Starting out in forestry

[Spruce Pirate]

2 hours ago, Rough Hewn said:

They are being gentle on you Jack.
Forestry is as harsh as it gets in arb work.
 

I'll be less gentle:

 

Forestry is brutal, your back will hurt, your hands will hurt, your knees will hurt, you'll be too cold, too wet, to hot, you'll get scratched, cut and bitten.  You need a lot of knowledge on specs, trees and treatments, you'll have unreasonable people making unreasonable demands of you.  The money is often not great, sometimes still on piece work so you really have to go to make your wage.  If you do it for long enough you or someone you work with / have worked with is almost certain to have a fairly serious accident and you have to deal with that.  It is certainly not for everyone.

 

I have folk looking for work from me on a fairly regular basis, they all have to pass a few subtle tests to get a chance - not that I think I'm special and like putting people to the test, but it's a waste of both our times to have someone who thinks that commercial forestry is going to be all swanning about a wood like Winnie the Pooh looking at butterflies and bluebells (you can of course find ways of doing this if it is your thing, either recreationally or professionally).  New starts always get the crappy, repetitive, monotonous jobs (stacking, banksman, re-spacing, clearing ditches, the list is practically endless!) - if you can cope with that you're worth developing, it's normally an excellent way of learning the whole job from the bottom up, it also makes most people far better at doing jobs further up the chain as they have a decent understanding of the work and a certain empathy with anyone who you may later be asked to look after / supervise.

 

If after a day you've decided it isn't for you then it probably isn't.  If you decide to go back then take the time to think about the job and ask questions.  How much is the chip actually worth?  How much will be chip produced?  What other markets are available for that size and species of timber in the volume it will be produced in?  I'd be very surprised if it turned out to be a waste of money.

 

If you've got this far I'd stick with it, you never know you might be one of the perverse bunch of people who actually enjoy forestry work.  If you don't you've only lost a week or so out of your life, shame to give up after the first day though.

[peds]

6 minutes ago, Spruce Pirate said:

If you do it for long enough you or someone you work with / have worked with is almost certain to have a fairly serious accident and you have to deal with that.  It is certainly not for everyone.
 

Theoretically, if you were to seek out and work with someone who already had their spell of bad luck, does that increase your own odds of getting through without a scratch?

[Spruce Pirate]

7 minutes ago, peds said:

Theoretically, if you were to seek out and work with someone who already had their spell of bad luck, does that increase your own odds of getting through without a scratch?

Dunno, I'm just a woodcutter, not a statistician.

[spuddog0507]

Jack would you cope felling 8 -12 of these every day felled snedded and processed ? just had 2 wk of these big lumps and just got finished about 2pm today was having tomorrow at home and then was to find my self a few days shooting to occupie my self for the rest of the wk but thats all gone tits up. now spending tues,wed,thur and fri delivering logs and timber, that tree was 55" across where i cut it and was rotten in middle.

[david wood]

stacking is important as said before. 

having rushed with somebody who was raining down scyamore regen of about 20 - 30 feet, stems on brash etc and no cutting to length. then having to go back and chip brash, cross cut and forward it out i can say had site been tidier it wouldnt have taken hrs to sort out. 

fell, sned, cross cut, stack - one stem at a time - stack brash if chipper not present. do next tree.

 

looks less dramatic than many stems felled but a much more orginiased site and easier at all stages.

 

oh and no huge tall stumps....  

[Jwoodgardenmaintenance]

52 minutes ago, spuddog0507 said:

Jack would you cope felling 8 -12 of these every day felled snedded and processed ? just had 2 wk of these big lumps and just got finished about 2pm today was having tomorrow at home and then was to find my self a few days shooting to occupie my self for the rest of the wk but thats all gone tits up. now spending tues,wed,thur and fri delivering logs and timber, that tree was 55" across where i cut it and was rotten in middle.

Now that's my ideal place to be might be hard graft but the view themselves are rewarding enough Where's that at? 

[Ratman]

Jack would you cope felling 8 -12 of these every day felled snedded and processed ? just had 2 wk of these big lumps and just got finished about 2pm today was having tomorrow at home and then was to find my self a few days shooting to occupie my self for the rest of the wk but thats all gone tits up. now spending tues,wed,thur and fri delivering logs and timber, that tree was 55" across where i cut it and was rotten in middle.

Where that be spuddog? Looks familiar! [emoji6]

[spuddog0507]

3 minutes ago, Ratman said:

Where that be spuddog? Looks familiar!

its at your end of Longridge fell up birdy brow they have just taken 12,000 tonne off, i wish the payment cheque was being paid in to my bank account,

[Ratman]

Not been up there for a while, used to go up regular with pooch, last time i was up there i had a run in with a tit head in cat loading shovel.

[Ratman]