Working for the Commission for the first time

[outinthewood]

I see the young fella is already throwing weight around "Hey there's a high stump over there get it cut !!" pointing finger and all !!

Glad to hear all is turned out alright and that the manufacturer is with you on the upgrades. I'm sure you have now found out playing nice is the path to happiness with the "Man" !

[Khriss]

Thats a dinky lil forwarder ! Not seen one like that . I bet there aint much ground press and thinning out racks must be a breeze ? K

[Khriss]

( Dunno abt the driver - looks a bit too rogue fr a new machine )

[Brushcutter]

How do you find the seat.  It doesn't look very comfortable as a big air seat.

[Big J]

The chap at the Commission was great about it. We came to the mutual conclusion that we tried, but FCS sites in South West Scotland are harsh on small machines. Just up the hill they are doing rack thinning with the chainsaw courses and with it being second rotation, the mounding and stumps from the first rotation means you need 75cm of ground clearance to get over some of them. 

 

The seat is good. Cab space was extended 5cm up and 5cm in length for me, but is still a bit too small. OK on reasonably smooth sites, but a bit jarring on heavy rutting. 

 

I'm hoping that the low impact nature of the machine is going to be my unique selling point. The National Trust for England have an 800 acre wood about 5 miles from here on a big country estate. I'll be calling them in the morning

[agrimog]

thats a neat machine J, but as youve found out, SW Scotland is a harsh training ground, everything you use has got to be at least twice as strong as you first think, I still break mog bits in some places, and others......machine no go areas......., they were planted by hand, and will need to come out by hand, and skyline. Im currently designing a skyline for a site to take timber into a job, it isnt low impact, after the initial survey, its no impact, even the walkin is a raised track, good luck on your new low impact extraction, its the way forward, especially as the big estates catch on

 

[Big J]

8 hours ago, agrimog said:

thats a neat machine J, but as youve found out, SW Scotland is a harsh training ground, everything you use has got to be at least twice as strong as you first think, I still break mog bits in some places, and others......machine no go areas......., they were planted by hand, and will need to come out by hand, and skyline. Im currently designing a skyline for a site to take timber into a job, it isnt low impact, after the initial survey, its no impact, even the walkin is a raised track, good luck on your new low impact extraction, its the way forward, especially as the big estates catch on

 

Very true. In the scheme of things, the site we were on wasn't too bad, but it's just all so unfriendly towards smaller machinery. 

 

What also struck me was the level of wastage in the stands. We were working in a 48 year old block of sitka (the machine will lift anything in that stand at 3.1m, for reference) and whilst some effort had been made to thin a little, the last majority of the stand had seen one rack thin in it's entire history. As such, around 50-70% of the standing stems were dead, and due to the fact that everything was overdrawn, much of it was blown. 

 

Is it that uneconomical to thin sitka that it just doesn't get done? Assuming that the first thin could have been done at 18 years, if should be on it's 7th thin by now. I was just amazed how much dead (and given it's sold on the tonne, relatively valueless) timber there was.

[Khriss]

I think hand cutting for pulp is uneconomic in those stands so they get over ripe then forgotten- a machine like yrs with a lil harvester head on it would tidy those stands right up an make a more valuable harvest at the end. Could be yr on to a winner first forwarder I saw in SW Scotland looked like it was made from a bit chopped off the Forth bridge K

[Khriss]

On 10/08/2018 at 12:13, spuddog0507 said:

hi helmets are 5 years from date of manufacture and not purchase date, and inside the helmet there will be a  clock face with an arrow pointing to the relivant number so lets say arrow is pointing to 10 on the outside and then another number with in the clock face and lets say that number is 14 so helmet was made oct 2014, a tip for you all when buying a helmet either look for date or ask about it , 2 lads who have worked with me over the years have been and bought a new helmet and 1 was nearly 2 years old and another 2 1/2 years old  so life span only half but still paid full price, and these helmets are tougher than you think as ran over 1 of mine with tractor and i was amazed at the amount of damage i did which was very little ,

.....yea- tyre cut or did it take a chunk out of the sump ? k

[Big J]

16 minutes ago, Khriss said:

I think hand cutting for pulp is uneconomic in those stands so they get over ripe then forgotten- a machine like yrs with a lil harvester head on it would tidy those stands right up an make a more valuable harvest at the end. Could be yr on to a winner first forwarder I saw in SW Scotland looked like it was made from a bit chopped off the Forth bridge K

There are a couple of harvester heads available for machines of that kind of size, but they will only take stems up to 22cm diameter. The issue is that the machine has no weight to counterbalance the weight of the tree. 

 

That's why I went for the bed processor instead of a harvester type machine. It'll take about 37cm, instead of 22cm.

 

We did cut quite a lot of nice 3.7m log out of it too