Big J

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.

Haha! The timber grows so beautifully there though that young, 10cm DBH birch is an economically viable crop. No branches, no fuss. It can be easily harvested mechanically too.

Hmmm, fair enough. I just hate lifting things manually when I have a machine that could do it for me. I could crane feed a chipper for 12 hours a day, but not by hand. Thanks for the heads up on the utility side of things.

I was also thinking about having an independently powered chipper. So 44bhp for the forwarder and more than that for the chipper.

Brainstorming this evening ideas for ways to deal with on site brash first resulted in the idea for a bed mounted branch logger. This is perhaps not a brilliant idea, but is certainly worth exploring. However, I'm increasingly wondering if a bed mounted, independently powered chipper with an 8 inch capacity might be a very handy tool. So, would a low impact machine, weighing less than 3 tonnes with a powerful chipper and a crane to feed it be a useful proposition? I could see a lot of work with utility companies as I'm low enough to work under power lines. I'd start with a reasonable second hand diesel chipper. Perhaps one that's on a fast tow chassis, but the trailer part of it is beyond repair. Then have a custom frame fabricated with a turntable so that it can be fed from either side. Maybe a (wired) remote control for off/on, throttle etc so that it can be controlled from the forwarder cab. Thoughts?

I will do. He manages a very large estate with outstanding forestry practices.

You are probably right. Maybe too much faff, but I just hate the waste. I've emailed a very knowledgeable forester in north east Scotland whose estate had invested in one a few years ago. He wasn't entirely convinced about it a few years ago when I last spoke to him about it, but I was wondering if the market had moved on since then. I'm keeping an open mind and am happy to be persuaded either way.

I very much like the idea of branch loggers, but not snedding the branches out. If they can't be fed if (mostly) whole, it's going to be too time consuming to be viable. Maybe I ought to go back to the idea of a chipper mounted onto the bed of the forwarder which I crane feed. Probably a lot quicker than branch logging, albeit it's then only a cost as I have no product to sell. The bed of the forwarder could carry a fairly substantial chipper (provided you could drive under it and lower it onto it - the crane wouldn't lift anything larger than about 750kg) and being self powered, it would make short work of the brash if it was crane fed. There are a lot of campsites in the area too. You could push the sustainability angle from the point of view that it would otherwise just be left on site to rot.

I'll have a chat with one of my neighbours - they have an 80kw solid fuel boiler that would probably take full bags of the stuff. Not a worry if you've got bits and all in it then.

The website was saying 13 bags to the cube, each bag 25-30kg, so I was working off that. You may be right though. I can't see it making much money, but it would perhaps save a fair bit on sites like that. I have a feeling that I'll find quite a few customers demanding a super tidy specification. You can already get a branch logger with a hydraulic motor: http://www.lumagireland.com/branch-logger-urban-hm-70/ All you'd have to do is fabricate a frame which would serve as a coupling between the forwarder and the logger. I already have auxiliary hydraulics.

Starting in November, I've got a fairly large hardwood thinning job to do (circa 400 tonnes), comprising of mostly ash and beech. The owners of the woodland would like a very tidy finish and have asked for all branchwood to be chipped. I don't own a chipper, and I don't really want to own one if possible. However, I've always liked the idea of branch loggers as a means of producing a low grade, cheap wood fuel. I realise that the product is quite bitty and not favoured by everyone, but the low price of it will mean it's appealing to many. I would think that this site would produce at least 50 tonnes of branch wood, which would produce 120 odd cubic metres of log wood, maybe a little less. Even if you wholesaled it out at £40 a cubic metre (£3 a bag), it would mean a return of nearly £5k, and I can't see it being that much slower than normal chipping? I could maybe have it mounted onto the forwarder, utilising a hydraulically driven PTO. I've 44 bhp on the machine to work with. Then a small farm trailer could be towed behind the forwarder to take the filled bags. It's never going to make much money, but perhaps it could turn a job that costs money into something that produces a bit of income as well as improving the overall yield from the site. Thoughts?

