Big J

Always nice to get your input Wallis You're making me think that I ought to be extracting the brash from the 3000t spruce clearfell we're doing. It's a super short extraction distance and there is plenty of it. I'll have a think about who to approach regarding the brash down here. As regards the ash, there are only a couple of blocks (out of dozens) with ash as tall as 30ft. It's mostly averaging 18-25ft. I would guess that most of the smaller branches would be extremely brittle and would snap off. That's probably desirable actually, as it wouldn't make good chip.

Speaking to Logbullet today, they've a new machine coming at the end of the year that will make an ideal carrier for a tree shear. I'll sell my forwarder at that point and upgrade, and be well equipped for this job, should it materialise.

I know, but I'll also have 30ft lengths, instead of 10ft lengths. You're never more than 75m from a ride in this woodland too. I did some willow coppicing for a friend at Christmas, felling and extracting similar sized stems for branch logging. It took me 6 hours to extract enough material to fill 42 builders bags, and that was on a 500m extraction route. They were hand felled too, and not ideally presented for uplift (the trees were along a river bank, felled into the field, meaning I had to lift them tip first). This ash would be much quicker. That's a fair point, but I'd rather try to present a no cost option to the landowner if possible.

There isn't enough trunk to warrant the additional processing. With taking the whole tree, it's just a single cut at the base and away you go. No grading, no processing, no fuss.

Hence the idea of a harvester/forwarder so that you only pass over each bit of ground once. Harvest in winter when nesting birds are inactive, then forward the chipwood on in late spring when the ground is harder. You do get a few passes with the little forwarder on soft ground before it makes a mess.

I don't think so. 50k trees is going to look awful on the deck if felled to waste. Still expensive too. There just isn't space within the stand. Has to be rideside or in the shed.

That's a beautiful bit of kit there, but huge for this level of woodland. It's only averaging about 17 years old, grown on poor soil in a fairly wet bit of Devon a bit too high up and exposed to some wind. Not much going for it, but as I said, the issue is that 50% of the trees have to be retained and no rides can be cut. The sub 2m width is non-negotiable. So long as it doesn't cost (or cost much for) the landowner, then I think we can make it work. Even if we just took it to ride side and Euroforest cleared it away, that's still a £40k bill for the landowner (remember, 50k trees). I'm sure it can be done, and I'll keep exploring options. In principle, I've already sold about a quarter of the chip.

Too many living trees of other species to do that really. No means of acheiving a financial return either, whereas I can probably sell the chip, which will be economically viable if I can make the harvesting and chipping process efficient.

Never, ever resaw someone elses timber. It's just not worth it. It's a lesson every sawmiller learns, sooner or later! ?

No. It's mixed, young woodland. 2x2 planting with lots of trees to retain. Anything bigger than a 3t excavator or the Logbullet would be a disaster there.

It's a fair point. I have been looking for a long time for an excuse to buy an excavator, but I think whilst the forwarder will be a touch slower felling, the fact it won't be double handling the material means it might work out similarly productive. It's pretty quick over the ground too, with a top speed of 14km/h. I'll have a think. Need to run the proposal past the landowner. Might stagger the chipping somewhat as I have a customer interested in taking 100 cube a month or the equivilent thereof. He only has storage capacity for 600 cube though, so it might be a case of finding 3 customers like him, chipping half of it, waiting a few months and chipping the rest. Should be able to make the job pay though.

Good videos and food for thought. Just wanted to avoid buying another machine if possible. True as that is, the trees are what they are. Small and brashy, but something has to be done with them

Come to think of it, I could just use the Logbullet forwarder to do the job, no need for an excavator. Just have to put a small grapple saw on instead of a grab and I'm good to go. I have 3 aux hydraulic outputs already on the machine for the operation of the chainsaw and the tilt on the head. It's ideal for the job as it's lightweight and is already set up as a forwarder.

There is a grant available for replanting after ash dieback. It's called the Tree health restoration grant, and extends to £2750/hectare, which would cover the replanting of around 700 trees per hectate, which would be about right for this particular woodland.

Quite possibly, but he would like to sell the woodland in the near future and I can't imagine that there will be many prospective buyers wishing to purchase that kind of liability. It's a huge volume of work, and a potentially high cost if not approached intelligently.

Kind of you to say. We've all got to do the bread and butter stuff to pay the wages, but life is more interesting when you push yourself to try to solve problems that other people shy away from

That was my thought too. It is now ubiquitous in the UK, and trying to prevent it's spread seems a bit like rushing to close the farm gate after the horse has bolted.

