graham, that's exactly it. The points you make sum it up for us; we're getting older, and much as we'd like to carry on as before, the body gets worn same as everything. We're ok for now, but mechanizing further seems to be something we'll have to look at. It's hard for many types of business to find good people that are right for the role, and finding productive chainsaw cutters is not easy, and takes a lot of training so is depressing when they pack it in after starting to get there and go off to a completely different type of work! Personally I like living on the job as it were, I've maybe 15 years now in a caravan (with log burner, and lately my young family). What I found difficult was the time before this when i was still single, living and working alone for long periods, operating a machine all day alone and then spend the evening talking to myself as well! Funnily enough, that was back when i had machine payments!
Farmwrench, I recall that salt was an option for the ballast, and calcium chloride too. I guess I was worried about the corrosion, plus the puncture issue. How do you find road travel with the water ballast? The talks of bans in log burning is a concern, I'm sure it will have some effect on supply and demand. Depends how far they take it. Ultimately it could cause roadside prices to fall, which would probably not help much.
Been having a look for pictures of the hydraulic splitters we use, i have some saved somewhere. Could only find these so far. This thing is a Binderberger Gigant 30 , made in Germany I think, or Austria perhaps. Anyway it's got 30tonne ram force, 2 speed action, 1.25m bed length, hydraulic adjustable height knife with different bolt on wings. This is what we use for the bulk of the splitting we do, we crane feed a grabfull of 1.1m logs onto it's side cradle (which can be raised and lowered hydraulically, it's raised right up in pics), have someone on splitter running that, someone off the back stacking the billets into bundler frames, someone chainsawing/helping stack, and someone running grab and doing the strapping of bundles. 4 people make it a smooth job, and in good straight wood it works well. I must have some better pictures of us all at it. That log sitting on it ready to split is a piece of that same type of poplar. I understand that a lot of the hybrid poplar planted in the 50's, 60's & 70's was a hybrid of Italian black poplar (Lombardy) x British black poplar and called "Robusta". It has fissured bark and grows to large size quickly.
And the we use this upright, or vertical, style of splitter to take care of the difficult to split stuff, or the various rings (short sections cut out when producing the 1.1m lengths) and knuckles, that have to be dealt with at some time. It's a Posch 20 splitmaster, 20 tonne 2 speed made in Austria. These pictures, 2 of us are scraping up the bottom of an old pile of oak, basically trying to find straight 1.1m pieces in some bent stuff we've been avoiding for about 5 years... This splitter lets you see where the knife is starting, which is a help in knotty old logs.
OIH, about putting felling heads on excavator, yes it's a concern that it might not hold up too well. I've heard that bushes and pins suffer, slew motor, cracks at base of boom. Even if used "gently", at some point it'll be pushed to it's limit, happens already with the grab on it. It's held up well on the grab so far, but after a long day of work you can feel the looseness starting in it's joints. This Case is not very strong in it's slew motor, which would be frustrating if trying to fell or process a tree using side pull, but may help the booms longevity perhaps? Also, oil flow is a limiting factor. Probably restricting us to a shear head or a stroke head. Went to the APF forestry show here in 2016 with the intent to find some kind of head that would suit us. Pic 1 was nice little hot saw, pic 2 might be the Tigercut Graham was referring to, pic 3 a Bracke C16.C which look good but need high oil flow. None of these delimb. Pic4 the very popular track-feed Keto 150, would suit us well actually but again, not enough oil flow.
There was a baffling choice available. There were many more, but the one that really interested me was the Picture 1, a westtech tree shear with rotator and accumulator arms. I had a good talk to the demonstrator, he showed me how it could sort and load, but both of us were not content with the speed of its rotator. It was like the hr hand on a clock. They'd not got to the bottom of why it was so slow on a new Hitachi, and were talking about spending more on a different pump section, so I started to have doubts. The price tag was something like £20,000 plus all the extra tax, transport, fitting etc, so not a insignificant amount. So I bought a new box rotator and a load of new log boxes instead. (far too sensible).
None of these heads would help on this kind of job. Cutting strips through hardwoods, some snarly oaks. My friend and colleague Guy Jones loading and unloading his trailer using a Merlo P34-7 loader.
Pretty rough trees, but oak is always in demand.
A very small dry sort!
Thanks for all the information with the pictures very interesting Thanks again.
Does anyone over there make a bell style felling head? One of those sized for a 75 would do thinning up to around 16" no problem, bigger if you do multiple cuts.
John, the more you post the more interesting it gets...... Thanks. Ed
Good pictures. what other people do in a totally different field is always interesting. That looks the sort of thing they had for hire.
I had a look for Bell felling heads, but could only come up with Waratah heads fitted onto Bell excavators (which looked like re-badged Leihberr). Do you have more info on the head style you mention? Stroke head or rollers?
Glad they're interesting ( the pics) I will have a look for some more good ones later. Just taken my 5year old daughter swimming lesson right in the middle of fixing a saw, so now need to go finish up!
It's only a felling head, so no processing to speak of. Ryan's doesn't have anything on their website atm as i think they are almost done updating their felling heads. If i remember correctly they recommend the DS20 for 15,000 pound and up excavators. This style of head works great in log length hardwood. Excavator fells, tops and bunches logs and a skidder drags the logs out to be merchandised. Depending on how accurate you need to be, cutting to length in woods might require somebody going around with a tape and marking paint. Here is a video of a DS20 on a bobcat in what looks to be pine plantation.
