gensetsteve

We are £180 for 2 cu metres or £95 for 1. I can see its going to be painfull breaking the £200 barrier. I told a couple of my customers last year I may pack up the processing as my processor is getting knackered and price of cord has gone through the roof. The response from all was shrug shoulders and people will need to get their logs from somewhere and you will need to charge enough to make a profit can we order now.

I would rather hang onto my stock till next winter than give it away. If Margins are tight, and at less than £80 a cube they got to be non excistent if you buy cord in. I would rather do less if profit is tight there are plenty of other things to do without competeing with people who cant add up.

About this time of year we get a load of posts about how the bloke down the road is too cheap. Then December the posts go anyone know where there is some cord. So I thought I would create a fire wood sellers bible. Any I have forgotten please add. This year there will be more unemployed than ever but remember you can only cut and store 10 loads before you loose interest. Even if the winter is mild, the demand has gone up 6 fold from last year so there will probably be a shortage again. People shop around for the cheapest deal this time of year best to go on holiday and come back end of November. While the price of fossile fuels stays high you dont need to give your logs away. Why sell for £60 a cube and sell out at christmas when you can sell for £90 + and sell out in march. You have seasoned it for 12 months whats another 3. All dry wood burns well . Wet unseasoned wood gives you a bad rep and stops those repeat September sales which boost your bank acct. Humans generally dont buy wood unless the temperature drops below 5 deg. Alot of people dont value your effort sell them some cord and a hand axe you will have a customer for split logs for life.

I had a email from one of the baltics could have been a scam but may be worth looking at 10kg nets of hardwood 2.40 euro landed in ireland in container 2600 bags.

If its dry will be 1500kg + trailer = 2500kg If its wet 3000kg + trailer = too much

16 tonnes or 24 metres I dont think I will get that through our 2x a 1x42 with loader maybe

I have sussed out why there is such a difference in price you live north of Watford and the cost of living is much cheaper. A £90,000 house your way would be £400,000 down here.

The td5 sounds like it is revving harder than it is. Half the time you need to watch the tacho and rev it higher. We had a 300 and a td5 You could rev the 300 to 3000 rpm without thinking about it but the Td5 sounds like it is going to blow at 2000 rpm. I tow 3500kg of loaded trailer and would not bother chipping mine especially now its got 150k on the clock once wound up goes like scalded cat. If you chip it you can get alot of head problems and cracked manifolds.

A tonne of green hardwood makes 1.5 -1.6 cubic metres of loose logs but will be half as heavy when seasoned.

I am guessing Galloway is not the place go processing. £20 to process + your free wood = £20 and the bags sell for £80 - £140 so the person gets £20 for doing all the work and you get £60 for doing nothing.

I hope the stoves are not as bad as the generators.

I have a friend who comes in and helps. we cut the cord to manageable sizes and load by hand. in a 7 hour day we get about 10 - 12 loose cubic metres processed. I would expect at least £300 for the day. I would not be charging £160 just to see the logs being sold for £1200 at christmas. Some people want to pay to little for their logs and some people want to charge to much but we all have to make a living.

Last time I see a post on here about pop at road side in cord it was worth £5 a tonne. If you get any jobs where you would like nice straight lengths of beech ash and oak removed I am just down the road. I have given financial advice to poor land owners in the past ( sell some land and run your new Range Rover into the ground rather than replace every year seems to help )

I would say most systems too much time and hassle. When we did billets we used to stack well and if we got one wrong we used to put a small ratchet strap round.

stretchy plant ties or insulateing tape.

I think both good quality machines. I would pick the one with the most powerful ram if you are going to put your oak through it. I think the Dalen is good for stuff with a bit of a bend in it.

Yes but they may just notice sitting in a warm cab flicking levers is a lot easier than standing in the rain pulling wet wood in and out of a processor. I like their logic though 'we dont earn much doing one thing lets see if we can earn less doing something else'. Mind you £20 an hour is more than we earn when we buy in cord and retail logs to the public so they must be doing something right.

I think Oak gets a bad press as it needs alot longer to season. Commercially that is bad news especially when you add in conversion factor. I expect it gets sent before its ready.

my 1.5 cu bags 3/4 fill my 2cu metre truck so I would say about right.

So that must include those 16ft 3 axle ifor trailers you see on 4x4

It could be, my thing is big diesels and it could be because we cancel the load for a few minutes to save the turbo before shut down. Maybe someone like spud could advise. I would have thought any oil round the bearings is more likely to evaporate if the saw is cooking with no air flow. You could be right especially with the new saws.

But processing is so profitable you may as well do it all yourself

I had a G reg with 19j engine about 15 years ago. Under powered compared with the 200 tdi . The engine let go at 65k so i did a proper rebuild in the workshop. After 6000 miles it started breathing oil into the air filter again. Bearing in mind I have been building 50 litre v16 lumps for over 20 years itstruck me as a very poor engine. We chopped it in for for a 300 which was vastly better. Apart from the crap gearbox, headgasket blowing between 3 and 4 every 80,000 miles and the cambelt snapping and the water pump gasket letting go it was quite reliable for a landrover.

If you allow the engine to tick over for a minute or so after heavy work I have a theory it helps extend the life of the coils. Shutting a hard worked 2 stroke down leaves alot of heat which travels up the crank to the flywheel. I would also think leaving an engine to tick over allows a better coating of oil for the bearings on restart. When i start my saws I tend to allow them to idle on the ground for a while then pick a small log and use 3/4 throttle. Just feels a bit cruel on a frosty morning to plough into a 2ft but 10 seconds after starting.

We had some ex battery hens. They often recover but problem is they often suffer prolaps as they are so inbred and not used to running about their guts fall out. I said if I get more hens in future they will be well bred sturdy jobs.