Chris Sheppard

Hi Chris,

Sorry for the slow reply, I've only just seen this.  As it is I'm mostly sorted for now but thanks for thinking of me.

If anyone was interested in any of the tractors etc and had any questions - feel free to PM me - I have nothing to gain from it but have spent a lot of time using most of them so can hopefully give a little bit of background history on them if required.  

That hypro processor has done very, very little (probably not more than 100-150t) and other than half an hour one morning has only ever been used by me - I reckon that will be very cheap compared to a new one.  It would be worth making sure they have the computer and winch remote for it though as they aren't in the pictures and were kept separate anyway, but probably expensive to replace.

A quick update to say thanks to everyone who's been in touch and that it looks like I'm sorted for now.  

On 10 January 2022 at 08:24, Tommy A said:

 

They sound like good machines Chris. Do you know who’s doing the auction?
 

 

Gilbert-Baitsons in Hull. Looks like buyers fees are a good chunk on top though.

Hi Pete, PM sent 

Will find out and let you know.

Here's a couple of fairly recent photos.

It's probably too old for what your after but there's a guarded up Valmet 8000 going up for sale shortly, 1994 model, 10,500 ish hours.  Stickers suggested it had been through wilsons at some point in its life (maybe for the guarding) Ideally wants tyres all round (or tubes as a minimum) and it has a bit ofa voltage drop between the key and the starter (but starts mint when it catches).  Big ol' girl with minimal electrics and sounds awesome.

 Also there should be a 2013 Valtra N121, belly guarded (by sovereign) about 3000ish hours. Probably still has the bracket for the forwarder controls in the back of the cab too.  Not a bad cab to spend the days in except the air con stopped working.

Both have come straight from work and as far as I know will be in the liquidation auction of where I worked in about a week or so.  

No pics on tablet but can probably get some off my phone.

Couple of bits to add to the original post:

After chatting with one of my former colleagues this week, we might be available as a two man foresty team for a time if that might be of interest to anyone?  We have worked alongside each other for most of the last three years on a wide variety of timber.  He hasn't spent so much time on machines but is competant at winch work (especially edge trees) and recently was getting some time in the tractor and forwarding trailer and is keen to learn more.

In answer to the reasoning for such a small working radius at the moment - it's mainly because my Wife is currently nearly 33 weeks pregnant so I could do to be not a million miles from home just for a bit in case bump decides it's coming early.  I omitted that bit out before as I was only a three legged dog and a broken guitar string away from it sounding like a bad Country song....

Also, thanks for all the support from everyone behind the scenes - the PM's, texts and phone calls from both new and old have cheered me right up.

1 hour ago, Andy2873 said:

Did you get sorted?

Bits and bobs so far and some leads to follow up next week.  Putting 2&2 together, I think you might be familiar with my former boss.

13 minutes ago, bigtreedon said:

I had Chris in 3 days last week great lad thanks for all you help mate

No prob Don.  Thanks for the opportunity and glad to have helped - you know where I am if you need a hand in the future.

23 minutes ago, aswales said:

Where in North Yorkshire are you based ?

Between Malton and Scarborough.

25 minutes ago, Pete Mctree said:

Chris is a more than capable individual and a hard worker too. Always an asset onsite, with a depth of knowledge and strong skill base.

Hope you find something soon 👍

Cheers Pete.  Hope all's well with you and yours.

Due to unexpectedly and suddenly being made redundant on New Years' Day due to the company I worked for going into liquidation, I'm currently in the exciting position of working out how to keep busy again and the wolf from the door.

I have worked with trees for just over 20 years now and at most stages of their lives, from planting, cleaning, thinning and clearfell, but also processing such as milling (various woodmizer type bandmills) and the usuals such as firewood.

I have spent most of that time self employed (until this last role) and have worked as a 'saw for hire' through to buying/selling standing and owning/maintaining my own machines in the past.

My most recent role (3 years) was as lead of a small team of between 2-3 cutting mostly firewood, sawlogs and softwood chip with me spending less time felling and more time spent either forwarding out (Valtra and Botex) or running the Hypro 455 processor or in the yard on the Woodmizer.  

Forestry has made up the biggest part of my time in trees, mostly motor manual felling (also including tractor mounted processor) and tractor with winch or trailer based extraction and have experience in both hard (including high value saw logs) and softwood, most terrains (including SSSI's) and have spent as much time using compact machinery as I have with the more usual sized ones.  

Whilst I don't consider myself to be an arborist (and I do not climb) I had a period of around 8 years where I was working with a tree surgeon quite regularly and as well as the usual conny bashing and garden trees, we would often get the trees the other local guys couldn't do (the 3120 got sent up the tree at least once) so am comfortable with lowering (albeit I haven't done any regularly for the last 3 years or so).

