Big J

It will be, yes. 6t.

Definite rip off on price (morning's work for three lads) but the pile of logs seems about right. It's not going to help with this job, but as others have said, get competing quotes next time. I would have put that at £400 max, especially as they didn't need to take away anything.

My main reasons for going for it were as follows: Really low hours, fully guarded but almost no time in the woods. It's only done 150 hours in the last year, and the crane is only 4 years old (tractor is 8). It's a good partner for the mini forwarder. The forwarder does the tight access, the steeper slopes and the low impact. The roof mount crane means it's great for winching. You can still handle the timber once it's winched to the tracks. I see your point about the stability issues. I may yet add legs.

Well, I've gone for it, financing it when I said I was going to keep my gear finance free down here! It proved to be too useful a prospect for it, and I've got loads of work for it next year.

Fair enough Wallis! As I said though, I just get someone else to do the felling if it gets that big but for most of the sites I've ever worked on 50-60cc has been ideal for the bulk of the work with larger saws only needed occasionally.

Possibly. I didn't really use the website. It's more about the face to face meetings with other sawmillers and the contacts you make through that. We'd all pass work around, as in if you couldn't do a job you were asked about, you'd pass it on to the sawmill you thought most suitable. I got tens of thousands of pounds worth of work that way. You also have your listing on the website and get a fair bit of traffic that way. It was the only advertising I ever did and it was more than enough.

Really useful and knowledgeable bunch of people. I learned loads and loads and I like to think I helped others too.

Join the Association of Scottish Hardwood Sawmillers. Loads of smaller scale mills across Scotland. Training days, sawmill visits and a plethora of other benefits for £100 a year. When I was up there, it was literally the only advertising cost I had and I got loads of work through the Association. Secondly, no certificates specific to milling. Just make sure you have your basic chainsaw ticket and ideally emergency first aid at work plus forestry. Thirdly, on a butt that size, you've around 215 hoppus foot in it. It'll take around a day to cut, so a rate of £300-350 would be reasonable.

I should add that for most forestry work 79cc is excessive. I'd always try to use 50cc and failing that 60cc at a push. Beyond that, I just pay someone else to do it! ?

I really liked my 6100 (it's with my old business in Scotland). My only gripe with it was that it would throw it's surclip (which holds the drive sprocket on) on a regular basis. Strong, grunty saw though and well recommended.

My 4 year old daughter sings along to it too, though I refrain from showing her the video, what with all the fake boobs and that.

It's only because she bloody lost the last one. That woman is footloose and fancy free I tell you!

Just bought my wife an artificial leg for Christmas. It's not her main present, just a stocking filler.

I was wondering if anyone can recommend a couple of stoves for burning branch loggings? Friends of ours are looking at getting two stoves. One for their house (5kw would be fine) and one for their cafe that they are in the process of setting up. This week I've been 'copparding' about 50 oversized salix viminalis stools, which once branch logged will produce about 50 odd cubic metres of firewood, if not more. They have a large polytunnel in which to dry it too. They are also taking thousands and thousands of whips from the felled material in order to plant a willow coppice, so that they can be reasonably self sustaining with firewood. Branch logging is obviously a very rapid way of producing woodfuel, but the chunks are smaller. For the 5kw stove, that's not such an issue, but the stove in the cafe needs to be larger (20kw, or more maybe as it has 150 square metres to heat). Ideal would be a top loading stove so that the bags can simply be poured in. I've seen a few on eBay advertised as sawdust burners, but they have no window, which is something they'd like. Additionally, I've no idea if a stove like that would be approved for use in a cafe (external air feed?). Any suggestions much appreciated

I agree with this. Windblow is not to be taken lightly, and motor manual multiple windblow processing is by far the most dangerous job in forestry. The Commission hate sending cutters in to do is and much prefer machines for reasons of safety