Yes, I think we need to get something like that. Seeing that thing working in the video, my shoulders started to relax and I began to smile. I don't know why we don't bunch trees and skid out. Perhaps fear of damaging the precious ground flora. Skidding would likely help the natural regeneration. I know it does get sickly muddy sometime early in our winter felling season and stays that way until spring. How do you cope with sticky mud elsewhere when skidding? We often cut the limbs off at stump and arrange this brash as a mat along the route we're extracting down so we can drive the forwarder on it. I've got photos on computer, I will hunt them down.
I've just remembered that Westtech here make something similar to that DS20, and that a biomass/chipping company local to me bought one but they were having difficulties with it when I last spoke, the bar was jamming half way through the cut for some reason. I think they were using it to dismantle trees in sections, so it was quite tricky when it jammed to do a lot about it. I shall call them up and find out what happened in the end.
Looking for pictures, I notice how dry a year we've had. We hardly left a mark on the ground. Picture 1 we thinned a oak plantation that's about a third of the way along it's life, actually looked quite hopeful when we'd done. Pic 2&3 a nearby wood, was oak and mixed conifer plantation with some failed areas where sycamore had self set (do you call this plane tree?). A lot of dog walkers through here, most had good things to say about our being there thinning, but one lady had a right go at me about how we'd ruined the wood etc and should be ashamed of ourselves. Didn't help that the bluebells were coming up at the time. Ho hum.
There is always the crazy ones John. I bet the woman that had a go at you went home and wiped her butt with toilet paper.
Bet she didn't own the property either. I've seen the same thing here before also. Someone walks a trail through someone else's land and thinks they have the right to decide on how the land is used. Keep the photos rolling.
I am a hobby logger at best, so for wet areas I just wait for it to dry out or freeze up. The mechanized guys build corduroy roads out of the the tops like you are talking about. The guys that still hand cut, which is basically everyone in my area just puts big tires on their cable skidder when it gets wet. Had to look up plane trees. I've only ever heard them called sycamores, but apparently someone calls them american planetrees. Those bluebells look pretty in that opened up stand. One of the guys I've been trying to get on here put out a video today of bucking logs with his excavator and grapple saw. Normally he follows around a rubber tired feller-buncher or hand cutter topping and bunching, but this is a small setting so hes doing the merchandising too. He acts a little goofy in videos, but he's a sharp dude.
Hvy 1ton, you know Logger Wade? That's great! I've seen a few of his youtube videos, real good stuff. I have to get something with a bigger screen to watch it on, could learn a lot more if could see it. That yellow frame, is it maybe 2 ft graduations, in one of his videos he lifted a "hydragate" right up and upside down so you could see it all. I didn't quite get to the end of this video yet as I'm going to be late for work if not careful!
Well, this week we're on a hardwood clearfell, haven't moved the machines in yet but I thought I'd post some pics of the funny angles these things are growing at. They are all leaning different ways, fairly weighty cherry, ash, chestnut. With trees like this there will always be jobs for hand fallers!
We're doing the job for a timber buyer friend who has a fairly serious hardwood firewood collection.
In between the rows is this JCB 812 fitted with grab and rotator. Nice old machine. It used to have a harvesting head fitted years ago, hence the rugged front guard over the window.
We're using this Hitachi 135 tomorrow to drag a few trees about. It's paint is faded but it's a tidy machine. Indestructible grab.
Plenty of good firewood there by the looks of things. Graham
Yes, he has his fingers crossed for a miserably chilly winter!
It looks like you will have your hands full dragging those tree tops out of the other trees just to get them on the ground. I've heard plenty of complaints about damage to the trees left behind in commercial pre-thinning around here. Do you have the same issue with the land owners when you do the thinning?
I think I've told this story before here but it's a good one so I'll tell it again. Friend of mine who is a homebuilder bought an old lot in an established subdivision in a stuffy part of town. On clearing day the neighbor directly behind the lot comes out raising hell about taking the trees down. She commences to tell my friend how she has looked at those trees for years and he can't take them down. He proceeds to tell her he bought the lot, has a permit and he's not only going to take the trees down but build a house. The woman screams from her back deck - "I'm going to sue you". In which my friend replied - "Get in line behind my ex-wife!". That come back ranks in the top 10 of all time.
As for collateral damage to retained trees, they sometimes look more ragged than we'd hoped but we've not has any complaints really which surprises me actually. Though have occasionally had silly moan about the damage an edge tree has done when, something like this: Me: "I see you've marked that huge ugly thing, standing over that young oak there" Agent: "oh you can just fell it over that way, can't you." (it's huge leaning heavy side weighted giant that has no where to go in the canopy...) Me: "huh... It'll just smash everything you know" Agent: "no, it will go over there" (walking off) Next visit- Agent: (snottily) " I see you tore up that young oak right on the side of a track, tut tut tut" Me: Thinking "(don't say anything, stop dreaming of wringing a chickens neck)" We get a lot more of the kind of thing CM1995 mentioned!
Got some pictures yesterday just as sun was coming up, but then the tail of a storm passed by and it was blowing cold rain all day and had hands full so didn't get any more pics. Hopefully today a bit more sunny. The access to this wood is right next to a fairly busy road, the tractor was jackknifed so we didn't block it completely!
Here's some pics of warmer days. Back in July, t-shirt weather. Pic 1 is Guy Jones moving along a side-slope with his crane held uphill, pic 2 tying them together for the weekend, pic 3 making life easy for the forwarders, pic 4 the trailer we use for moving kit about, 20 tonne with 25' bed.
It's really too bad AGCO axed Valtra in NA. I don't know if you've found stumpjumper on youtube, but he has a DS28 on a 160. I should have thrown one of his videos in with the ryan's one.
More fun than a barrel of smiling monkeys! Stumpjumper has our mob summed up!
Been pushing these leaners away from retained trees, and "other obstacles". Chill wind there today, froze our grins on solid, but it didn't rain so we're grateful for that.
