Milling guide

[Johnpl315]

What a bizarre thread. 

A few points. Does the wood have a felling license or management plan in place? If there is any quantity of millable timber to come out you will need a felling licence. 

Second, what is the actual objective of managing the woodland? It seems strange to be producing sawlogs as a byproduct of management for conservation. 

 Thirdly, in my experience milling is not really a way to make a quick buck. Aside from the fact that milling itself requires a mill which is expensive you then have to market and sell the timber. 

 If as you say there are some decent sticks to come out then I would look at selling the timber standing and using the money towards the management of the rest of the wood. 

 I would be interesting to hear what other jobs need doing in the wood because you can get a lot done for £60k.

[Jon@CareFell]

I know Wilde and can vouch that he invests an awful lot of his own time and money into the railway to help them out and has done for years.

 

From what I know the railway have had a survey done and there is a lot of work to be done and it’s more than he can manage, for free, over and above what he already does. He is not looking to earn a fortune just cover some of his costs, if possible.@trigger_andy To suggest that you can figure out someone’s intentions from a few posts on a forum without asking for proper clarification, I suggest is a little hasty. To outright call someone an opportunist is defamatory and offensive. Maybe people should spend a bit more energy trying to listen and understand instead of just assuming the worst, jumping to conclusions and hurling insults.

 

It’s a forum, generally people come on and ask questions/ for help. Right?

 

[wilde]

57 minutes ago, Johnpl315 said:

What a bizarre thread. 

A few points. Does the wood have a felling license or management plan in place? If there is any quantity of millable timber to come out you will need a felling licence. 

Second, what is the actual objective of managing the woodland? It seems strange to be producing sawlogs as a byproduct of management for conservation. 

 Thirdly, in my experience milling is not really a way to make a quick buck. Aside from the fact that milling itself requires a mill which is expensive you then have to market and sell the timber. 

 If as you say there are some decent sticks to come out then I would look at selling the timber standing and using the money towards the management of the rest of the wood. 

 I would be interesting to hear what other jobs need doing in the wood because you can get a lot done for £60k.

thanks, its good to get some helpful feedback, yours and a few others is the kind of useful direction pointers that I need, for example the idea of not felling but first letting people see the sticks standing first. The rest of the work involves climbing 100's of trees to do a variety of work from taking large swathes of material out to just a few branches, some of the problems are that it's never been managed, ivy covered a fair few of the trees so will invariably make the job unpleasant, most of the trees are in the woodland but there are also many around the site and down the tracks (well over 200 trees I'd estimate outside the woodlands). They have never had apart from myself over the past few years an experienced tree surgeon to get any work done and so no work ever has been done. 

[Johnpl315]

Ah yeah the trees overhanging buildings is not something you often deal with in woodland management so I can see how that might make the job more complicated and more expensive. 

 To further add to my post, although I am far from being an expert when I was milling a few years ago I found the milling the easy part and the marketing and selling is the hard part. 

 If you use a chainsaw mill then it's slow going and hard work but buying a

bandsaw is a big outlay. So I suppose it depends, how many trees are there that could be worth milling? Is it something you are interested in doing long term? Is a milling service something you would think about offering other clients in the future? 

 If you decided not to mill it yourself you would have the option of felling the trees and selling the timber at roadside or selling it standing. 

 Selling it at roadside has the problem of extracting the timber. Hardwood saw logs want to be left in as long lengths as possible so you would need some kind of machine to extract. 

 That's why I suggested selling the timber standing because it is the least amount of work, and you know in advance exactly how much money you will get. 

 

[Rough Hewn]

I know Wilde and can vouch that he invests an awful lot of his own time and money into the railway to help them out and has done for years.
 
From what I know the railway have had a survey done and there is a lot of work to be done and it’s more than he can manage, for free, over and above what he already does. He is not looking to earn a fortune just cover some of his costs, if possible.@trigger_andy To suggest that you can figure out someone’s intentions from a few posts on a forum without asking for proper clarification, I suggest is a little hasty. To outright call someone an opportunist is defamatory and offensive. Maybe people should spend a bit more energy trying to listen and understand instead of just assuming the worst, jumping to conclusions and hurling insults.
 
It’s a forum, generally people come on and ask questions/ for help. Right?
 

And I’ll vouch for Jon.
[emoji106][emoji106][emoji106]

[Rough Hewn]

You’ve got my number Jon,
Pass it on to Wilde.
[emoji106][emoji106][emoji106]

[Forest2Furniture]

10 hours ago, Ratman said:

I’m not ready space wise to have a go yet, but in time i will, and hopefully i’d get a bit of advice off a few of the reputable guys on here, Saul (Rough Hewn) has already suggested i may pick his brains and even get hands on with him if i’m ever interested, (thanks Saul ) I’m not to far from him so will probably call on him one day no doubt, if only for a meet and a brew favours bring favours and all that. We all have to start/learn somewhere, the OP may not have worded things in the best possible way but i kinda get the jist of him just wanting a bit of advise/help to get started if it is feasible regards him/his time/the charity etc.

Fair point, my bad for having a go. 

 

If op had started off with it's for a charity then he would have got a better response from all I'm sure. 

Rough Hewn is a good knowledgeable guy he'll see you right when you're ready to mill

[Forest2Furniture]

1 hour ago, wilde said:

thanks, its good to get some helpful feedback, yours and a few others is the kind of useful direction pointers that I need, for example the idea of not felling but first letting people see the sticks standing first. The rest of the work involves climbing 100's of trees to do a variety of work from taking large swathes of material out to just a few branches, some of the problems are that it's never been managed, ivy covered a fair few of the trees so will invariably make the job unpleasant, most of the trees are in the woodland but there are also many around the site and down the tracks (well over 200 trees I'd estimate outside the woodlands). They have never had apart from myself over the past few years an experienced tree surgeon to get any work done and so no work ever has been done. 

At last it's all becoming clear, there are so many potential promlems you need to overcome. 

There is a lot of help to be gained from this forum the key is to how you word your request.

I wish you luck with this and apologies for my outburst last night. 

[Jon@CareFell]

You’ve got my number Jon,
Pass it on to Wilde.
[emoji106][emoji106][emoji106]

Will do, I came a bit late to this party and was a bit taken aback by some of the responses.

[topchippyles]

Shuts trigger up then ?