There is no one solution that will do everything. My best advice with the chainsaw milling is to cut boards as narrow as possible. The set up performs much better on a narrower cut and on bars 42" and under you completely eliminate bar sag. Better to mill as far as you can go on a narrower throat and then rotate the log (using a winch, or something similar). Very few customers want full width boards. Most are happy with a book match. All good down south. Very busy, much more so than I expected to be

Having run an 84" bar on a double headed mill with two 880s, cutting logs much under capacity is very unpleasant. A lot of chain not buried in wood and I found that it's a stressful endevour for the chain anyway, so they're more likely to snap. Better if it's buried in wood. My best advice would be to keep your old mill as well as having the new one. I used to run a 50" double ended bar too, and that was a much more sensible size.

I use Mike Crutchley. He's back again in January doing winching tickets for us. Then I'll need a tractor based forwarder ticket shortly thereafter. My medium trees took about 2 hours all in. A forward leaner, a backward leaner and one that wasn't leaning. Simples. Still learned a bit though, so I'd never say that they weren't useful courses.

It's daft isn't it? Box ticking taken to the extreme. Not conforming with the industry standard despite being massively overqualified in that area is something some organisations will struggle to reconcile!

I did my CS32 on Monday, 1 to 1 with an assessor in Devon for £130. I can pass on his details if you wish, as he'll cover your area.

Would be a good buy I think, filling the gap between your little Makita and the bigger Makita

Aye, but does he have his EFAW + forestry? If not, he's not coming on my sites! ?

Dropped out of school aged 17 with a couple of AS levels. Parents going through an awful divorce and lots of other things too. I'd had a part time job catering at the local pub which I did full time for a year after that. Enjoyed the rush of professional catering - when you've got orders flying in and you've got to be ruthlessly organised to get it right. Brings out the German in me. Went to Nepal for a couple of months, met me now wife (from Northampton, not Nepal) and started doing social care when I got back. Worked as a home help with the elderly in the village I grew up in and enjoyed it. Moved to Manchester to live with Kathryn, and went into working with adults with severe learning disabilities and autism. Did that for a total of 4.5 years spanning a move to Edinburgh but hated it. People would enthuse about it being a noble vocation, but you're essentially caring for people with the intellectual capacities of squashed apricots and repeating the same routine, day in, day out for years on end. Enough to drive you demented. It's obviously not the fault of the service users, but like the lack of dignity for so many as they become elderly, it's one of the less positive aspects of improved medical care in the 20th and 21st century. Anyway, during that job we moved to a country estate near Edinburgh. I got a chainsaw for doing firewood for the house, the forester saw that I had a good work ethic and said if I got my basic chainsaw tickets, there would be work. At the same time I discovered chainsaw milling. I did three years of three days a week self select thinning in hardwood stands around the estate and greatly enjoyed it. I also built up the sawmilling. I moved to larger premises with the sawmill, paused with the forestry work for a couple of years and focused on supplying quality hardwood for cabinet making. Got bandsawmills, forklifts, other machines. Starting a lot of work with elm harvesting up north, felling for myself but mostly for other people, selling parcels roadside, and buying and selling other parcels too. Spent a while looking for, felling and selling elm for veneer. Got into doing cedar for beehive manufacture too. Bought a couple of machines specifically for it. Chances are today that if you buy a UK manufacturer bee hive, the timber will have been cut by us. We then decided to move to Devon, so I sold the sawmill and went back to low impact forestry. Bought a little forwarder, a little processor and a nice 4x4 Sprinter to tow them. Have an alpine tractor with a winch now too, and looking at financing a Valtra with trailer and larger winch. We've got loads and loads of work ahead of us and I've never been busier. Enjoying a great deal too. It's nice to be in the woods and not having to deal with customers all the time. I've enjoyed reading this thread too and hearing the back stories of others on Arbtalk

Depends on how much the extended family get on my nerves! Could be a week, could be a day. If the weather is reasonable, I'll go fishing. If it's not, I'll probably still go fishing!