One corner had these new "other obstacles" to steer the trees away from, we're glad that it all went well and the wind wasn't against us. The straight tree on the right was marked to be retained, which I'm a little surprised by. Well within reach of those new houses...
Going to work happy, you can't beat it. I know it's a nice sunny day, but even then, there are so many people out there who are unhappy in their jobs. Looks like you have a good gang. Graham
Did you get any of this today yet Graham? Very picturesque but will be cold fingers tomorrow.
Lucky you, think of those log sales. No snow here. We had cold, rain and wind - worse today. Hope to get the wet over by Monday. Don't mind cold so much, but hate the wet. Much easier to keep warm, than keep dry. Graham
Snow pics are great. Does newer valtra still have the 3ph/pto useable or is the lower mount crane in the way?
I am surprized that you get snow, just never thought you did.
Snow is not something we get down south much, thought I'd snap a pic. We had 5-7" Friday and it's still on the ground.
Here in Southern BC we have 1 to 2" now should have a foot or more.
Yes, snow falls here (SE) occasionally on an average year, but rarely to any great depth. However, even the smallest amount causes chaos on our roads as millions of careless drivers don't have the skills to cope with it, so the traffic jam reports on the radio are the worst on days like today. We didn't go anywhere even though we have mud and snow tyres on our Pickup and can happily navigate through 4" of snow, but so often the roads are blocked by cars sliding around so we stayed put in the woods. Hvy 1ton, the pto and linkages are accessible on the Jake frame crane but you have to stretch and bang your head to connect hoses or electrics up!
Same here John. We just take a "snow day", stay home and enjoy it.
Well it's been a messy week or so, since the snow fell. Then as Graham predicted, got frantic with log sales as people realised it's Christmas in a few days and their log shed is bare. Was going well sawing straight into the truck, then filling boxes while the truck was off delivering. Until the dual mass flywheel decided it had done enough, good old land rover! So packed that one off on our low loader, and fielded a replacement to try and catch up with the 20 or so deliveries still lined up. Thought to myself, customers might not be too happy if I said "sorry, truck is broken, won't be fixed until 6th Jan, will be in touch."!?
Happier day in the sun, just before the clutch pedal started shaking to a new tune.
Seems like it's usually the inner wheel that goes flat...
And then the joystick went loose on the loader. Seems like an odd design to make a bracket with 4 holes but then only use half of them to bolt it to the valve. Egged the holes out, so bought a genuine new kit from Merlo which has the complete set of parts, ball joints, bolts, everything including the bracket, all for £150 or so. Have to be more gentle with it, hey.
Must confess that in my idle moments in the evenings this week gone by I've been watching Logger Wade on youtube, he sure puts some vidjas on, good fun!
Those standard size boxes and the rotator on the telehandler seem a very efficient system. Typical Landrover, let you down at the busiest time. Glad I don’t have mine any more. I don’t think £150 to fix the Merlo was too bad. Graham
I'm surprised you don't do any deliveries with the tractors. Are your deliveries too tight or too far?
That sure looks like a super slick wood setup thanks the the pics
Yes I was very happy with the Merlo joystick parts cost, it was about the best little kit I've ever seen, ball joints, all the little cap screws, rubber gaiter, the bottom plate, even rubber blanking gromet and a genuine cable tie for the gaiter. They thought of everything! Delivery wise, you'd have to see some of the lanes and roads round here and then the way other road users fly about, it seems like most of them are competing in a car rally competition. Just yesterday on a bend I had to get out off the way of 3 of them on a bend and got rubbed up against a brick wall with the lowloader following behind. The wall owner was actually very decent about it, I just left it parked there and went and knocked on his door. He even helped me to reverse out of his wall, stopping cars back round the bend! So we use the tractors to shift the odd load of roundwood to house owners that have their own splitter, but it's taking the tractors life in your hands it seems, plus the roads are bumpy potholed things a lot of the time, so even a rattily land rover is a smoother option! Here's a load with pretty red straps on, ready for the road.
This is better, I found a few more interesting pics on phone. After this I'm going to have to brave the noisy hard drive on old laptop which I'm dreading. We felt like proper Canadians on this job. Well, I did, the boys just smiled at me and carried on. Was nice to work on a sandy hill with the smell of pines, seatbelt on, nicer trees than we usually tangle with.
Working it out to the last little corner that was a slippery sandy bulge. Backed the trailers up empty on the exit side and loaded half loads with the tracked loader as it was all soft rabbit holes. Was ready with camera in case tractor rolled over, but it didn't so bit of an anti climax.
Even got to drag some down pole length, rather than slithering around on the bulge. Then diced them to length down by the ditch.
And then we didn't like the look of the side slope, so I got to be a roadbuilder for a couple hours! The forwarder man was happy afterwards.
How is the new year treating you @John Shipp
Hvy 1ton, on grand scale all is fine, thanks for asking mate. But been hard getting back to it after new year shutdown. Wife, kids & I went to Japan over new year to visit her family and friends, just got back and now everyone here has head/chest colds, fever, guess we picked something up on the long flight home!? So it's been messy, and back in the woods is dark, very grey, misty, muddy so we're joking but careful not to take a rope with us if we're on our own! No new pictures, and funny ish story, I dragged my old laptop in the hand luggage all the way over to Japan thinking I could find something interesting to post here while I was sitting around. But it turned out that my wife had previously removed a few files to make space for backing up more recent (kids) photos, she had said something about this, but I didn't realise she meant all my old stuff! So somewhere in a dusty draw is a memory stick I guess, but it made me smile that I took that thing all the way there to find out they were all gone. The sun must bust through sometime soon, and I will post something interesting when it next happens! Cheers amigos.
