logger

I think if you look into it deeper guys you will find that running red/ white to suit the job doent work out, the vehicles are supposed to be registered according to the work they carry out and use the appropriate fuel, if a vehicle is registered agricultural/forestry then thats what its meant to be used for, just because you can register certain vehicles under this category doesnt give you the right to use rebated diesel.

Tbh this modern day thing kind of grates on me a little bit.Im not against training but Ive worked with lads that have got all the tickets with time under their belts that will never be what i would consider good as long as theyve got holes in their bums. Im amazed how little felling knowledge these guys actually have and saw handling is numb to say the least.

Its the kind of job that youve either got it or you havent imo , sure a lot will get through but at a cost to themselves and their workmates.

I had no training as such and cut for 30 years before i had to get tickets , and personally i wouldnt swap any 5 day course for what i learnt out in the real world.

The one with the screw in looks like fuel tank breather, wondering if the other clear pipe has been put on carb by mistake as crankcase pipes are often impulse pipes for carb. would be worth switching them and trying.

Hiya Stu,

Tbh its not easy to get into but if youre determined then you will find a way in, machinery has taken a lot of the work away from saws but there will always be work for a good man on a saw.

Forestry and arb. work are poles apart and i guess you try both to see which suits you best, the money for good cutters now far exceeds that of groundworkers if you are good at your job.

Brushcutter, what year were you cutting chip at 3 quid a tonne? I started in the industry in the mid-70s and recall guys getting more than that then.

Hi,

I would have thought biomass on a standing sale is going to struggle taking harvesting costs into consideration.

The 80 - 100 tonnes could well be a realistic volume on this type of stand.

There is a market for pallet logs but haulage is always a dictating factor, also a limited market for kindling. If you can supply some pics. tree measurements i may be able to place some for you.

The pump is the part that the plastic drive locks into. To replace the filter a piece of strong thin wire with a small hook formed in the end usually is best through the filler cap, the pipes normally stretch enough to get them out of the filler cap to replace the filter

Thats the drive for your oil pump and will need replacing. Its worth checking that the pump that it meshes into is turning freely , they often jam up with sawdust and cause that drive to wear out. Also because the oil pick up filter has been off remove the oil pump unit and check

the hole at the back that mates up with the pick up pipe, they are often blocked when the filters been off and any comtamination will cause the plastic drive to strip again.

Someone on work experience should be "looked after"

 

The fact that someone allowed him to do the cut, then allowed him to continue the cut actually placed the lads life in serious danger and he was very lucky he wasnt killed

 

Had he been killed, you can rest assured someone would be to blame

Thats the way i see it too, the other way of seeing it is that if you can stand and watch someone do something like this then your own ability is questionable and theres the potential for the same thing happening to yourself.

Leyburn Lad,

I remember your Father and the accident , he was a smashing bloke , thanks for posting that.

Ive got to say that looking at the photos it was an accident on the cards once the back cut started, the gob was never going to allow that tree to come down in one unless you chased it off the stump and thats not going to happen with a pulled tree.

Ive seen it happen with experienced guys when everything looked right, but tbh the signs of things going wrong were there in this instance but luckily the guy got away with it , if that tree had taken him with it looking back at his mistakes might not have been much use to him then hey?

Because a lot of us are benefit cheats and dont want exposing .

I agree with Andy, as i understand it working tax credits was brought in as a top up to help to help them do a job, in effect with the introduction of the minimum wage it gave employers the means to abuse the system, it could be argued that any employer that doesnt pay a high enough wage for their employees to survive off is in fact having their business subsidised by the taxpayer. Sadly in some situations people are worth more at home than they are working,but its not them thats setting the wages. Victimising people for having kids is unfair i reckon, i was one once.

Favourite with these when the filter has been off is the hole where the pickup pipe meets the pump.Whip the clutch off and take the pump assembly out and check.

Who like me loves northern Soul ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?

This oldie did Wigan casino in his mis- spent youth .Saturday night Blackpool mecca then down to Wigan for the all nighter then sometimes an all dayer on a Sunday--Monday not worth a s--t .Great atmosphere though and good crowd to be part of, it had a phenonomal following at its peak with coaches coming from all over the U.K to Wigan on a Sat/Sun.

Hi, can any one tell me if douglas fir can be used for fire wood, i have been offered some standing and need to work out most profitable use for it, i will be greatfull for any ideas.

As said before firewoods a last option, pics would be nice , and an idea of volume. If theyre as good as youre describing i know someone in that area that will have them providing theres enough to make collection worthwhile.

Good point!

 

If you HAVE too summer fell Sycamore you can leave the crown on the felled tree until the leaves wilt, this helps pull out the sap to reduce the staining.

 

Other methods are to get the butt planked immediately after felling and then stand the planks up on there end to let the sap run out.

 

Another is to drop the butt in a fast flowing river, Secured by a rope or chain, the flowing water will push/pull the sap out.

 

But as logger says far better to fell in the Autumn or winter, the rule I was told was once the black spots come on the leaf, where the aphid eggs were stuck to the back of the leaf, its safe to fell Sycamore for timber.

Unless you can find a private user for the wood i think you would be struggling-- commercial buyers wont pay a premium on sycamore felled with the sap in regardless of what you try.The black fleck that discolours and devalues the timber can and usually does appear quite some time after the timber has been cut, and runs throughout the log. Far better to leave stood if possible,planking figured logs is a last resort.

logger, i think log job back on will call m/day, ps the proper name is curley sycamore for those who dont know

Or even curly for that matter --didnt want to confuse things even more -- theyre not all as long in the tooth as me and thee fella. Cheers for letting us know on the other job.

Sorry to jump in on the thread but is it easy to identify rippled sycamore?

