Big J

The 79cc is the one Jonathan . Same weight more punch. Like a 440 vs 460 It is a lovely saw, and I used to have two but they stayed with my old business. These days, I take the view that if I'm on the saws cutting, I'm doing something wrong as I ought to be sat on my forwarder watching my ass grow and exhausting my pointing finger ? As such, the slightly more gutless model will do if it's £100 cheaper

I would say that must be a possibility as I have a 435 that I'm borrowing. I started a spruce clearance job with it before getting a 550xp and was felling trees up to 20" at stump without issue. It was slow but useable. A 20cm cut would take about 6-7 seconds at a guess.

https://www.worldofpower.co.uk/makita-ea7300p45e-73cc-petrol-18-45cm-professional-chainsaw.html I will very likely order one shortly. I had one of it's predecessors when I had the sawmill. Very fast and powerful saws, and they give away nothing to their Stihl and Husqvarna counterparts, yet they are £350 cheaper.

Sensible policy. The hill road from Cullompton to Honiton just gets me down to 2nd gear at the top in both directions. It's supposed to be a main road too! I'll get the van booked in with a Mercedes specialist, assuming there is one reasonably locally.

I'm wondering if you lot decrease your service intervals on your arb trucks to account for towing and other heavy work? My 4x4 sprinter now spends at least half it's time towing heavy and despite being upped to 160bhp, I spend a lot of time with my foot stapled to the floor. Devon is very hilly. I've put 7k on it since I bought it, and it was services around a thousand miles before that. I'm getting to the stage of wanting to service it again, despite the computer telling me it's not needed for another 12k. What preventative maintenance do you all do for your tow trucks?

Can anyone share their experiences working with alpine tractors in a forestry setting? There is a fairly large woodland locally with an abundant stock of decent hardwood in it and I am fairly sure that if I offer to thin it for free (ie, in return for the timber) that they will bite my hand off. Access is poor and the extraction route is long. With my little forwarder, an alpine tractor skidding and a cutter felling, you'd be lucky to do 20 tonnes a day. The woodland in question has a good access track right through it, but it slopes quite steeply up from that, and then falls away at the bottom. I had through that a reasonably meaty alpine tractor with a skidding grapple (with a rotator) would work quite well to skid the stems down to the track, where they could be cut to length ready for forwarding. Division of labour would be cutter fells and sneds out, tractor operator skids out and cuts to length and I forward out. What really appeals about the little tractors is the versatility. A reasonable sized winch could be fitted when needed, and there is enough power for a branch logger if I ever get round to scratching that itch. What are your collective experiences, oh wise folk of Arbtalk ??

Aberdeen is pretty miserable actually. Loads of sea mist and perpetual grey skies.

You have to remember that for timber to reach it's ultimate EMC takes quite some time. If firewood retailers waited for EMC to be achieved, they'd all be bankrupt. Additionally, it doesn't take into account regional and local variation. Where we were near the Firth of Forth, the sea mist was a frequent occurrence and as was the drizzle. The climate was markedly drier just a touch further inland. Either way, my experience of EMC is that this year was the driest on record. With my £300+ moisture meter (Delmhorst J-2000 with hammer probe) we had moisture contents down to 13% in the sawn timber piles and also the firewood. Standard MC over winter was always a little over 20%. No sawn timber would ever make it right through winter under 20%.

The reservoir is indeed the chain oil and it's gravity fed. Not sure about the oil holes.

I've opted to reduce the throat to 18 inches (24 inch bar). Fewer teeth to sharpen, cheaper bars and chains and given than an 18 inch cut would likely come from a 24 inch log, my forwarder won't lift anything larger anyway. Plus, quicker cutting.

We had Tom Dixon (Tom D on the forum) in a few years back with his 8-400 and it was excellent. We put a very large pile of sawmill offcuts through it and on a 7hr day produced about 145 cubic metres of chip.

Looks like we will be limited to 3.7kw as that's the largest single phase motor available. I'm no concerned though as the cutting power ought to be somewhere between an MS661 and an MS880, coupled with the fact that the mill isn't running on the surface of the wood, meaning no friction. I've opted to reduce the cut length to 16ft as my forwarder won't easily handle 20ft and I don't have vast amounts of space here. I will probably fit a 3/8 low profile chain. Mark - I'll save you the offcuts mate Once mine is in and I'm happy with it, I'm happy to organise mills for other Arbtalkers. A good occasional mill me thinks

Looking forward to getting it here and installed. My feeling with regards to chainsaw mills is that the chainsaw is the weak link. Having gone from diesel to petrol through to electric on my three original band mills (Woodmizer, Logmaster and Trakmet), I can testify that electric is by far the superior power option. With it being single phase and not too heavy, it's technically mobile too assuming you have something to lift it on and off. It is 7 metres long though.

I'll be wasteful with the cutting, so thick offcuts (no edging) and square edged boards throughout. About £2500 fully assembled and collected from Wales, I think. Plus VAT. Somewhere in that ballpark as there are still some variables.

After 2 short months without a sawmill, I've ordered one for my own personal use. I've not yet had to purchase any timber from anyone else, and with the new one arriving in 6 weeks, I'm hopeful that I won't. Keeping it really simple and low cost, so a carriage chainsaw mill, with a 6m cut and a 55cm throat. 3.5 to 5kw single phase electric motor (to be finalised), from an engineering company who I've bought from before and who produce solidly built and well designed kit. I'm only intending to cut the odd beam, rail, and occasional batch of cladding for myself, and with me producing timber with the forestry work, I'm not worried about the waste from the 3/8 chain kerf. More details to come, but I felt that it was the simplest, best value way of producing good quality timber with minimum fuss.

Sorted, many thanks Woodwizard!

Having sold my business earlier in summer, most of my saws went with it. I kept a small old Tanaka (45cc or so) and a 395xp but having nothing inbetween. I've also a tiny Husky that I'm borrowing too. I thought I'd only need a large saw for doing my firewood and small saws to keep on the forwarder but I was mistaken. I've been doing a small softwood job where I've been felling for my processor, and the Tanaka is painfully slow. Does anyone have a spare 50-60cc saw that they want to sell me? I'm back to the job next week and would rather not persevere with the toy saws.

I was out playing with the processor (Kranman P25B) today winching out some sitka from a super boggy little corner of a woodland. It's been a learning curve today, but the machine performs well and makes short work of stems up to about 8 inch, and manages bigger sticks too. It didn't like the willow at all though. Much too bendy. Anyway, I'll have 25-35 tonnes of 3m sitka by the middle of next week roadside. 350mm down to 50mm or so. Who would you be approaching as regards finding a home for it? I'm thinking Euroforest, which means I'm selling my soul to the devil and it'll probably end up in Kent! Any other suggestions? All help much appreciated. I'm finding quite a lot of work in Devon now and won't have to travel to Scotland again I don't think. I've been working with the National Trust near Tiverton, and I'll be starting with them at Killerton too shortly. I would like a bit more work for the processor though. Jonathan

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.