Big J

What about a Mercedes Vario? Always fancied one myself and they also come in 4 wheel drive: MERCEDES 814 VARIO 4X4 CREW CAB CHASSIS CAB EX ELECTRICITY BOARD.. YEAR 2002 | eBay

I had one for over two years. Survived the first 19 months of my daughters existence as a chew toy/throwing toy. Excellent phone but retired for a tough smart phone (Kyocera KC-S701 - very good actually. Crap battery life compared the Aldi phone, but as someone who was smart phone phobic, it's converted me).

That tree has presumably been standing there for 400-500 years, without any major issues (I presume) with kids eating berries. Such a bloody shame. The yew has lovely form and seems to be in the prime of life.

I think that I possibly have an out and out winner for category of worst overloading of anything ever.... Chatting to an Irish contractor working on the dualling of the A9 at Kincraig at the pub the other night, he said he'd taken the Mitsubishi L200 and Ifor trailer up to the scrappies in Inverness with some shuttering. Towed it the whole 38 miles there and turns out he had 8 tonnes of steel on the trailer (tri axle). The way he chatted about it, it didn't even seem much like it was much out of the ordinary! I've no idea how he got up the Slochd towing that weight!

Good on you for trying to change their minds but this has to go down as one of the worst reasons I've ever heard for removing what has to be an historic tree of some significance.

We've recently done a 80% clearfell on elm (the remaining 20% was ash/maple/sycamore) and it's impossible not to leave some brash around stacks. Elm brash is awful to manually handle and even fairly small product lengths are stupidly heavy. As such, it's quicker to try to be intelligent about your felling (ie bunch your crowns into one pile) and not worry too much about removing every last piece of brash from stacks. We've found this to be quicker. Great video of the Kinetic - some lump of timber he loaded too

No, but I am aware that it should be being demonstrated in the UK May/June, and I'll make an effort to go and see it.

True. A bit of stacking by the cutters helps a lot, as well as there being minimal brash over the stacks. Looking forward to seeing the Kinetic 8x8 demonstrator

I understand the appeal of an alpine tractor, but it's not suitable for what we want to do. Too clumsy and compromised. The difficulty with a multi purpose machine is that it's never as good as something specialised. A small forwarder would be a lot quicker at forwarding small timber than an alpine tractor. There is enough work doing that, and even if there wasn't, we're not that bothered as there is plenty of other work at the mill

Awful that it is being felled. To echo Adam M - what is the reason for felling? I might have a contact in Lincolnshire who would be interested. I can check.

Sound like a lovely stem and ideal for a Lucas mill.

As in haulage costs to get the machine to site. With a mini forwarder, if I have a job that is 2 days (say 80-100 tonne on an easy site, 60-80 if not so easy) and it's 30 miles away, the haulage costs of getting a larger machine to site would make the job unfeasible whereas with a smaller machine, you just load it to your plant trailer and do the job with no additional costs. There are a lot of these smaller woodlands around, often with some good trees and these are the woodlands that the SRDP grants are aimed at.

Thing is that there are plenty of people with that size of machine - the market is quite competitive. You can't do small stands economically due to haulage costs, it's 6 times the weight empty and I doubt that grant funding would be available for that class of machine. I'm not disputing that they are very good machines, and I work with an 890 quite often, so I know both ends of the scale. Small scale forestry is just something I enjoy and I believe that these mini forwarders are the best way to do it.

It's certainly something I'd consider, and something I already do. I do quite a lot of elm harvesting (about 1500 tonnes of mostly elm in the past year) and always feel like a bit of a spare part on site without a machine to operate. I'm entirely capable of doing the felling, but other people do it better than me. There are a lot of local estate woodlands with medium sized hardwood where it's going to be mostly a firewood job, but with perhaps 25% by tonnage sawing butts. As it is at the moment on the estate where we live, the woodlands are getting hammered by oversized machinery and seemingly inept cutters. Just does my head in! A forwarder with a lift capacity of a little over a tonne would see most stems extracted in usable lengths without making a mess.

Right, had a 20 minute phone call with a forester friend, and he explained in detail the issues relating to first thinnings and spruce in this country (my background is primarily hardwoods). In short, hairy bastard spruce, grown too quickly, thinned too late and wolves that require substantial machinery. So, I'll shelve the harvester/processor idea for a moment, but the forwarder is still a goer. Does anyone have any other suggestions for road towable (as in sub 2.5 tonne unladen weight) forwarders other than Alstor, Kranman and Kinetic?

