firewood

I season my wood outside in vented bags, sitting on pallets with the top only covered with tarps or old corrugated sheets. a barn to dry stuff is nice if you have it but it is not essential. I would say that the most critical thing is airflow and then temperature. get the wind howling thru it but keep the rain off. a container kiln could work but as mentioned above uniform airflow would be a problem. I dont think you could just load it up willy-nilly. you would need to stack every piece of wood that went into it to ensure channels for the air to circulate . that is a cost in itself. there would be a cost to power your fan or fans. with regards to heating if you could use woodchip or sawdust waste (from your processor?) that could be cost effective. If you have to use your own firewood to burn I would say forget it and stick to normal airdrying unless you can sell your final kilned product for £160m3 as some seem to do. Also i would not place the fire inside the kiln. one little spark and your wood is gone. burner outside / heat transfered inside as hot air or use radiators. if you already have the container , burner and fans and fuel source go for it. if you have to buy them in i would say do not bother

yes i wonder...............

cheers old hand. will give them a go. do you know if the chainsaw belt has to be toothed. what is the reason for the toothed belt anyway? grip?

If I was looking around for a much bigger capacity machine i would also look stateside. I know there may be issues with CE compliance (if you employ staff to run the machine) and there may be import duties etc but take a look at these badboys..... especially the "rapid loco" a snip at $65k CRD Metal Works, Manufacturer of the Woodbine Family of Firewood Processors -

fantastic avatar:lol: i need to get a bumper sticker made up of that.

bob i run a 1x37( Easy control) Hakki owned for just over a year and had about 1000 ton pushed thru it. (90% softwood) I have not managed to trash any bearings yet but i am a maniac with a grease gun! I give every nipple a pump at least once a week. However i do go thru lots of belts. to date 6 sets of 3 off the main gearbox and 3 chainsaw belts. I use standard tractor belts as replacement and i suspect that they are not quite tough enough. maybe a belt made of a harder compound if available, would be better. they do seem to stretch every 50 tons or so. I suspect that the less sharp the chain is the more stress / wear in the drive belts. The chain may still cut but not easily enough. not yet seen any sign of wear on the infeed or out feed belts. how are you loading yours? I presume you have a log deck. if this is set at too steep an angle it can batter the infeed conveyor especially if you putting big diameter lengths thru. consequent stress on deck bearings and infeed belt and rollers. I have noticed a small oil weep on the gearbox / pump but this is very small and has not got any worse. this started when the pto shaft i was using failed (sent shock thru machine?) specifically what belts have failed on yours?

But you have hit the nail on the head for all arboriculture and forestry related industries when you say: "we are all price takers not price makers." There in lies the lack of marketing, regulation, and sense of self worth which this industry desperatley needs. Great debate. For the likes of contractors, fallers and firewoodmen the problem stems from the fact that too much market power is concentrated at the top and bottom ends of the market. The supply side is dominated by the FC and the landed estates. The demand side is dominated by too few large customers (sawmills). The meat in this sandwich is us. you end up being squeezed from both ends.

Or " it takes a big hammer to drive in a big nail" seriously though i lost 2.5 stone in two months by cutting out anything containing or cooked in fat e.g chrisps, biscuits, chocolate, chips, pies, pasties. whenever you feel like eating any of the above have a banana instead. weigh yourself once a week and see the pounds fall away.

no. the splitter activates normally as the saw is brought up. normally i only have to use the pedal when splitting up pre cut rings. looked at the linkage again today. I may be wrong but it seems as if the little upright rod activated by the pedal is slightly too short to easily activate the mechanism. is this sort of wear common? TBH i do not know what it was like when brand new so hard to be sure. I gave the whole undercarriage a blow out with an airline as well today so am pretty sure this is not a chip of wood in the wrong place causing the problem.

Doug what you say is true. however, we are in a free market for firewood with lots of substitute products i.e oil, coal, gas, electricity, wood pellets and briquettes. If you want to sell into the market you do so at a price that competition from other log suppliers and substitute products sets. i.e. we are all price takers not price makers. some of these products are easy to use( i.e. flick a switch or turn a thermostat ) but expensive. some are cheaper but require effort on the part of the customer( i.e handling and stacking logs). Unlike many of my competitors, I'm trying to build myself a fulltime year round business. to do this i need a high volume of sales. this comes partly from a quality product but it mostly comes from competitive pricing. This is because only about 20% of my customers burn wood as a lifestyle choice (they like a wood fire, its the green thing to do etc). These customers would probably tolerate paying £100 a cube for their wood. The other 80% of my custom is from people for whom wood burning is an economic choice as they perceive it as better value than the alternatives. They are very price sensitive and owe me no loyalty in the first instance (once i've supplied them for a while i hope they view me as indispensable!) I could set my price at £50 / m3 minimum for say softwood but in the current market i would only sell about 10% of what I am currently turning over. to me that means no viable business! So i price accordingly to beat who i can on price and look to volume to deliver my profit. I know it's not the only strategy but it is working for me.