I have CS30, CS31, CS36, 0021-03 (Assisted Felling), 0021-11 (felling over 380mm) and don't required a refresher until late 2024, as well as a +F first aid certificate (I'll have to check dates but is still valid at moment) and All Terrain Vehicle Handling (overdue a refresher though).

I do not have any FMOC, likewise I do not have a Chipper qualification but so far this has never been a problem.

Ido not have experience of driving purpose built, but have spent time workng modern Valtra and trailer based set up so would be keen to make the progression to purpose built.

Full, clean, UK driving license and also have provisional entitlement for C1, C and CE

I have my own saws, PPE etc and should have some more transport organised shortly.

On 21 April 2021 at 07:13, MattyF said:

Sounds far too cheap .. good efforts though.

^ exactly that.  £225 a day for a man and any sort of machine and fuel is costing you money.  

Hi Andy,

Not bad, ta, and you?  

Did spot you and daisy dropping some logs off at stones's a bit back - she's still looking well.  Was it a flatbed you fitted or a tipper?  I've not had a landy of any breed for a while now, slowly working through the rust on a 4x4 Sprinter now. Kinda reminiscent of Daisy in that its big and white and not the quietest in the cab

20 minutes ago, Svts said:

Interested in what you decide on. Sounds like your needs are similar to mine. 

Happy with my Kts trailer/crane but could really do with a driven trailer. 

Had a roof mount and found it more of a hindrance in thinnings.

Agree with the Botex in small stuff, always seemed a bit numb. 

Are Corwen still the Farmi dealers? 

They were a pain to deal with when I had one years ago. 

Heard good things about BMF gear. 

All my experience of roof mount was with my old 1164 and for a lot of work I quite liked it but never really had to do a lot of big timber with it. Part of the thinking with a possible roof mount was more long term thinking with maybe a small felling head or energy shear.  We've just upgraded to the next sized up Hypro which still means a lot of getting in and out of the cab....

Not sure on Corwen, though they do still have the Farmi trailers and cranes on the website.  i'm just up the road from the KTS dealer, but it doesn't look like they do anything particularly big lifting.  

BMF isn't one I've heard of (or the far foa ones) but will go have a look.

Hi John,

Not bad thanks, still here just changed the scenery a bit.  Hope all's good with you - saw the article in EA, looks like the toy collection is growing nicely . Just about finished an awful roadside job that would probably have liked your Merlo.

I've heard good stuff about the Kronos, and possibly from a guy who drove the one you're talking about from time to time.  Driven axles are something I've no actual experience of but guessing they are different league to the cage drive?  The Kesla ProTraction setup looks like it works well with the Valtra shuttle but I'm not sure how anyone elses drive system plumbs in yet.

I am quite taken with the Farma, but theplates over the cage drive look to me like they'd get in the way as much as protect the drive system.  

One thing with going to an electric lever system that does put me off a little is when/if anything goes wrong its getting further away from being able to fix it without getting a grown up involved - its probably a lot better than it was a few years ago but I can remember at least one tractor parked up for a few weeks all because of a tiny little solenoid that had gone on one set of levers.

All being well we're off to go see a big Kesla early April 

Before too long, we're looking to replace the current trailer  ( Botex 11t with 560 loader) and are in the process of whittling down the shortlist.  It needs to be a fairly versatile set up as we can be in first thinnings one job or wrestling big hardwood logs out on the next.

Has anyone had much experience of the larger models from some of the northern european manufacturers like Kesla, Kronos, Farmi, Farma, Palms etc? My experiences have always been with the smaller models of any of those but, on paper, they all offer something that can lift similar to the current Botex but with a bit better visibility past the kingpost and geometry that works better with smaller timber. 

Also, I'd guess that a double extension (with the chain) is probably not the best for those times dragging big bits in on the extension?

AWD isn't crucial but we are considering it this time, but as a minimum some taller and wider tyres would be an improvement.  

My thinking is 10-12t trailer with adjustable pins and an extending bed (for the rare times we want 2 bays of 2.5's), steering drawbar, floaty tyres, single extention crane around 7m.

There is still a bit of thinking towards going roofmount at the same time (current tractor is a Valtra N121) but I think we probably do too much big timber to go that way yet.

Sorry for the late reply Kev, only just spotted this.

Most of what we used to use it for was on sites where we'd bought standing and were selling at roadside and generally smaller sites with a few wagon loads in total rather than huge blocks.  We did use it on a 1200T job once and whilst it wasn't exactly ideal, we were getting the timber out fast enough to make it work. 