I was walking home last night and decided to take a short cut through the cemetery. Three girls walked up to me and explained that they were scared to walk past the graveyard at night, so I agreed to let them walk along with me. I told them "I understand, I used to get freaked out too when I was alive" Never seen anyone run so fast

I agree that burning plastic isn't ideal, but I read recently that around 70% of plastic packaging in the UK is not presently recyclable. Between it going to landfill and being incinerated in a (hot) home stove, I'm not sure which is worst. At our old house, we found that once summer started in earnest (and we didn't have the fire on), we were easily filling our 240l recycling bin every 2 weeks, with it sometimes being a squeeze. When the fire was on and anything combustible was burnt, it was once every 6-8 weeks, rather than once every fortnight. Quite a difference. We lived (and luckily still do) by ourselves with no neighbours, so any particulate emissions wouldn't be of direct concern to anyone in our vicinity, but I do acknowledge that it's not ideal.

A lot does come down to the individual cutter. Had one chap work for me over a summer (this is going back years). Fresh off a training course, lovely chap, but painfully slow. He'd average 5-6 tonnes per day and no more. On the same material, with a slower saw and not cutting especially quickly I was 9-11 with sometimes 14. He did 8 tonnes in a day twice. Funny thing is that he went on to teach chainsaw operation later on! My point is, if you find quick and efficient cutters (who can put a tonnage on the deck without endangering themselves or others) then hold onto them as they are worth their weight in gold. They aren't all equal

It's too far south for my old sawmill in Scotland, but I've spoken to quite a lot of sawmills in East Devon lately, so might be able to find a home for it here. 3.7m the lot of it, down to 18cm TDUB except for the more fluted butts, where I would take a 2.5m length off first before going onto 3.7s. Careful with your felling not to fell over other stems or logs on the ground. WRC is very brittle and will smash easily.

The figures I quoted were from when we were cutting three days a week doing hardwood self select thinning on trees of a similar size. They are certainly doable for competent cutters. On the last job up in Scotland my cutters did about 1.3 tonnes an hour on fiddly, swept and in places windblown larch clearfell with 400kg per tree, and 1.7 tonnes an hour on larger spruce, with plenty of windblow and selective thinning (sitka hangs like nothing else). Clearfell birch should be quite quick

It's just a Google image as I don't have many photos of mine at all, especially not cutting anything. Can't wait to get started with it.

Is the birch straight enough to put through my stroke processor? The reason I ask is that it's way quicker than hand processing, stacks all the logs for you and stacks all the brash for you too.

Very much so. Some of the butts are a bit fluted, but depending on where you are, I've got a market for it. What is the location of it?

1-1.5 tonnes per hour, depending on the individual competency of the cutter. Maybe a bit more as it's clearfell. When I was cutting regularly 6-8 years ago I would have been confident of doing 14-15 tonnes on a 9 hour day.

It seems mad now that most of the pickups tow 3500kg. When I had a D40 Navara, it was fairly awful for towing, regardless of weight. It's my opinion that the overhand is simply too long (ie, the distance from the rear axle to the tow bar). More often than not it means that unless the trailer is very well loaded, the trailer wiggles constantly. The tail wagging the dog and all that. Since moving over to vans a few years ago I'm completely converted. Stiffer rear suspension, shorter overhang and a longer wheel base all combine to provide a much more stable and comfortable towing experience. The Citroen Relay I had previously was superb for on road towing and even the 4x4 Sprinter I have now is very almost as good (despite having a longer overhang and higher suspension). If you need a pickup, fair enough, but if you don't and you tow regularly, get a van. It's not even like to save much on fuel on pickups, as my vans have always done 32-35mpg unloaded, though I do drive quite slowly. The Sprinter does a solid 24mpg on a 6000kg train weight, which I think is superb.