clueless

tom is that 4 ton? what cable have you got it with?

swb - you beat me to it! double drum is probably a bit overkill at the mo especially that money. we're not in it full time its just a hobby.

well thinking about it as we're probably not puling massive distances and there would be two of us on the job most of the time so going basic with cord control probably makes sense for a first timer. i see wilsons have a ex demo igland 55 for decent money (on their website anyway not sure if its still there). do you have anything lying about Chris?

hi we've come to the descision we need to buy a winch, to enable efficient extracting over the winter. There seems to be 101 different makes, sizes, features, extras etc etc and i'm a bit confused. Surely someone has been in this situation before and can offer some help. Our Tractor is 85hp so i have been drawn to something about 5t so that it 'looks right' but am not dead set on that size. the timber we will be pulling out is mainly birch, ash up to 12" and a lot of mature hawthorn. not really looking to pull out much bigger as its only for firewood. may do some bigger stuff if theres windblown needs shifting (bit of pocket money!) do i need remote control/radio control/dead man brake etc etc preferably would look at a farmi as thats what my local dealer offers. thanks for your help

i used to have a loadrunner micro dumper from load master engineering (competitor of mucktruck) which could take 330kg and was manual tip, changeable bed also. this was on tyres and was very kind to the ground when turning. i couldnt get on with it on the jobs i was using it for (paired with a micro digger for doing round the back of house stuff) but sold it to a mate whos a builder and he reckons its the best thing hes ever bought. for the right sort of job they are brilliant but i have to be honest unless you have a suitable application in mind day in day out then theyre a bit of a white elephant. just googled loadrunner and cant find anything recent; have they gone bust?

hi anyone know a cheap website for flue liners/flue lining kits? just been quoted nearly £600 and thats to install myself (6" 9M) cheers

i use a company called owens road services as they are local to me but i have had stuff shipped all over the country with them. they are part of palletline i think but i generally pay about 45 quid a pallet. had a firewood processor shipped from northumberland the other day for 80quid on a double pallet. cant fault them.

yeah she's got a loader on and a silage grab but what i find is that when you pick up a bundle its sticking out the sides of the footprint of the tractor so you cant get out of cramped areas easily. hence why i'm looking at a grapple as it picks up long ways. christ that doesnt make sense does it! picking up with a winch - will that enable me to pick up the whole bunch or will there still need to be some gear dragging along the ground? i need to keep the timber as clean as possible as its only thin stuff cheers for the help so far

yeah i'm not quite sure how that would handle the crappy stuff like a bundle of 3" - 4" diameter lengths

to be honest i've not got a lot of big stuff to pull out but the ability to winch something out, grab it end on and take it to a laydown area is all i'm looking for and a japa seems like the cheapest way forward. i just need to work out what sort of winch can go on it. also i'm thinking the japa without the slewing function is the best option due to failure of the slewing ram being mentioned a few times that bgu machine looks handy but it also looks pricey! cheers

buzz - its only going on a little newholland 6635 doing thinning so wouldnt be picking up that much weight anyway mr ed - i was thinking of that option but cant work out what winch would be best to put onto it because i would think it would be limited to a hyd or electric (i.e. superwinch type job) due to the space available and short length to pto. what do you reckon?

hi guys i'm looking at the option of a linkage mounted skidder to remove timber from my woods. basically its the most financially sound option at this stage as the woods arent bringing home enough bacon to justify anything better. i cant seem to find any other makes than japa and riko. i like the japa because its simple and fairly rigid, whereas i like the riko as it has a little winch on it which would come in very handy for pulling out little bits and bobs that the tractor wont back up to. any comments or suggestions as to other makes or even anybody used this type of setup before? cheers

gensetsteve - what do you class as amazing? looks a nice setup by the way not your everyday gardeners polytunnel is it

random question but how much quicker will logs dry in a polytunnel environment? i.e. is a polytunnel a worthy investment if you can get you logs to market quicker than normally seasoned ones

mr ed - does that rojek machine screen the small stuff (i.e. leaves, twigs etc) from the bigger stuff (i.e. small logs) because i see it has two bags on it and looking at their website the amount of green on the gear they put through it i would expect it to come out a lot different to what they show the logs to look like. hope that makes sense!

let me know if you got my PM cheers

we are looking to get a bigger processor at the moment as ours is too small (hakki pilke eagle) and we need something a bit more productive. looking at either a haki pilke 1x37 or a palax ks35 i think. i can get stuff from tree surgeons, and we produce a fair bit ourselves but i'm specifically keen on sourcing by the wagon load in order to fully assess possible margins etc that can be made by bulk production