Certainly a nice machine, but the fact that it can't be towed to site on a normal 3.5t class trailer precludes it from consideration. Grant funding is principally aimed at small scale forestry and I don't think I'd get funding for that. I've always steered clear of grants thus far, but I figure 40% of the purchase cost is worth the effort.

It's £16,500, but extra £4k for diesel and an extra £800 for larger wheels.

That certainly looks quicker than their previous stroke processor. Skilled operator though - looks like a learning curve on the hydraulics. Any idea what sort of money that is? Does that make more sense than a roller processor?

All outstanding feedback and very much appreciated. I've always felt that the most important stage of the management of a stand is the early stage. Get the first thinning right and the rest is relatively simple. That being said, I'm not willing to lose money on it! So it looks like a little forwarder is perhaps not a bad idea but the harvester is not. I will have a look at the Kinetic in May when it's in the UK and I'll pop over to the Kranman factory when I'm in Sweden in summer (only a couple of hours from where my brother in law lives). J

The newer version does have a full cab. The marketing idea would be to get into stands before they got to 40cm. For first thinning, it's way too late and from what I'm lead to believe, means an increased risk of windblow.

The hairiness of the stems is going to be the determining factor I guess. Something I'd need to speak to the manufacturer about. The hydraulic flow rate seems to be quite high on the Usewood machine. Even if you managed the low end of that scale (30 cube a shift), that's still a wagon load and still makes sense financially.

Good feedback, and really like the look of the Kinetic T8 - like an Alstor on steroids. Would certainly be interested in seeing prices and lift capacity close in. TCD - my calculation was done entirely hypothetically. What would be a realistic output, would you reckon? The advantage these have is being able to work in small, otherwise uneconomic stands. You could run them to site on your trailer, work them for a couple of days and leave without ever incurring haulage costs.

This is a good video to illustrate the idea: [ame] [/ame]

Latest crazy plan to get me out of the sawmill is to look at micro harvesting. Small scale forestry has always been something I've been passionate about, and having done about 840 tonnes of mostly elm in the past four months, I've been enjoying being in the woods. I've worked repeatedly over the years with Alstors (have one on a site at the moment) and whilst I like them, I'm wanting something just a bit bigger. This is the front runner at the moment: Bison 10000 6WD - Kranman With all bells and whistles it's about £45,000. That's just about every upgrade and extra bit of kit relating to forestry (tipper body not included). My argument for it is that it's a bit bigger than an Alstor, has most of a cab (not sure about the extra £4k for a cab) and lifts a fair bit more. It's also cheaper. Then on the harvesting front, I came across Usewood a few years ago, and their 8x8 Harvester is very sexy: Forest Master Takes up to 22cm diameter timber and goes just about anywhere. Price from online rummaging seems to be about £51,000, which seems like bloody good value. Provisional calcs suggest 40-50 tonne a day is feasible, which matches it to the forwarder perfectly. The idea is first thinning softwood, specifically spruce (with enough other work thrown in to keep us sane, as well as a rotation of operators. I don't think 5 days a week in a Sitka stand is good for anyone!). Spruce thinning is done too late in the cycle in the UK, resulting in overdrawn and wind vulnerable trees. If you could get in and delicately thin the trees when they were circa 15cm dbh, you'd produce a stand with greater wind resistance and ultimately a better final crop. Couple that with idea that I imagine most land owners expect to make nothing from a first thin (ie, you might get the wood for free, or near enough free) then perhaps it's worth pursuing. 40 tonnes of chipwood grade spruce is worth about £1280 locally, which in my mind is a reasonable day rate for two machines and two operators. Couple that with a 40% SRDP grant, negligible running costs and no haulage costs (both machines are under 2.5t), am I right in thinking it might make reasonable business sense? J

I can top that. Had a mostly loaded artic stuck to the axles on a construction site last month. Loaded up with logs no problem, went to turn, the ground was solid solid solid then suddenly soft. Left side bogged to axles. 36 tonnes to get unstuck. Fortunately I had a winch tractor nearby, but it took the 8 tonne winch doubled up with a snatch block to shift it. Great post though - really made me chuckle