santacruz

I dont know of much hardwood of any sizes or quality going for milling as firewood is fetching such a high price, and sawmills offering such a low one its easier just to firewood the lot at the moment.

pro lite bars are not the best, they are not even light. Try power match or a stihl rolomatic bar. I have never used either on a processor, but I know they are superior quality.

Can you not just go to the weigh bridge, otherwise it really is only an estimate.

Everytime I hear that logs can be too dry and they burn too fast I just despair. Whole tree harvesting including the below ground biomass is not a great idea in my opinion. I believe that mainly in the UK trees are grown on poor soils where every bit of nutrients is important. As the tree grows the tree takes up these nutrients and they are mainly used and stored in the needles, if you then remove all of this you run into some serious problems. In Sweden they are organised and the biomass goes to large scale schemes where they collect the ash then return in to the woods. I cant see that happening in the UK, even if we did the soils under spruce plantations are mainly organic and cannot hold onto the nutrients when returned in this rapid way. Many soil scientists have warned against whole tree harvesting for many years but no one has listened to them. Sustainability is about more than just CO2.

I am flippin cross about this. We need to form the, " We have enough certificates and insurance documents already alliance". And just say enough is enough and find the person responsible for making these rules, he must be out there somewhere.

My whole problem with extra training is the NPTC themselves. Could someone explain how they have become the sole recognised assessment of competance for forestry and arb?. Where is the competition to keep prices keen?. What stops them charging what ever they like?. I will tell a story to show where the route of my beef comes from. When all this NPTC thing was starting up they basicly came round the woods looking for assessors, anyway the fella from my area who was chosen to be fair was a very good timber faller, but not a machinery man. He came and spent a day with us to learn how to use the harvester. When an FMOC in harvesting became compulsory a few years later we booked an assessment with NPTC and who turned up, it was this fella. I am sorry but that assessment cost 200 quid and half a day wasted. The whole system needs shaking up. And another thing I know a few NPTC assessors and a few of them travel all round the country in a 4x4 for 1 day of assessing, now if the process was competitive then there would be no way this would be profitable. Would anyone travel 200 miles for one day of tree work?.

If you watch forestry guys that fell all day every day they always chase the hinge. They look up and watch the tip as they chase it then step away by the time the tree is around 45 degrees. Only if you are felling uphill or over a bank is it unadvisable. I did a clearfell of poplar once that seemed prone to barber chairing. I had been felling full time for the skidder for 5 years so was pretty experienced, and also lazy, paid a piece rate and fast. I would never clear my escape routes, just a path to the next tree. That was until a 2-3 ton pop barber chaired and i had no where to go I was stuck right next to it as it chaired upto about 20ft then the stem fell off the chair and only by luck fell off to the other side otherwise it would have killed me. After that I found the best way to prevent it was to bore in both sides behind the hinge to form a tiny hinge then finish it off round the back, as they were all 2-3 times bar length so were too big to chase. In my experience if a tree chairs then your hinge is too big. Forget your 10% hinge rule the correct size of hinge is a hinge which is just big enough to send the tree in the required direction, and judging this taking into account species, lean, wind etc comes down to experience.

I feel that saw chain performs best in its last 25%, its marginal but thats my opinion. There should be more clear information given by dealers on those grinding machines, they have a number of serious issues. The worst being the heat they put into the cutters, makes the chain almost impossible to file afterwards, and if you do the file tends to ride too low in the cutter as it strugles to file the hardened area around the working edge and you end up with beaked cutters. Also blunts your file, I find one file will do one chain right down to the wear marks, but after trying to file a machine ground chain its blunt. In my opinion chains that come off those machines cut slow and are far from smooth. How many people do you know that know what they are doing with an axe that sharpen them with a powered grinding wheel. Answer none. I know that its got more to do with temper with an axe, but you cant get away from the fact that a file is best, and it costs one whole pound, and its very portable, and cordless, and light weight to, and there are holes in your combi can to transport it.

I am going to get onto security this week. Could anyone thats been unfortunate enough to have been broken into give details of methods of entry tools used etc. If we all work together sharing info we can make our yards etc safer. A company I worked for kept getting done over by a group going round with 4ft bolt croppers. They did 2 or three sites until we stopped them by adding enough steel to the security until they were stopped.