Ok, it's been a while, and I'm having a snow day today. Apparently it's 10 degrees colder here than at the north pole this morning, not sure how true that is but it's definitely chilly and looks set in for a few days.
Set off early on a sunday morning recently to avoid traffic, was so peaceful compared to weekdays. Been up to the usual felling for firewood with occasional sawlogs.
Quite often faced with a large leaner that we want to fell sideways to avoid trees growing under it. But particularly large oaks, they're often so immensely heavy with towering crowns that the hinge or holding wood fails early and they go where gravity sends them. So I saw ole Logger Wade showing a "triple hinge", I was a bit sceptical at first, but after a few more hinge failures I thought I'd give it a go. So these pictures show large crowned oak, and several hopefully retained young oaks beneath it. And the triple hinge worked. Shame you can't fell the same tree twice to see if it would have gone sideways anyway, but there was another large leaner we did next, using normal cuts, it failed as soon as it started to move...
Without the wheeled loader on the job, getting these lumps on strains the equipment. Managed to blow a hose.
Snow looks lovely, you can tell it's the first day of spring tomorrow. Been pretty cold here, sea froze in Bembridge, Isle of Wight, which is near us. No laying snow yet, but due tomorrow so they say. They have been doing a lot of felling near me, but leaving a lot of the bigger stuff as there a no local sawmills that can take it any more. Graham
Yes, it's a laugh Graham, firewood customers that have been saying "see you in the autumn" have been calling in a panic. It seems the mills have to work hard to market hardwood species other than oak and most of them have given up trying. The ones than are interested are far enough away that the transport is too much and it's simpler and more cost effective to put them into firewood. Luckily we can find a sawmill for some of our logs but would be good to see straight grained beech and poplar getting used round here. Also ash.
Don't you fellas have portable mills over there?
There are portable mills and we can pay money to saw them. Then we have to stack them properly and cover top. Then find buyers. It's the finding buyers bit that is tough part. It just sits there.
Portable mills round our way only seem to custom cut stuff to order. Guy with some woodland opposite our yard wanted a shed built, so timber was cut from that and cut on site, but have not seen people cutting on spec and trying to sell. We just don’t have that sort of market. Builders would rather buy structural wood from builders merchants and timber cladding is now mainly plastic fake wood. Graham
Wot Graham said ^
Thats a bugger. Here in Oz there are blokes with portable mills who are flat chat. One bloke I know has continually 3mths work ahead. Trees that aren't good for structural timber are usually cut for furniture which they get a better price for but don't sell as many cubic feet.
Here in Alabama we have a fairly robust forest industry from pulp/chips to southern yellow pine lumber but finding rough cut oak for trailer decking can be a challenge. The last rough cut oak we bought came from a specialty hardwood mill that deals mainly with peeler logs for plywood laminate, I guess they have some lesser grade oak to saw nominally.
I was in Savannah working a couple of years ago, and we had a day off to do laundry and tourist around. We were in "Somewhere" Alabama and we stopped to get gas, out behind the minimart was an old tin shed with the sound of a band saw emanating. My working partner and I both worked in the woods here in Washington in our younger life and we were naturally curious. Went back there and there were four old geezers taking turns drinking beer while the fifth one ran the saw, did the off bearing and everything else. They were running red oak, 12 and 14 ‘lengths. They all took turns working and they said they only did the work for beer money since the beer cooler was only about 100 feet away. We sat and spent some time visiting, drinking beer (very generous) and telling lies. We had a great time. They were cutting some pretty sizeable cants 4x 8s through 6x12s. Don’t know if the beer or age fogged my memory banks, but for the life of me “Somewhere Alabama” is all I remember.
Oak prices here have crept up a little as availability of standing oak sales is restricted and owners are expecting more for their 100+ yr old trees, which is fair enough. However, this seems to be regardless of how much care and attention the trees received, particularly early stem pruning, so even the roughest oaks have a heavy price tag attached...
I am looking forward to the day that we work to that method, it seems like a fun way to do it! We were all seriously tempted today, the rubbish we've been cutting. It's a job for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. They are a large charity that own a lot of woodland here. Some of their management techniques seem very wacky. We generally get to cut down a lot of rubbish on RSPB jobs, it's all under the guise of ecology or "Sites of Special Scientific Interest", but it's just poor forestry in reality. Somewhere Alabama sounds great!
An outfit here in Oz has started radial sawing logs. They claim they can use timber that normally wouldn't be used and that by radial sawing retains better strength in the timber so it can be used structurally therefor better prices.
Tones, any pictures? Radial sawing produces great boards, particularly in well behaved wood grain. We were surprised to find that radial cuts from internally stressed chestnut produced very strong curved banana boards that would've made great footbridge sides!
Products - Radial Timber Sales Reckon you blokes should give Kevin McLeod from Grand Designs a call, think you'd be snowed under but with a different colour
Interesting idea that Tones. Might spark off a whole new chapter. Hmmmn.
Been thinning a patch of hardwood and the bluebells are everywhere, plus some early purple orchids. Nice time of year.
That is a nice picture angle. Love the blue sky in the back ground also.
Looks a nice day out in the woods. Hopefully the dry weather is here to last. Seems like it was a very wet winter. Graham
It sure seemed grey for a long time! And then as usual spring arrives in a blast and nature just goes for it. It always seems to get mad busy as soon as spring bursts, trying to make use of the good conditions before you can't find logs in the greenery roaring up. Took picture of this Early Purple Orchid, but it's past it's best!
Been laying out brash mats in the wet spots, extra work but avoids problem of sinking below...
Good angle for the picture. We never could afford to take time to lay down on the job.
Ha, got me! Mind you, we Brits have to get up earlier than a lot of you guys. We've probably put in half a shift before you westerners have even made it out of bed!