We have taken a few down over the years which seemed to have abit of a wavy grain.

Nearly all sycamore will show ripple in the grain at ground level,and it is not possible to tell a figured log without knocking the bark off as the smoothest of trees can be loaded with ripple-- bark needs to be knocked off at around breast height.The strength of figure varies from tree to tree i.e in some trees it just glares out at you, other trees you really need to look closely to detect it. Its also possible to have figure in one side of a butt and not the other , if at all possible never summer fell a figured sycamore-- not always possible in arb work admittedly .

i wasnt suggesting you were the one in the wrong:001_smile:

 

i guessed by your name you have a little experience in this field

Cheers. and im not trying to be clever-- just think its helpful that people know these things.

We never worked off charts but more from volumes accepted in the round timber trade-- there were slight variations from site to site but these are generally minimal--usually not more than 1 cube/ ton.

the 2 of you must be reading off of different charts then! havent seen the data myself, though coincidentally i guessed it a

t

15ton on the day.[/Q

Steve i dont work off charts started in this game as a measurer and it was part of my job to know what timber equated at ft/ ton to keep lorries running within legal weights.Green beech 25- 26 cube per ton trust me ive measured hundreds of thousands of cube.

just got the measurements through on that beech tree, comes in at 312 cubic feet, which equates to roughly 15.5 ton

Very roughly--- 12 ton would be nearer

:congrats:

 

Yeah right, exactly - why stumps left so high? That's bad practice in my experience - wasting wood for starters. Ditto re the spikes left on the stump - cut em off. Funny how seemingly simple things and solutions seemed to evade them and make them mad.

I agree it does seem a waste of timber , and looks awful , never mind being a nuisance aswell, but you only need to look at sites in this country that have been cut by harvesters to see a similar thing.

A lot of the high output mills are now computerised and timber with large buttresses is a nuisance to them as it either has to go through a butt reducer to make the log more uniform , or risk a lot of production time and wasted timber because the magic eye on the sawline misreads the log because of the swollen buttress.

I doubt very much whether the actual working of these sites is overdramatised although perhaps one or two of the guys possibly play to the camera.

There are lots of sites , and ive worked quite a few down the years , of equally steep terrain throughout the U.K, it may be far removed from what a lot of you are doing on a daily basis and i accept that timber production and arbwork are poles apart, but somebody has and still does harvest the timber that is planted on those hillsides.

Yes theyre still around-- ask your local machinery dealer, another useful thing to have is a liquorice stick kit , its amazing what size holes you can repair with these. Ask your local agricultural tyre repair people they should be able to help you -- theyre around 30 quid a kit and a sound investment.

yep by mad axe men still dreaming off xcuts ,use get some right f:scared1::scared1:kings collage teaching 1,way old school teaching another:confused1::001 enough to drive a man to drink ?

yeah, but those old boys were a pleasure to work with and a mine of knowledge.I started in 73 no a.v lightnings and danarms were commonplace. I, as you well know, knowmost of those mad axemen you are referring to, and they would turn in their graves at some of the work thats been turned out now .. Top fallers then on 100- 150 per week -- if they made more they got their piecerate cut-- a well payed job then.Everything was hand burnt, stumps 2 inch below ground level and every last twig to be burnt or you didnt get your money.

The most noticeable thing between then and now is that they didnt make a big issue out of things it was more a way of life and the things nowadays that become major because of health and safety were just part of the job then and guys just got on and did it without any fuss.

The downturn in safety statistics really came after the storm in 87 when ,attracted by potential earnings ,we saw an influx of a new breed of cutters , most of who would never be any good as long as they had holes in their bums.

cheers mate i will keep you in mind.

not meaning to keep banging on and if you can tell from the crap pic im just curious how much do you recon this butt was worth?... i would of thought £250 -300

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Its difficult to say without seeing the end because Elm can also have a lot of problems with shake, it also is a relativeley short butt and some of the problems from the fork/ side branch will run back into the tree. There is also considerable fluting to the butt which at best would decrease the volume of boardfeet recovered from the butt and at the worst could be an indication of shake but as ive said cant comment on that without seeing the tree end on.Regardless of that i will stick my neck out and say that its worth a lot more than firewood and that potentially there are a couple of second lengths that will also make the grade . I know this may make me sound like some of the merchants that have been described earlier but im just trying to illustrate the points any buyer would be looking at when buying this tree. If the tree was sound and there was either more to go with it or you would store untill haulage was in the area then you could be looking in excess of your quoted figure.Just out of interest do you have a vlume in hoppus for the butt?

sorry i have yet to deal with a merchant that is not a shark yet... i have yet to have sold a large parcel and walk away with out been taken advantage of,more than often it could of been worth more than treble in fire wood.

I have had to many bad encounters to list !all my timber will now go as my own fire wood if they dont offer what i want for it!

The truth of the matter is that a lot of lower grade timber has very little value

and for a number of years now has been competing with imports.Since the closure of most of the pits the outlets for lower grade hardwood have been limited -- I came into this industry in 1973 and have seen a lot of changes through the years ive dealt with both good and bad over the years but i can honestly say that there are some good merchants/sawmills in this country.What i have found over the years -- i started my career as a roundwood buyer/ measurer is that because someone has big timber they automatically think its good in the case of oak mentioned in another post just because its 3-400 years olddoesnt automatically make it worth a lot because of problems with shake etc.The other thing that ive noticed and ive seen lots of photos on this site along with timber offered out of yards is very badly presented timber. The final point i will make is that a lot of merchants/ sawmills are very reluctant to push the boat out on timber offered to them from arbwork because of contamination from metal.If you do have what you consider to be a good parcel of timber - particularly hardwood in the future then p.m me and i will do my best to place it for you