Whilst it didn't have a huge capacity (from memory I think we used to roughly work on 3T of 12ft sofwood sawlogs per average load and 2.5T of 12ft firewood when gauging what was coming out), and it's top speed was hopeless (about 8mph) it would float in and out of places where a bigger machine might get stuck or need more room to get in and out.

That crane was only 3.2m long, which was a hindrance at times, I reckon 4.5 would have been ideal and a bit more hydraulic flow would have made a big difference to production I think. 

Also, a newer tractor with a better road speed would probably have been a good move too as everytime it needed moving from site to site it meant loading the forwarding trailer onto a trailer with the tractor, having another machine at the other end to unload it, then go back for the tractor - On more than one occasion the time moving it to and from a site was longer than the time it wass needed on site.

I would say though, that it worked much better on sites where we were moving timber that we'd felled ourselves as it was more inportant to present everthing a bit neater when cutting than you'd maybe need to with a bigger machine - the short reach and lighter build meant that playing pick-up-sticks in deep brash wasn't a fun experience.

On 8/14/2017 at 21:45, Pete Mctree said:

When viewing the unread posts, I have discovered the "condensed list" button - magic, especially when viewing on a phone. Gets rid of all the crappy bulk

Definitely helps on desktop too.  Not tried it on anything portable yet but hardly use owt like that anyway.

Still feeling my way round the new site and struggling a bit but that's probably me and my non existant tech skills.  

the two things that spring to mind straight away are that it's very, very white, to the point it hurts my eyes.  It sounds like as a user I can adjust and select things to suit me but is there the option of adding a background colour to soften it down a bit?

Also, I used to browse primarily by clicking the unread post button and it used to list threads in chronological order of activity rather than actual individual posts and used to take no time to flick through every few days, just stopping to read what looked interesting, whichever topic it might fall under.  Is there a way I can do this too?

Regarding LPG, when I bought a petrol engined processor, the dealer did mention that he'd converted some to run on bottled gas and that it was very easy to do. At the time I did look into it a bit but decided that, for me anyway, that it was just easier to stick with petrol.

That was one of the 13hp honda engines so I'm sure it couldn't be that difficult to convert other industrial petrol engines, the hardest bit would probably be mounting the gas bottle without it being in the way.

Apart from the excellent advice already offered...I use the lightest possible saw that is big enough for the task. Husqvarnas all the way for me, but whatever brand you use , similar principles apply. 15" softwood? a 346 is fine. 15" hardwood I'd go a 365. If you're regularly getting into bigger stuff like hardwood firewood >20" I would consider getting something with more power. You learn when a saw is struggling so why push a wee saw to its limits? I also recommend using the shortest bar as is sensible. I never run the max size bar for a given saw as default, only when totally necessary e.g. a massive tree, I've got a 36" bar which goes on the 395, but then I'm straight back to something more sensible like 24 at soonest opportunity.

Pretty much this ^

Although when out on site, most of the time what dictates wheich saw is picked up is which one's sharpest at the time......

Definitely looks like aspen type fuel use is more widespread over there as it's available from pumps on the forecourt at some filling stations.

No help regarding working there as I never have................. and as a country I think their living standards are better than here (in general). I love the country myself- far fewer people, more space and things are well thought out over there- I even quite like their cities, and I hate cities usually!

I'd agree with that (though my Wife's not swedish ).

Have visited a few times now (mainly Northern areas) and always look forward to the next time.

that's an accident waiting to happen !!!

much safer to use one of these ! stack all you small stuff on it first then put a larger one on top so it doesn't bounce the saw about once you start cutting or you can put a couple of bungee straps to hold it tight together !

I made something similar out of scrap timber a few years ago and found it's the quickest way to deal with small stuff. Used to stack all the undersize (sub 3" diameter) poles separate in the racks and scoop them up as the last load of the day with the forwarder and then whenever I had to let a wagon in I'd cut and fill the trailer while he was loading the wagon - typically it would take about 40 min to cut and fill the widetrack sankey til it was heaped.

I did have one of those portek saw hawses and didn't get on with it. Used to find the small, smooth barked poles would grab and spin. I'd rather take my chances with one of the ones the OP's looking at

 

In my experience hand cutters move to either Arb work or sensitive sites doing scrub work.

 

^ This

Forestry was where I started and what I really used to enjoy, but it was always a bit of rollercoaster. For every good job there was always more bad ones, it's hard on bodies and saws and usually just relentless.

Haven't cut anything production for a couple of years or so and can't say I miss it that much.