Sounds about like a summer of hoot owl to me. I reckon you Brits get to go home early to.
Yep, that's true too. Apart from log truck drivers. They like to work early and finish late.
Summer of hoot owl! Not heard that phrase before, but I looked it up, good one. No, it was bad attempt at a G.M.T. joke, we English are famed for odd sense of humour.
For those that don't know the term Hoot Owl, here in the northwest when the weather gets dry in the summer and the humidity falls below a certain point, the woods are shut down for fire danger. That means all machinery is shut down and everyone goes home. To work around this the loggers go to work early in the morning and work till the humidity hits the stopping point. People might go to work at around 2:00 AM and be done working around 10:00 AM. That might be roughly the same time as the Brits are working?
Back when I was around logging in BC I seem to recall the first truck was always on the landing by like 2:00am. When spring breakup was approaching they'd start at like 10:00 or 11:00pm so the last truck would be out of the bush before the roads got too sloppy.
I see while searching that Buzz Martin did a song "hoot owling again", but I can't find it to listen to. On a different note & not for fire reasons, if there's no houses nearby during hot spells we get to the woods in the duskiness and start chainsaws up when it's light enough to see properly, go though to about 2pm. Makes a lot of difference to how much sweat we lose in the first few hours, we have to wear chainsaw protective trousers and boots, they're always black or mostly black and are awful punishment when it's hot and a clearfell. Sweat buckets. Some health and safety types keep making noise that chainsaw operators must wear full sleeved protective jackets in forestry felling. I tried one of these on at a show and it was the heaviest jacket I've ever seen, thick with the chainblocking material. So far, sense has prevailed and it has been shouted down with force by anyone with any sense, I think we'd die of overheating if we were pushed into those as well. Head gets pulsing bad enough on hot days as it is!
I recall one early morning when I was still living at home ( the family quarters were on one side of San Juan Bay and the Shop & Cookhouse were on the other side of San Juan Bay ) catching the "Crew Bus" from home to the "Marshaling Yard" on my first morning of "Early Shift" , Ollie Virtanen ( who always had a great sense humor ) got on the bus , and made the comment . Christ were getting up to go to work the same time some guy's are getting up to go home !
That's the song, but it comes up "this video is not available" when I click the arrow?
Camptramp, what time did you have to be at the marshalling yard for the early shift?
We've been working in a block of woods about 200 acres, it was used as a bomb hide for the nearby airfield during WWII. So there are concrete roads through a lot of it which is convenient. Trouble is punctures, I always seem to pick up a nail in a tyre when working here.
It’s amazing the amount of out of the way places you go and run into hidden WW2 stuff, still there, just over grown. I always like to see the bluebells. Amazing how long they must wait dormant when the canopy is thick, but as soon as the woodland is thinned out and sunlight can get through there they are again next spring. Graham
Hi Graham, I think that especially in woods a lot of it more or less IS forgotten, there are remains of small huts and sheds in this wood and they are flattened and disappearing through old age. Walls crumbled and fallen over, steel frames rusting away, and I think no one dares to touch them because they are almost monuments to a lot of people. The flowers will be a riot in there for the next couple of years, until the canopy closes it down a bit.
Went on a road trip to Jas P Wilson's yard in Dalbeattie, Scotland on Sunday. Their yard is always interesting, a wide range of forestry equipment sold there, also converting machines to forestry. They have 55-60 staff in the yard I believe.
Need a longer timber trailer some days.
Those are some biguns your dragging out there.
One of the guys I knew that ran a Garret skidder used to say that if the front wheels were touching the ground when you got to the landing you weren't making any money. Looks like they take that to heart in Britain
Wilson's weekly walk round
Ha, yes, there is truth in what he says. With these oaks overhanging so far, the trailer hitch is trying to lift the rear of the tractor, it can feel a little odd when bumping over tree roots in the ruts. The tyres don't look too happy, need bigger tyres on the longer trailer that we need...!
Along the lines of the skidder with the tires off the ground: I worked for a side rod who was always complaining about not enough wood in the turn. We were highleading and parted the 1-3/8 mainline twice in one week. That cooled of the "bigger is better" turns idea for a while. we were flying two 1-1/4 x 60 chokers at the time. I do like the look of those "tyres" in post 152. "If you aren't breaking things, you aren't getting things done."
Well, we got things done at this job, finally finished there today, but a few things broke towards the end. Clearing up the last of the oaks was a good thing, and moving out the decent hardwood logs went pretty easy.
Things degenerated the last couple of days while moving random length firewood that caused a couple broken cab lights while trying to weave a 7m bent log onto a load of ~4 -5m wood. Then one of the tyres decided it had done enough; got a puncture in the morning, tyre fitter patched it late afternoon but after one more load it was flat again. This second time was most frustrating as had just spent time gathering up and twiddling together a right crap load of wood that the locals wanted for their own firewood, and had to unload it again to block the wheel up and get out near the road.
Tyre co has nice van, I offered to buy it from them. 4x4 Mercedes sprinter.
Was about to set off to next wood (involving a stretch along the "A12" dual carriageway, a notoriously awful, busy road voted Britain's worst highway a few years ago...), noticed one of the tractors front wheels leaning inwards oddly. Lower kingpin bearing had given up. Thought it better to put it on the trailer and bring back to yard, rather than test my luck with it any further.
Summer solstice tomorrow! Gosh, time fly's. Been warm, started our next thinning job ok this week, but are one machine down still. Small breakdowns like repetitive punctures and bearings are nothing compared to some of the heavy equipment repairs you see on HEF, yet they still slow the jobs down til they're sorted out. This patch of Scots pine is typical in that there is no way in except fill the ditch in and climb up to the road.