Yep, too much fiddle for the volume. Not sure how you'd move 4000 cube of low grade logs

Yes, unfortunately. They did have a pile of about 35 cube of thinnings in one of their sheds and I don't know any firewood retailer who would touch it. It's ideal for a domestic user as none of it needs to be split, but too slow to be commercially viable on a larger scale. Even £15/cube for chip translates to £60/t which is more than I'd get for it as log. Additionally, there is no way a timber lorry would come close to getting a weight on with it being dry. Interestingly (just been on the phone), Euroforest would take it from rideside and chip it free of charge, so the only cost for the land owner would be the excavator. £35-40k with the excavator, works out at about £300/acre which I don't think it too bad at all for complete removal of an average of probably 400 trees.

Lots of interesting responses - many thanks! The average tree size is very small. 12cm at chest height probably and only 8m tall. There are some that are taller, but most aren't. The weight of a tree like that is about 50kg, if that, so I don't think that the 3t machine would struggle. There are some trees that are a little larger (like the those in the third photo), but most aren't. The issue with a larger machine is that it's largely mixed planting and they don't want to damage the remaining trees. Even a 5t machine (track width 1.8m) would be too large. Most of your collective concerns regarding safety whilst felling should be mitigated by the small size of the trees. The grapple saw straight onto a forwarding trailer idea reduces handling to the extent where it's potentially possible to make it commercially viable. As regards chip points, I'd look to find a chipper/trailer combo set up where the tree lengths could be left at ride side for the tractor to chip in situp, taking the full trailers of chip back to the shed for uplift. There are rides everywhere in the woodland and the extraction routes for the excavator would never exceed 100m. We can't mulch it, as it's a mixed woodland. I think (from speaking to the old lad that looks after it) that it was planted by the Commission as a test site. The overall result of the test is that hardwoods don't grow well here at all. Thanks for the pointers on chip price John. I'd like to think that 25 cube of chip per acre would be a reasonable estimate. That's only the equivilent of about 8-9 fresh tonnes, and considering it's effectively a 50% clearfell I can't be far off. I'll speak to a local chip company today and see what sort of price they'd offer for chip loaded to a walking floor. This is the sort of machine I'd consider tackling the operation with:

Not a sunrise, but one of my cutters took a bloody stunning photo on a big spruce clearfell that we've just started:

Some pictures of the lifeless ash above.

I went to see a large ash clearance job over in West Devon earlier today. 150 acres, of which about half is ash planting in the region of 15-18 years old. It's small and it's largely dead. Recently dead, but dead. By far the worst chalara case I've seen thus far. I wonder whether chalara came in with the last round of planting, hence the very advanced dieback. Anyway, the landowner is still keen to explore options for removing it. It's unsightly, and being dead is all going to fall down into an unholy mess within a few years. My best idea to maximise the value is to whole tree chip it (there is after all no green matter on the trees) and retail the chip as graded biomass, which will probably come in at under 30% MC. Harvesting idea in my head thus far is to use a 3t class excavator with grapple saw to fell them, with a pull behind forwarding trailer. That way, the machine only has to pass through the stand once, handle the timber once and there is no hand cutting requirement. It's all 2x2m planting, with other broadleaves (to be retained) throughout. A machine larger than 3t would be too big. The excavator/harvester/forwarder would then run the tree lengths to ride side (there is a good network of rides), where the tree lengths would be left. A tractor with biomass chipper and hopper would come along, chip the timber and take the chip to a large concrete shed, where it would be loaded onto walking floor artics. My best guess is that over the 150 acres (it's not a solid 150 acre plantation - with open space, perhaps 120 acres of trees) there is something like 1500 cubic metres of ash to be removed, equating to around 4000 cube of chip. It's a hell of a lot of trees (maybe 47,000), but I reckon an excavator set up like the one I've outlined would manage around 50 trees an hour, felled and extracted, or 4-500 per shift. So 90 odd days on site. My question is whether we'd be likely to find a home for that volume of ash chip? Is the whole idea mad? It's not profitable forestry, but it's certainly interesting and would give me a good excuse to get a small arb excavator. Are there mobile chipping set ups like the one I described that can chip at ride side and tip out? What would the per cubic metre price for the chip be (£20-30/cm I'd imagine). Any advice is, as ever, appreciated. I'm always grateful for the sounding board that is the Arbtalk massive! ?

We're on a site at the moment that is producing some good quality ash butts. We've more than we need to supply the one customer who's taking an artic load, so was wondering if anyone else wanted any? If bought by the artic load, it's £6.10/hf, milled to specification and loaded onto the lorry. If you're running a small to medium sized milling business, it's a great way to get a nice pile of stock cheaply. Milled on a Serra Bavaria, so high quality cutting. Artic haulage costs buttons for most of the south and midlands. PM if interested.