Big J

Everyone is short of timber at the moment and I haven't heard of anyone paying to dump timber in ages. You will get a better response if you rephrase your question along the lines of "I'm in need of timber, happy to collect and pay a reasonable rate"

Looks a nice wood. You felling as well Jonathan? Sadly not. The presentation is a bit hit and miss, with the wood cut anywhere from 4 to 5m long, which is too long really. It's been sat on the deck for nearly 2 years though as it's not been possible to get it out until now. Oak, birch, ash and hornbeam mostly. Some of it still very heavy.

Not a lot of space to get in or out. Good fun though, even with the 1000m extraction distance and the 1 in 3/4 climb at the end of it!

Why not favour the birch? I remember doing a job many years ago clearing stunning birch regen from a spruce plantation. The sitka was supposedly the improved genetic stock, but the birch still grew more quickly. I'd think about selectively thinning the birch once it's a bit older (another 5 years or so - just fell to waste), leaving the best stems and a bit more light around the better oak. The birch will act as a nurse crop, drawing the oak up. Much quicker rate of return on a birch crop, and if you're left with a nice final crop of oak, even better.

Yew - 1520lbf on the janka hardness scale DF - 660lbf on the janka hardness scale Therefore we can deduce that douglas is 43% as hard as yew. And from a durability point of view, there isn't anything that is widely grown in the UK that is more durable than yew heartwood.

Broadly speaking, all needle bearing trees are softwoods and all broadleaves are hardwoods (except ginkgo bilobo, which is technically neither). Hardwood and softwood really only refers to the reproductive cycle and bears little relation to the hardness of the timber.

As a point aside, why can't I type text after my quote? Any lines I add just get added to the quote, rather than appearing as normal text. Also, when I copy and paste, I don't necessarily want it to appear as a quote. Is there a way of avoiding that?

The forester came back to me and said: As such, it's probably a non-starter. You would need to develop a market locally for the nuggets to work. The small bag (onion sack size) require 2 people. The branch logger machines have changed a little and there is a conveyor set up now which might allow bulk processing into a trailer for later screening (this would allow you to feed through everything which maybe quicker. Tricky one, you might be better with a subbed out chipper

I think you'd just be chipping to waste. Alternatively you could get an old farm tipping trailer and chip straight into that and then tip out. I've no idea how you'd best load it to an 8 wheeler though, as there are no concrete pads close by or telehandlers to load it.

The forwarder is strictly speaking rated to carry 1300kg (keep in mind that the terrain it has to work on is much tougher than for a road going trailer) but 2000kg is fine. I'd rather not bolt something to it that is a lot heavier than it's rated capacity as it seems like an invitation for issues further down the line.

Logbullet mini forwarder - all the details are on their website. Thanks for all the insightful responses. I feel I may be on a hiding to nothing, but I feel that without explorative discourse, I'd just keep doing the same old same old. I like brainstorming ideas, even if they are daft! Back to the drawing board!

Transporting the chipper would be an issue, yes. It would require separate transport to the forwarder. As you and many others have said, the main issue is that it's not going to be worth crane feeding a small chipper. The reach on the crane is 4.2m, so total height of the machine with crane extended vertically is about 5m I'd guess. Maybe back to branch logging?! 😄

I'd just want to wholesale them. I'm not interested and don't have time to retail them or dry them.

Technically a softwood, yes, but harder and denser than anything else native. Pine is hard to beat once dry.