This evening I got motivated and stayed out til dark to bash the axle until it separated into neat little groups of components
Not bad after a full, sweaty day of chopping down trees, tomorrow can order some bearings. Gonna have the rest of the day off now.
I've seen guys work in 2400sqf climate controlled shops who were complete pigs to work around. Kudos to you for how clean your work area is and the fact you even covered the motor working with a dirt floor. That's pretty impressive.
Yes, I'd like to do something about that dirt floor. If I'd known we'd be working from there for 8 years already,... There were a few sparks and some singeing going on, getting the old king pins and bearing race out.
LOL Love the pics got me smiling now!!! Really like the 3 'jaw' internal puller bits, will have to try that in the future.
I like your sense of humor John. If I make it back across the pond again we need to have a pint.
Definitely, trip to pub, anytime you are over!
Last time I was across the pond I wasn’t even close to old enough to set foot in a pub. When I was in Boy Scouts one of our high adventure trips was England and Scotland. Somehow or another I got separated from the group in London. Riding around in the cab from the hostel to wherever we went I had been watching what we passed by etc. I had enough money for a cab but at 12 years old I questioned how they might view that so I hoofed it back following the landmarks I had seen. When I got back one of the parents, Mrs. Lane, was sitting on the steps with a desperate look. Not unlike you’d picture when somebody is thinking “how do I tell his mother I lost him in a foreign country...?” She jumped up, ran down the stairs, hugged me and cried her eyes out. I was the youngest on the trip and they were all flabbergasted I found my way back and walked the entire way!!
With the traffic these days it's likely you'd be quicker on foot than by cab!
Seems that way in any large city. I’m sure things have changed a bit in going on 28 years! Sure seems like things have changed a lot all over the world since I was a young man. Most doesn’t seem like it’s been for the good. Makes me wonder what my grandfather thought about the changes he saw in his lifetime....
I can recall in particular a great uncle who talked about how things were changing for the worse, this was 40 years ago when he was an old man. And my grandmother once almost apologised to me once, we were looking at a map as i was interested in hearing about where she'd grown up. It was the same countryside that I'd grown up in, but half of the placenames she was describing she had known as fields and farms, whereas now it's all built on. She reckoned that in her life they may have had the best of it, with many modern improvements coming in, yet a lot of the quieter, old fashioned ways still the norm.
I can remember hearing my grandparents talk about all the changes and what they had seen change. Then my father would say the same thing. Now I am starting to resemble both of them, and most of the changes I have seen aren't for the good. Around here it's hard to find young people who want to work. If they show up they are much more interested in their cell phone than anything, other than how much am I going to pay them. Maybe it's my 69 years of age and working usually everyday that is bad.
The 1950's to the 1970's were probably the "Golden Era" for the Working People of our corner of the World . Better Safety , Working conditions , Pay and Benefits . Then major changes came . To me those were the "Good Old Day's" . I can't even imagine what our World will be like when the "Adolescent" of today grows to our age and looks back at this period of time as "The Good Old Day's .
I'm wondering if this has happened to me!
Their robots will love to hear all the "old" stories!
General questions about the UK - As there are small forests in that part of the UK, (hopefully I have not missed an answer earlier in this message thread) what are forest/ woodlot contractors likely to supplement their job or time share there job with? (apart from firewood) Do they do arborist work in towns? How much under canopy mulching is done in the UK? JCB - 325T forestmaster mulching Rhododrendons? Are there other forest machine converters other than this in the UK? Is Valtra - sort of the market leader in the UK for forestry tractors? https://www.caledonianforestryservices.co.uk/forestry-tractors-timber-trucks (Valtra Tractors, Kesla etc, I like the cabin crane on the back of the truck and the Case tractor, also running the processing head off the tractor crane.) What other machines are around to replace the Landrover with e.g Iveco http://pickupand4x4.co.uk/iveco-daily-4x4-review Felling heads A Matriarch rotatable (bar saw) felling head is likely to be 400lbs lighter than a Ryan's ds20 head, matriarch probably sourceable through bell equipment uk. http://matriarchequipment.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/MT50FH-Specification-Sheet.pdf (associated with bell(sa) so a history of doing the tree felling job) Firewood - make sure you educate your firewood customers (and council staff, enviro regulators etc)about the modern woodburners with reduced emissions (even if they are mega euro/ uk pound initial cost). So hopefully you maintain a customer base with compliant into the future woodburners.
Hi Plebeian, Your question about woodland contractors is quite hard to answer, as there are so many small woods and a lot of different set ups as to who does any work (or not a lot of work) in them. There are a lot of people with full time jobs who weekend warrior a wood in there spare time, farmers who do a bit in winter, gamekeepers who do their own thing,etc. For forestry contractors like us, we manage to stay just on forestry with the firewood as you say filling the gaps, by covering a wide area and going to a different wood every week or two typically. Arb work and landscaping is definitely a mainstay for a lot of companies doing some work in woods, also excavation contractors do some, small sawmill owners, and farmers sons etc. Mulching: undercanopy mulching does go on particularly for the woods where rhododendron is a problem, otherwise the cost restricts it's use for plantation cleanups or leveling scrubby areas which would help further management. It's more woodland-owning utility companies, charities, national forests, building developers etc that seem to be using mulchers the most. More in a minute,...
So from what I've seen, several times we've put in a price for understorey mulching and the customer has baulked at the price and it hasn't happened. Whereas the ulility arb guys, you see them driving around with mulchers and chewing up the veg where powerlines cut through woods, see that a lot.
