Chris Sheppard

Our 4T weimer's been a good trailer on the whole. The wheel track could do with being about 6 inches wider and a steering drawbar would be nice but it's a scaled down big trailer rather than a scaled up small trailer. We've only got the 3m crane on it but as it's a cut down 4.1m e can retrofit the longer booms if we wanted to. Did you ever see pics of the drive unit Steve fitted to one of the smaller JMS trailers? Worked well enough to push the tractor round just off the trailer wheels. Limiting factor with the JMS trailers was they were on quad type tyres so wuld have worn fairly quickly. That Mactrac looks a simple enough thing. Reckon an old compact tractor could be chopped about enough to make a front end not disimilar to the kranman front end. Can usually lose a good few inches off the bonnet before getting to the front of the engine. I'd love to have the time and facilities to make a proper little homebrew thinnings forwarder but I don't think it's ever going to happen. Best we might manage is to stick a steering drawbar on ours and maybe one day some wider offset rims and drive cages.

Usually a bit more than softwood chip - round us usually starting from £25/T roadside if it's a bit rough up to £30ish if it's not too bendy. Used to be that low it was hardly worth doing but biomass has pushed the price up nicely.

For sure. Can't beleive there's nothing available off the shelf in that size yet.

I reckon a smaller driven trailer with steering drawbar (of around 2.5-4T) would be a good first part to the project as there's currently nothing available like that. The only small driven trailers I've seen are tiny like the vahva jussi and kranman. Once a working trailer was built, it probably wouldn't take a lot of doing to make a front end and splice the two together into a working unit. If it could be kept as close to 2.5T and sub 16ft as possible then that would be a huge advantage as it would be easily transported too. However, IMO, in the UK there'd probably be more chance of selling a trailer than a complete forwarder. The downside of the tractor and trailer though is that it takes two trips each time to transport it onto site. When at Riko, I looked at the possibility of using one of the smaller alpines as a front end of a small forwarder or stretching an artic steer AGT but still kept coming back to the driven trailer idea - like with everything though it's time and money. Slighty off on a tangent, I still think a mid sized dumper could be made into a good compact skidder. Take the tub off, make it reverse drive and mount the winch and butt plate where the tub were - mini timberjack

We seem to have been lucky and have missed the last bit of snow completely - proper cold though with the wind.

That'd be a good starting point. Also, even though it involves trees and chainsaws, it's a whole different world to Arb. If you've not done any commercial forestry then it will certainly be an eye opener and chances are you'll either love it or hate it.

Depends what you want it for though doesn't it. 560 is great, no doubt about it, but for smaller thinnings the 550 on a 13" is just plain ace - feels similar to an old 242 but pulls similar to a 357. If we get the bigger hardwood thinnings we're waiting on comfirmation of, then a 560's on the shopping list though. I'm defintely not in the stihl camp and doubt I ever will be, but comparing a 261 and a 560 isn't really a fair comparison - ones a 50cc and the other's a 60cc.

Mine has been. 13" is mega flickable but pulls 15" well too.

Tis a good show, both from an exhibitors point of view and as a punter. Used to be my favourite show of the year and have been trying to get to it as a punter for the last couple of years but never managed it yet. As an exhibitor you'd get to go to the saturday night do with the band, bar and food

I could really make use of one of those, it would replace the current rig quite nicely. Just don't fancy being tied to an expensive machine for however many years it would take to pay it off.

Even a 20hp compact tracor will pull a small timber trailer (like a vahva jussi etc) more convincingly than a quad. Our Kubota is physically about the size of a fergie 135 and pulls our 4 tonne forwarding trailer without breaking sweat and is still only about 5ft6/6ft wide.

Not sure I agree with you there. If it's straight and you think it's going to start to go on it's own, then surely a wedge isn't needed. Also, surely you're increasing the risk of it chairing by taking more time and also leaving it with a semi cut back cut. If it's not straight forward enough to think it might need wedging, surely it's just as easy to cut it properly.

I think it comes down to assessing each tree as you come to it. Yes, in an ideal world everything would be by the book but it doesn't seem to work like that. A calculated risk based on common sense and experience.

Tis a bit more serious than that - it's driving a vehicle without the correct license. Don't know the penalties though.

That's probably why they've got so much for sale - sat it all at roadside and can't find anyone who can haul it without it falling through the pins

Should do, they can see a fair bit from the seat and reach is usually somewhere around 9m from memory. I know we can stack 2 rows of 3.7m and they can load the back row without moving.

An 8 wheeler or a 6 wheeler and drag.

I had to google it too. Looks a bit like a cross between a dogtooth and a cushion cut. IME the key is to get it off the hinge as quick as possible, whether that be by chasing the hinge on smaller timber (probably not something any instructor will tell you to do) or by letterboxing the hinge, notching the sides of the gob fairly deeply and using a dogtooth, or various levels in between depending on the tree and what it's going for.

the current pro 50cc husky is the 550xp - it would make the old ms 240 or 260 feel very slow and heavy.

Agree totally. I left the woods for a couple of years and very quickly realised I shouldn't have and made my way back again. If I was you, I'd forget college for the time being. If you want to get a start in the woods, go do CS30 and 31 first and get some experience. A college qualification is all well and good but is no good without the saw time to back it up. Then, if you wanted to go more into the management roles, college could be a useful tool. The fact you've already spent some time in the woods and haven't been put off is a good start - a lot of people have an idea in there heads of what to expect and find the reality very different. You'll never get rich and you'll ache places you never thought you could, but there's no job comes close to being out on a good site crashing down big sticks

Really does depend on what you're doing with them. General arb, a small pro saw should last a good few years before it expires as it's unlikely to be going hard all day long every single day. Production thinning you could kill a saw in a year if you were particularly rough as it would be screaming it's nuts off all day. Don't think I've ever totally scrapped a saw yet, usually end up on ebay once they're getting past their best, or they get treated to some fettling and keep on going. Other than my 550, the rest of my saws are mid 2000's and I'll happily take any of them out to work. I've a 1985 Husq 181 that got used a fair bit in the woods last year too with no probs. Definitely a how long's a piece of string question though.

SOLID OAK WOOD WORKTOP 4M x 650mm x 40mm £170 inc VAT! | eBay They have a website too but it's cheaper to buy it through ebay. Even with the carriage it seemed the best deal we could find. We used some stuff called Top Oil, by Osmo - dead easy to put on and brought the colour out really nicely (photos don't really show it that well though). There's a base coat available too (can't remember what it was called but by Osmo) that's meant to give it a more durable waterproofing.

I can see where you're coming from and before I tried one I was exactly the same way of thinking. Took a 560 on demo for a week and was convinced within the first 5 minutes that it was the way forward. The way it put down power was just nuts. I ordered my 550 off the back of the demo and haven't had need to take it back for anything as yet - it's now 13months old. Even if you can find a 24" bar to phsically fit on a 357, I think you'd be fairly disappointed in it's performance. 18" on a 357 is as big as I'd want to go, IME. I'd tend to be running a 15" on it, with the 18" occasionally. The 372 would be my go to 18-20" saw but mine tends to live with a 15" and a bigger sprocket. I've never tried a 24" on it but on the whole I'd be reaching for a bigger saw again by then. I'm sure others might disagree, it all depends on what you do with them mostly and how patient you are I suppose.

But it's not a pylon, Twisty

How solid do you want? We got the butchers block type (2 inch square in strips) in Oak for something like £160/£180 for 4m off a company on ebay. That was abou best I found. Can try to find details later if you wanted.