I had a gnarly kick back a couple of weeks ago first time in ten years. Nearly pooed my pants, but the chain brake worked (on intertia alone as it happens) and the chain stopped befor it hit my shoulder. There was so much force both hands came off the saw.

I used to cut in the forest for wire rope extraction. The only way to make it pay was to just cream the big trees in a thinning, or take nice trees from beyond the C marks in a clear fell. Make the job look like a goodun from roadside then beyond the view from the road batter the piece. The FC always take the cheapest price on all DP contracts and then wonder why they get a crap job. They dont discriminate against contractors who put in cheap prices and do crap jobs. I even took live Larch on quite a big thinning piece in winter and just left dead ones, the FC auditors wouldnt notice until spring, just to make a decent wage. The rock bottom prices lead to dangerous practices. Felling uphill onto the road, no banksman no view of the road, my attitude was I pay PL insurance not to stop and look or really care if there is a vehicle there or not, its just fell fell fell to earn enough money. Its all the FCs fault. Anyway rant over I dont do Forestry anymore.

Its not just the government but the whole system. Four year terms are too short. Imagine if before 2007 the government had said to avoid a crash we are going to make it harder to get credit, slow imports from China so your 50" LED LCD flat super screen will be twice the price, drop the minimum wage to make us more competative and take the heat out of the housing market so you cant re mortgage your home to release the extra equity it has suposedly magicaly gained and buy an Audi A4 with built in sat nav and go to the Maldives. They would not have even lasted the 4 year term.

I firmly believe in buying new machinery, but I am not adverse to buying second hand at the right price. It just seems that at the moment machinery is fetching stupid prices. I dont just mean pretty steep I mean nearly as much or as much as a new machine. I have watched firewood machinery that is well used go on ebay for more than its rrp. Currently there is a fransgard winch on ebay its going for £1000 with 7 days to go, a new equivalent igland is £1800-£2000. The new machine comes with a new wire and 3 chains and sliders worth £200, and as far as I know there is no UK dealer for fransgard so where to go for spares?. Its all madness no chance of buying a machine for its true value, who is buying these things?

956 is a great tractor. It does have problems like all tractors. The handbrake is a band in the gearbox if it doesnt work chances are the band is now floating round the box in little bits. It mainly effects the 4wd opperation especially if its the later solenoid operated 4wd and it normaly stops it coming out of 4wd. If its stuck in 4wd its a strip down. All it takes to knacker the brake band is too drive for a short time having forgotten to take the handbrake off. Out of the two the 956 is a probably a better tractor, although they are different. The Ford is much bigger and is too high for forestry it feels like you are going to fall over when you drive it on anything rough or a side slope.

In my experience pro lites will last about a month using them all day. I use them as I will quite often bend a bar or pinch the nose before it wears or the sprocket bearing goes. Also its normaly the other way round in that 325 cuts faster than 3/8s as it cuts a narrower Kerf therefore chips less wood. It is slightly easier to sharpen the bigger cutters on 3/8s though.

Very good tool. Mine is just starting to wear now. I will post pictures of where it is going

These guides wind me up. All it proves when someone says that a certain spp does not burn is that they cant dry logs properly. Dry wood is all the same it being made of wood and all. There are differences in denseness and tendancy to spit, but a dry log is a dry log. These guides just create wood snobs.

Always get loads. The local bee man said that they are not all queens, and some large males will overwinter. Anyway, they are mean buggers when they warm up.

Its the fork extensions all the way. Even extra long ones t reach right to the front. Bags of logs arent that heavy.

You need a pump on the pto or weld a pto onto the crank and put it there. The pumps in the back end of even big tractors dont give enough flow even to move the crane with enough speed when you get good at using it, especially with electronic controls working a parallel crane.

Befor giving them any of my hard earned money I would like to know who they are, why they have decided they can provided accreditation to our industry, who asked them to and whos pocket does the money end up in.

it depends on the size of the log, might be 250 big logs or 500 small logs

Hardwood is no harder to fell and extract than softwood, it flies through the harvester, you only cut one product size, therefore one stack, it doesnt even need to be snedded properly or be anywhere near on size to sell. Bazz it through the head, cut it into randomly sized ugly lumps and someone will buy it at a crazy price. Its all to do with demand, cutomers demand it therefore the price goes up simple.

I fell into a customers septic tank. Nothing like it for making sure your upto date with jabs.

I cut through the nails by running a hacksaw down the joints its quicker than it sounds