There are maybe a dozen or so companies in UK, that I know of anyway, that convert machines for forestry. Maybe more now that I think of it. Jas P Wilson that we use for UK made Botex cranes and trailers etc, excavator conversions, also purpose built dealership. Caledonian Forestry that you mention, do nice tractor conversions with European cranes. Companies like AT Osbourne and Marshalls forestry do the occasional conversion. Forest Machine Services, A&B Services, G McArthur Forestry Services, Exc@8, RJ Fukes all do excavator conversions, A & B doing a lot of skyline winches. Apologies to any Uk company I've forgotten here! (edit- AC Price is another, also farm machinery dealers can supply forest equipment, eg Chippenham Farm Services) Valtra is definitely market leader for uk woods. It would seem that a lot of the farm use Valtras get a 2nd life in the woods too. You do see other brands being used in the woods, or for forwarding timber to roadside, particularly larger hp machines set up with the cabin cranes and pulling a 25 t load up a forest road for transfer to a truck. Probably the main reason is that valtra have rotating seat as standard, and option of full reverse driving controls. They are also good on clearance, they were designed with forests in mind.
Sunday morning in the wood yard
Those iveco 4x4 look like a good vehicle, though are heavier at 2.5t with same 3.5t gvw. So lost 300kg there, compared to the land rover. That article sums it up actually, there are only a few options at the moment. It's likely we shall overhaul the LR 130 some time soon, and keep it rattling for another 5 years.
That Matriarch MT50FH looks good, having a look for some more pictures of it
It's been very dry lately so it was good timing for some work we've been doing on the drainage of a neglected Cricket Bat Willow plantation. Edge trees that must have blown over 40 years ago and were left, have rooted in both sides and grown up again, filling the drainage channel with decent sized slugs of wood and roots.
Winching them over was straightforward enough, it took longer to cut them into pieces we could handle and drag them out. Lots of chain filing.
Been dusty and hot, so said to ourselves "right, strip down, flush engine properly, get rad recored". Seems only way to properly clean lower half of rad is to remove counterweight and lean hyd cooler over as far as can and remove the mouse-nest-like debris that builds up between the two. We were supposed to be burning the tops on the last job but conditions were to dry to be safe. With the amount of tinder stuffed between the rads we may not have much of a machine left if we'd had a burn up...
Resealed the cover plate on the Nabtesco final drive while waiting for radiator recore. Had an easier time getting the wire out of the groove than I'd anticipated, probably could have left track on as it turned out but did have better view this way. Was expecting a lot more struggle, this one was the wire in a groove similar to a internal circlip.
Upgraded the roof mount. A Valtra T191 reverse drive with Botex 570C. Lime green grab????
Good work on those willows. Did you all do the climbing or someone else? One the guys i worked with doing custom harvesting cut down some trees for the neighbor in May. We come home in September and there are green leaves on the trees. I asked if they were willow tress and he says, "Well, yeah." He didn't believe me that a few branches got stuck int he ground and started rooting. I went and cut a branch off and stuck in the ditch in front of the house as proof. Not a whole lot of real estate in the back of that 75.
Opportunities to spend money on wonderful things are pouring in at present, my sensible half (wife) says fixing this old truck might be too much at this moment... Nice old Scania though.
hvy 1ton, two slightly younger members of the crew did the topping, then us two older guys spiked back up later to attach the chokers. Some people are better than others at swinging saws around in trees or maybe they just like it more, I'm definitely developing Velcro patches somewhere as time goes by!
Hi John, Camptramp stopped in this morning and said your coming to Canada in a few weeks sure hope you have a great time visiting some of our logging shows.
Thanks Hank R, yes a few months ago we decided to buy tickets for plane, and come have a look. Been wanting to ever since came across this forum!
Did you make it home John? Or are you stuck on some logging road here on the Island?
Ray , John & his family are safely back home and hard at work catching up at work .
Thanks. Was wondering myself if John went home or stayed on the island. Ed
As the dry weather on the coast this Summer shut down the Woods just as John arrived , he didn't get to see or experience many of the things he came to see . I believe he will return in the not to distance future earlier in the year to avoid our "fire season" .
Hi Guys, sorry for being so quiet, uh... Been a bit manic since getting back. 075 I've been meaning to email you for a while, will do when get caught up. Unfortunately, didn't get stuck up a logging road, thought about it though! Got some pictures to put up on various threads too
I hope you took particular caution reassembling the cover plate. They have a steel button that sits in a recess in the centre so the ball on the sun gear run against. Anyway then you knock the plate back into the hub that button can fall into the gears and you will have know idea until the machine moves. It's all Diamonds or Stones.
Tones, I hope the caution I took was enough too, I cannot remember now exactly how it looked, but I recall a shiny spot on inside of cover plate and maybe a ball on the end of the sun (?) gear. It has done maybe a hundred hours since so hopefully I've got it back together safely....
Log haulier got himself new truck, Scania R730 V8 auto-everything, very smooth ride.
Really doesn't make any sense to move wood ourselves unless it's clean-up loads or there are access issues like wet mud, these trucks are so smooth and can haul twice as much in a day for same fuel. A chipwood depot, for energy wood chip production supplying local biomass boilers.
Sitting here waiting for the right parts to show up, Mike the top mechanic and his assistant (that's me) have been in and out with the hydraulic pump 3 times in as many days, now we've learnt that the upgraded pump kit doesn't have all the necessary parts included. So hopefully bolting it up this next time will see us with the extra hyd flow we're seeking, instead of the absolute zero flow we got! It wasn't raining the last two days, but it is about to now! Very grey.