Hi guys, sorry if this is something which is repeately asked I am looking at going into firewood production semi-full time. I’m not going to ask if anyone thinks this is a good idea because I am still trying to make it add up in my own mind. (I welcome your thoughts though). What I have realised is that I don’t have enough seasoned logs in ‘stock’ to keep me going at the moment (well, come winter time anyway) before our other logs are seasoned enough. And conversely, I don’t want to pan the whole idea, just because I don’t have enough logs bagged and seasoned already. How do I go about sourcing timber in the mean time? I notice a lot of people by it in by the wagon load to process themselves and this is the sort of this I want to look at doing. Also Is it possible to buy in seasoned timber for processing? I'm in south wales by the way if that makes a difference presumaby to haulage costs I would appreciate any help and guidance you can give as I said before I am trying to make the figures stack up in my head before making any big moves and want to make sure I can get some decent saleable stuff in so that I don’t have to risk selling stuff that isn’t 100% and hence lose repeat business. Thanks again

Ian - thanks for that document, its kind of an expanded version of something I've already got but now in a lot more detail. Firewood man - note quite sure what you mean - you mean you think doing it in a ring kiln is the less work option? not getting on with oil drums either at the moment. although te weather didnt help last weekend.

Hi Guys I would be interested to hear peoples opinions on charcoal making as its something that doesnt seem to get very good 'reviews' especially from a commercial point of view. I note a lot of the time that 'normal' firewood production seems to be favoured over charcoal production. why is this? Is anybody making charcoal commercially or has anybody tried it and moved on? Please let me know your experiences. the reason i ask is because we were/are producing a lot of thin stuff from thinning out and entering a management phase of our woodland after it had been neglected for a number of years. we do not have a chipper and felt that charcoal production would be a way of adding value to and using these small ends that are too small for firewood. We had a go with a retort kiln over last summer but found this difficult to manage with a lack of heavy machinery (kiln was stillage orientated). we are now producing small batches of product using oil drums which whilst we know isnt as productive as say a ring kiln but it is allowing us to start small and perhaps understand the process a bit better before hopefully upgrading, if we can see that it makes commercial sense. as a side note one of the main advantages for us of using oil drums is that we can do a burn and bag the product over the same weekend which i belive would take 2.5 days with a ring kiln. i would also been very keen to know if there is anybody producing using a ring kiln in south wales that would be willing to share some knowledge in person in exchange for some graft? cheers for the replies in advance

thanks for your comments guys some good food for thought there

hi David thanks for your reply, i agree with you to an extent but what we have is classed as 'aincent' but to me its just a mess. there are no established cants that we can work as it has all 'gone over' over the last 50 years or so. we understand that there was a coppice system in rotation around 1940 but since that period its all been left to go. where we are at now is trying to bring back some form of coppice system so that we can work certain areas and also the other areas that are basically overgrown with bramble etc we are just mulching up and bring back to meadow. i appreciate your comments on working with aincent techniques but to be honest we're only in this for a hobby (gpd forbid it manages to pay the mortgage one day that will be a dream come true) and only have the weekends due to my 'day job' so it suits us better to use the kit i already have to make the weekends as productive as possible in the hope that one day we'll get some pocket money back by selling firewood, charcoal etc etc i have read much about fagots in forestry/coppicing literature but have not really got any more of an idea on how to produce a saleable fagot, what the user looks for, what its purpose is and where to sell them. i know its basically a bundle of twigs used in embankment stabilisation, but any further info on them would be appreciated. cheers

shreks wee brother - doing the earthworks and stabilisation on the stuart milne housing site on the side of the hill there. talk about microclimate! standing 4 days a week due to rain in june, july and august i couldnt beleive it! jamie - thats what i'm thinking. was going to run over it with the digger to make the heap a bit more approachable from ground level, then go at it with the flail mower. she's heavy duty but i still have reservations about the stuff being too hard/big for it. still, even if i had to replace all the flails it would probably be cheaper than buying a shredder. i dunno i just dont want to trash my kit you know... mestereh - not really its a bit enclosed where it is and wouldnt want to risk it. i accept thats the simplest solution though. cheers again for the replies

hi guys hurdles etc are out of the question as the stuff is too messy for that (i.e. its not nice and neat and straight and good quality) what sort of chipper do i want to be looking at with drum discs not blades? cheers

hi mate i'll see if i can get some pics up next weekend when i'm back from work. i accept the fact it needs money spent on it whichever way we go and we've been toying with the idea of getting a pto chipper for a good while now but having come across some of the more basic shredders (i.e. the menart type) on tinterweb lately i was wondering if they may be a better option to compost down quicker. although i'm sure you'll tell me that a 'chip' will compst just as quick as a 'shred'. as far as chipping as soon as you cut - yes 100% agree but unfortunately you are right in saying that we've let the piles build up, thats the problem when your making access with a 13ton digger you just swing the crap out the way! its a small world i spent most of last summer in largs whilst on a job at inverkip cheers