Harvester Hand Cutting middle ground?

[andy26]

What's the opinion of the balance between mechanisation and manual work.

 

i.e. there is an economic point where one or the other is going to be the best option.

 

There's a lot of woodland that I believe will be brought back into management. Partly due to the rising price of firewood and partly due to the RHI.

 

Most of this woodland is not coniferous planted tightly together in neat rows.

But generally a mangle of broadleaved of varying ages.

 

A conventional harvesting head is all but useless in such situations.

 

What's the best way to efficiently carry out felling and extraction?

[Frankie Lawrence]

I allways think something like a little bob cat to help with the moving of timber and clearing brash with a forwarder working alongside clearing timmber. No manual handling of wood so doesnt need to worry about lengths etc etc.

[andy26]

I allways think something like a little bob cat to help with the moving of timber and clearing brash with a forwarder working alongside clearing timmber. No manual handling of wood so doesnt need to worry about lengths etc etc.

Yes, exactly how I see it.

 

I had a contractor in to some of our woodland.

 

Some was a Larch plantation which was felled by a harvester.

 

But the mixed broadleaved (Mostly Ash and Oak) was cut mostly by hand. There were two or three cutters, felling and snedding with a 14t 360 with a hydraulic swivelling grab to handle and stack the timber as well as dealing with any hangups, which are frequent given the canopies of broad leaves.

 

Seemed quite efficient and took most of the hardwork out of the job.

 

As it's not really something you see everyday, I'm interested to know how other people do things?

[slack ma girdle]

Felling by hand, skidding out in whole tree lenghts, and using forwarder/ excavator with timber grab to do the lifting. But being adaptable in any suituation, and adapting what you have will be far more usefull that lots of machines that only do one job.

[Frankie Lawrence]

 

As it's not really something you see everyday, I'm interested to know how other people do things?

 

Personally Ive never been on a site with a harvester and only occasionally had machinery to help.

 

Alot of our work is on coppice sites where a digger would be a bit of a pain thats why I suggested a bobcat but whatever make it easy and whatever get your more wood and more monney:001_smile:

[Chris Sheppard]

We tend to do a lot of smaller woodlands and blocks that have been neglected so harvester is out for a lot of the work, at least initially, whether because of uneconomical to bring to small site or timber not really suited.

 

Done a lot of handcut to skidder and nearly, but not quite as much shortwood to forwarder.

 

Both work well on the right sites and timber, it wouldn't be fair to say which is best as one would be good for one site and bad for another.

 

As for output, of course we're not going to get anywhere near the output of a harvester and proper forwarder, but my overheads were a fraction of theirs.

 

Other than a harvester, there is, IMO, no way to effectively remove a man on the ground doing some sort of manual work, even a processor requires the timber to be felled in front of it, and shortwooding needs a fair bit of hand stacking, to be efficient.

 

Currently, we're workign a site which has a selection of different compartments of different sizes and species (and thankfully it's all flat!) from untouched hardwood first thinnings right through to Softwood clearfell and each one we've attacked differently as required.

Edited June 22, 2011 by Chris Sheppard

[Chris Sheppard]

But being adaptable in any suituation, and adapting what you have will be far more usefull that lots of machines that only do one job.

 

 

Absolutely. We're currently using one little tractor which is either pulling the traielr, winching or pushing up brash.

[Joy Yeomans]

when we fell by hand large broadleaves, we find if cutting for firewood, cut to the longest lengths possible which we stick to 12' easier to fill each bay of the artic and fills the deck of the transaw quicker and therefore processing is quicker , smaller lengths to us means more handling more often by machines

[Brushcutter]

I've used a variety of methods that all work really well depending on the team and the wood.

 

Did some ride side felling on some nice 12-18" chestnut which was to be left to naturaly regenerate to SC coppice. there were 3/4 of us two of us who were experenced and 2 college kids with CS30. We felled and dressed the chesnut out in the wood. The college kids would drag it in on the winch and process it to 5' 8' 10' depending on what we were using it for. Made the best of kit and people skills and it was dam quick. Now if we had a roof mounted crane then the stacking side could have been sped up.

 

Do a lot of final nurse crop felling so again hand fell into the racks and stack the 3m chip and leave the sawlogs 4.1m-5m for the forwarder to deal with. As long as the racks are wide enough and used properly its all good.

 

Bigger hardwoods i tend to cut to length and then either pick up with the forwarder if i can get to them or skid them to one place then extract from there.

 

I've worked with the harvesters in the hardwoods too. Sometimes they're fine and get along but you have to cut out a few 3m lengths out of the stuff too small for the rollers. Other times you have to fell by hand take a length off and let it do its thing. Other times you fell take the top/forks/co dominate stems off and let the machine do it.

 

Had to deal with a few hung up and windblown cherrys over a foot path all about 18" across. The tractor just could not get in the wood so had to use a redirect and a tractor in a meadow. So my normal methods wouldn't have worked there. However i'd just widen the rides to get my kit in then a few racks here and there. A year down the line bit of natural regen no one would know we were there.