So,John. Are you back in business? Hope so
BP, yes, for now. A few teething troubles with this tractor. Got full crane power now with new pump, but didn't cure the odd steering symptoms. If standing stationary, cannot steer lock to lock at any rev. It gets so far fine, then goes hard and won't turn further. Both front and rear steering wheels same effect (it's reverse drive) , if put crane out back of rear wheels it goes a bit further towards full lock, if pick up a log out back it goes lock to lock. If move tractor a little, it goes lock to lock. Though it also seems to hesitate if you steer "without warning"! Which is scary in oncoming traffic. We tried bypass test on steering ram and there was a small trickle bypassing. Various priority valves and such to check out next (when Mike the Mechanic returns) if that doesn't do it I suppose we'll change ram seals.
Clutch isn't too convincing either, at 33,200 kg GVW it just seemed to sit in the moss when trying to pull off in bottom road gear. In a lower gear it pulled away ok. Have to spend some time and money is all!
We've been thinning ash trees out of this plantation, they've got the dreaded ash dieback (Chalara or Hymenoscyphus fraxineus as it's been renamed) that's gradually wiping out all our ash trees. Lots of loose limbs on these weakened trees. Selling the logs all the way to China.
No Emerald Ash Borer issues on your side of the pond? Ed
EAB is expected to arrive soon... Predictions for Chalara is 95-98% loss, so there won't be a lot left for the Emerald Ash Borer anyway.
We are back to abusing tyres again
What length 24’?
They're going in containers so 1st lengths only up to 11.2m I think ~36ft.
Random lengths load hits the road.
Has anyone on here had any experience of"Turkey Oak" as we call it, and know of any uses for it. We come across them sometimes in our woods, some people seem to have planted them for their colourful leaves when young trees. This tree pictured had a 12m clear stem, 3' diameter and no one wants Turkey Oak for anything here.
Not sure what Turkey Oak is? Here, if one takes a decent Oak log and saws off one edge slab, then flipped the cut side down and sawed two 3" thick slabs from the middle, them two pieces often sell for up to $500.00. They butt up the slabbed edges and make table tops from them for banquet tables. With the wavy edge they make a grand looking table from the book matched halves.
A bit of poking around the internet, I found that Turkey Oak/Austrian Oak is really prone to cracking and splitting. The only use I've seen mentioned is fencing products. Most of what I found was for the Turkey Oak that grows in the SE of the US.
We have what we call black oak around here, grows really fast, tall and straight and nobody uses it for anything. Except firewood. I read somewhere that it also splits when drying. Somewhere else they said that if people would use what they call southern oak drying methods they would have better results and make it usable.
Place called "Stour Estuary Wood" at Wrabness, near the coast eastern England. To me the name sounds as damp and misty as the place was, first thing in the morning.
I get a shiver just looking at the photo.
Glad you said that, John C., as this job had me cold through pretty much every day! We were making best use of the frost which was 6 below on the best morning.
It brightened up on some days. First picture is some of "the good": Last 2 pics are "the bad&ugly"! Productive place though, ~450Tonnes per hectare (2.47acre) is good in hardwood where we are.
Thanks for replies on the turkey oak. When this felling season (winter) is over I will have a go at milling some, meanwhile it is cracking up pretty good on it's own.
Great pictures as always. Looks beautiful out there. As boss you need to be the one operating the machine, not stood outside freezing! For UK it was quite a cold snap, but we seem over the worst of it now. Just want it to stay dry. Graham
Hi Graham, dry sure is best for getting on working, but it sure is too dry round our way. Ponds in our woods that are usually overspilling in February are practically empty of water. If we don't get rain at some point I reckon we could see a drought this summer, in Essex and Suffolk.
Moving machines is so peaceful early on a Sunday morning. Even if it is foggy.
@John Shipp How are things going?
Hi hvy 1ton, Ok here thanks friend, but I've been getting that sinking feeling a lot recently. We're having quite a wet "summer" this year, actually doesn't feel like summer much at all in the woods recently. We're in some nice trees at the moment, and the timing was planned for these months as it's a wet ground site. Soil here I think they call "Pudding clay" which seems pretty accurate.
not bad trees
Doesn't time fly! Been a while since I've posted anything on here with pictures, I've been meaning too.
Bit the bullet and got one of these, Keto 150HD. Had it more than 5 years now and it's helped a lot.
Still hand fell bigger bits or uglier, particularly in thinning where trying to miss young stems in the shadows. Then use it to process the tops.
Upgraded trailer to similar thing but bigger wheels
One of the best things I've liked is that I can build really good brash matts to mover around on
Apologies for the grainy images, I've killed my lens by wiping with my thumb. Working further from home occasionally.
Going from conifers to crappy browsed (deer) hornbeam is not a fun trip
Poplars
Raking out and burning rhododendron, there's a lot of this to do but nobody wants to pay for it
gone back to ballasted tyres (regular antifreeze) so saving it here when got puncture
And so on...
Whereabouts are you logging? No bigger than your country is it sometimes surprises me how much open land there is. I don’t know why but I feel like it would be all gobbled up by now. Of course I haven’t been across the pond in over 30 years. Wife and I talked about a vacation in a year or two and it always seems to circle back to the UK and Europe. Both of our families came come Germany or Austria, mine from Germany in the 1840’s and hers from Austria around the turn of the century. Other than museums I’m not into the typical tourist stuff. I’d rather come log for a few days than ride around with a camera around my neck. I wonder if my CDL is good there lol. It would be weird to drive on the other side of the truck and the road!
Junkyard, I am in East Anglia - it's the chunk directly north east of London. I stay away from heading out towards London very far, so from Colchester (oldest town round here) which is north Essex, going north an hour or two's drive which means up to around the Ipswich area (Suffolk) and across towards Cambridge, is normally where I keep to. House building is getting rampant now around what used to be quiet little country towns, whole fields getting built on everywhere. There's definitely areas to avoid parking machines in woodlands overnight. But some areas not changing too much. If you head this way, let me know, there's still some good pubs around here.