so from their website 1m3 = £160! That is more expensive than coal! does anyone know of any customers who buy or have bought this "kiln dried" wood at these sorts of prices? looking at various other "national" suppliers on the web it appears to me that one of the biggest attractions for customers must be the fact that the wood is crated and can be forked into position at customer premises in a ready made logstore. but you you sure pay for that luxury.

no wonder I cant sell hardwood round ballater:lol: softwood is plentiful and nice and easy to process so £90 to £120 for 2.5m is ok depending on distance. However, hardwood seems to be in short supply, is expensive to buy in and I would not sell it for less than £180 for 2.5m3. what has not sold so far will go quickly in the week before xmas and the following weeks as people come to the end of the first loads they bought in October IMO if you are selling at £130 for a load of hardwood there is more profit in selling softwood at £90 a load so why bother? I appreciate that the economics may be different if you are getting your wood for "free" as a tree surgeon or contractor.

Doug I agree with you wholeheartedly. all we have to do now is convince our customers to pay 2010 prices:thumbup1:

Thanks Steve I think the bolt may be the problem. I'll give it a turn

Thanks Steve I think the bolt may be the problem. I'll give it a turn

for a first go that's pretty good. so far i've only ripped up oversize softwoods (that wont fit thru the processor) into planks and posts. my first 4x 2s where very trapezoidal. it takes a bit of practice to get the hang of squaring things up. But as you say it adds character. the" rustic" look is always good

no it's clear of debris

the foot pedal that releases the splitting ram only works after several hard pushes. This has happened suddenly, one minute it was fine the next it wasn't. have had a look at the linkage but cannot see anything obviously amiss. does anyone have any ideas?

One would hope it is better money than logs however from posts on here and what i have heard thru the trade (in grampian region) it seems it is on a par or worse. there seem to be more and more suppliers selling 60x45 cm nets for around the £1 mark wholesale. I guestimate that you can get about 85 to 90 bags of kindling out of 2.5m3 of split logs = £90 at best. I can achieve £90 to £120 selling 2.5m3 of split logs (softwood) without the additional costs of nets and bagging up. I know that, retail, kindling could fetch £3 to £4.50 per bag but if you need to make a kindling machine pay for itself you must also be selling wholesale. So, has kindling had it's day?

sorry, i didn't make myself clear. my argument is that there is more than enough firewood in the uk to meet domestic demand if the demand is spread a bit more evenly throughout the year. as a supplier it is much easier to respond to spikes in demand on a month by month basis rather than solely in November , December & January. Kiln drying is a symptom of the fact that demand is not spread throughout the year. It provides a quicker way to meet spikes in demand by fast forwarding the seasoning process. the process has its own drawbacks such as increased energy inputs and moisture reabsorption if not treated carefully. The higher cost of such products to the end customer is also a big consideration. personally i'm not convinced that the extra few % mc of dryness is worth the premium you would pay for kiln dried in terms of the extra BTUs extracted when burning.

Right. This link takes you to a rehash of the underlying Grauniad article here: Rise in domestic wood burning threatened by poor supply from local forests | Environment | The Guardian The article starts by reporting the rise in wood burner sales and from this extrapolates that we will not be self sufficient in firewood. note that it does not state that firewood is being imported only that we have net imports of 180,000 tons of wood and wood products most of which we can surmise is timber for construction. there would be some woodchip in this figure for power stations. The article then goes on to talk about rogue suppliers selling green wood as there is not enough seasoned product to go round (2008 / 2009 season). what it fails to mention is that if, as a customer, you want a guaranteed supply of dry wood you should be buying it in March or April for use the following winter. you should not be trying to order it 5 minutes before you need to burn it! The problem is not shortage or undersupply it is the fact that 90% of the demand is squeezed into 4 months of the year. as has been stated on arbtalk many times before customers need educating in this respect. the alternative is for us suppliers to tie up lots of capital in drying wood throughout the spring and summer until the winter. this we all generally do but you cannot respond quickly to big increases in demand. spread out that demand and you can. As to the economics of importing firewood into the UK i do not believe it currently stacks up. my guess is that if hardwood delivered by the artic load to say Hampshire is currently £40 ton then the cost of imported product to the same location would be in the region of £60 ton. the £20 difference to cover the extra handling of loading into ship, actual shipping, unloading ship and final artic delivery. The other point to bear in mind is that if the market price ever did rise to the £60 level this would also bring more UK supply to the market, dropping the price and rendering the imported stuff too expensive JayVee over to you.

If you are a domestic customer it is simple.....just get the supplier to quote per cubic m3 loose loaded onto the back of the truck or trailer. as long as you have this info from all your potential suppliers you can make valid cost comparisons. you can also measure the truck or trailer that turns up to deliver to ensure you are not being cheated.

the jets from lossiemouth regularly low fly over my house. a couple of times they have been so low that the leaves in the trees blow around in the slipstream. used to scare the hell out of the dog as well