Low impact forestry services in Devon and the South West

[Big J]

15 minutes ago, Richard 1234 said:

Have you sold the sawmil business now?

like the new machines too?

Yes. The two chaps that have been working with me for years have taken it on. 

 

I like the machines too

[Big J]

Any of you tree surgery types in the area need a hand during the first two weeks of August? Debating whether to bring the forwarder down at the end of July or not. 

 

Can lift some fairly substantial sticks. Was playing in the yard with it this morning and I'm fairly confident of getting a 1000kg log loaded. Throws around 500kg very easily. Also has a small winch on the crane too. 

 

Get in touch if I can help out.

[john p]

Might have a big block of larch to come out, about 15 mins from Tiverton. If chap still wants it doing you fancy coming for a look?

[Big J]

2 hours ago, john p said:

Might have a big block of larch to come out, about 15 mins from Tiverton. If chap still wants it doing you fancy coming for a look?

That would be brilliant, yes. Processor and forwarder job or just forwarder? 

[john p]

No idea yet, not been to see it, will let ya know in the week

[Big J]

[Big J]

Out with the processor today, testing it with trees that were much too large. 

 

It didn't much like bendy larch at 350mm, with the bends creating some issues, and the smoothness of grand fir created some issues with gripping it. It waltzed the spruce though. 

The photos above illustrate just how tidy a job it does. Neat habitat pile on the left, neat stack of logs on the right. 2 or 3 more trees like that (350mm at butt, 7 lengths of 3m off it) and I'd have a forwarder load. No manual handling at all.

[arboriculturist]

22 minutes ago, Big J said:

Out with the processor today, testing it with trees that were much too large. 

 

It didn't much like bendy larch at 350mm, with the bends creating some issues, and the smoothness of grand fir created some issues with gripping it. It waltzed the spruce though. 

The photos above illustrate just how tidy a job it does. Neat habitat pile on the left, neat stack of logs on the right. 2 or 3 more trees like that (350mm at butt, 7 lengths of 3m off it) and I'd have a forwarder load. No manual handling at all.

 

[arboriculturist]

That's low impact tidyness.

The Grand Fir and Spruce ok for sawlogs but don't ever supply to anyone for Firewood.

Whitewoods, which as you know includes species of Spruce are cheap to buy and that's where it ends. Whitewoods =  low quality, non-dense softwood and any level of moisture and it decays - fast!

 

We are all enjoying your pioneering journey into low impact Forestry management and the really great images.

Please keep it up.

[Big J]

9 minutes ago, arboriculturist said:

That's low impact tidyness.

The Grand Fir and Spruce ok for sawlogs but don't ever supply to anyone for Firewood.

Whitewoods, which as you know includes species of Spruce are cheap to buy and that's where it ends. Whitewoods =  low quality, non-dense softwood and any level of moisture and it decays - fast!

 

We are all enjoying your pioneering journey into low impact Forestry management and the really great images.

Please keep it up.

 

Thanks for the encouragement!

 

I've burned loads of spruce myself up here, but I burn anything. 

 

I'd be felling for biomass chipwood predominantly, so spruce would be ideal. It does process nicely compared to larch and fir. 

 

As I said though, the trees were much too large really. 21m of product off a single stem is nothing like first thinning, but it's good that it can do it. It'd only be 2.5 trees or so to the tonne on that. 

 

Very confident that once we're up to speed that we can do a tree in 3 minutes with the winch to one point and reposition every 5 trees  or so. So, 20 odd trees an hour, which would equate to 5 tonnes an hour or so on smaller material. Might do better than that as I'm hopeless on the fairly complicated hydraulic controls at the moment.