Big J

Hi Graham - it's about 2 miles from the Golf course, between there and Offwell. Really good lorry access - best I've seen so far in Devon! Give me a call mid-morning and I'll send some photos

On behalf of a customer, there is a spare 150t of oversized hardwood for sale. Very good artic access, cut to 2m lengths (generally) and species mix of sweet chestnut, ash, beech and oak. Diameter is anywhere from 150mm to over 1000mm, but most of it is in the 400-600mm range. It's not especially pretty, but it's not rotten and with no VAT on the price, it's well suited to a smaller firewood producer. The customer wants £48/t roadside. I can take photos of the stack tomorrow. As a bonus, there are some chestnut, oak and ash logs in there that might be worth milling.

I'm not sure what it is about sycamore that attracts the metal. Worst trees I've ever had had been sycamore. Depends on the project, but unless you want nasty sticker marks and grey staining, you need to end rear that sycamore for 3-6 weeks.

Very specialised cutting with a double head, with extreme wear on machinery and operators. Also uses a ridiculous amount of fuel. At least £450 I'd say. I think the only 3 days I ever contracted myself out with the 2 880s and a 7ft bar, I was £400 a day but that was about 5 years ago. Production rate with a double header actually isn't that far behind a Woodmizer LT40, albeit with much more sawdust. There are much easier ways to make money though.

Mainly just the 50 odd blades that came with the mill. Had some Hakansson blades afterwards that were great for about 3 sharpens and then snapped. Far from retired. Back to forestry now and busier than ever!

Haha! True enough. I looked at the Cook Saws some years ago, but ended up importing a Logmaster LM2. That was my mill before the Trakmet. The Yanks know how to build a solid mill

DF is always tricky, especially on a long cut. Dry, abrasive timber. I used to have a Trakmet 800 wide (first one in the country, no longer sawmilling) and put just over 1000 hours on it. Ripper 37s will likely be the best you'll get. The lack of deflection on the set up doesn't lend itself well to tough cutting. I ended up putting combination roller/sandwich block guides on, with a 1/4 inch deflection and that helped.

I was a member of the Association of Scottish Hardwood Sawmillers for years when were by Edinburgh. Some training days, sawmill visits from time to time, £100 a year with a listing on a website. Got loads of business through it. Everyone is more successful if we work cooperatively. If you're not able to do a job, you can pass it on to someone that can and vise versa.

Go bandsaw definitely. Chainsaw milling is purgatory, knackering your body, your chainsaws, your bars and everything else. Set up is cheaper on a chainsaw mill, true, but the kerf and fuel saving on a bandmill soon pays off the difference. Chainsaw milling works out at about £0.30 per cubic foot in fuel and chain oil whereas when I had an electric bandmill powered by a diesel generator, it worked out at £0.035 per cubic foot. So, milling a 700 hoppus foot lorry load will cost you around £25 in red diesel on a bandmill and £210 in petrol and chain oil on a chainsaw mill. Then couple that with the wastage from sawdust. Cutting everything to 2", you gain around 3 boards for every 2 logs you mill (assuming 750mm diameter). That 15% wastage means instead of getting 700 hoppus foot, you end up with just under 600 hoppus foot. So if you had quality oak (costing £8/hf delivered in), it's cost you over £800. Coupled with extra fuel, you're about £1000 more expensive on every 25t load to mill with a chainsaw mill as opposed to a bandsawmill. So, keep the chainsaw mills for the inaccessible oversized timber, but for run of the mill stuff, get a bandsawmill.

When fresh, wrc is 65-70% water, so not surprising.

It's really difficult trying to figure out how to harvest trees efficiency, but work around 1.3m high stumps. I've got a fair chunk of suitable ash coming up in September, but the hurley lumps might slow us down considerably. I'll have a think.

Absolutely ridiculous. Life would be a lot easier for arboricultural professionals if the public could grasp that trees have a finite life span, and in an urban setting safety comes first. Walnut has sod all natural decay resistance and with is as hollow as it was, I'm surprised it was still standing. I wonder how the woman in question would have reacted had it come down in a storm, crushing property or worse, people. Muppet.

Yep, WRC. Lovely stuff. I had some old boards I was working with the other day and couldn't help myself smelling the cut faces. Best timber there is

The only thing that may cause problems is sitkas ability to remain resolutely stuck to their surrounding trees, and not fall over. Luckily, we don't need it to fall. Severed from stump is fine as the winch will pull it out to the processor, dropping it as it goes.

I have that experience with the dinky forwarder. It has a bed extension that I can put in, but I never do as it completely buggers the balance of the machine, and as you say, you can feel the stress on the centre joint. It's best suited to 3m lengths, but 3.7s are OK

I'd like to get your opinions on a thinning approach I'd like to undertake on our next job. We've about 10 acres of spruce to thin. It's had racks in 4 years ago, and the trees adjacent to the racks are noticeably much larger than the internal trees. 1 in 7 so far. I'd suggested some further thinning as not much was taken out of the matrix at all. In in the interests of keeping it fairly simple, and in order to maximise the growth of the remaining crop, I was proposing a sort of hit and miss line thin between the racks. So, presently, there are 6 lines between each rack. Starting with line 3, you remove one tree. You then take the next tree from line 4, and then back to line 3, then back to 4 and so on. My theory is that having seen the hugely increased growth in the lines adjacent to the rack, conventional rack thinning results in improved growth and form in only two lines (those adjacent to the rack) whereas this hit and miss method results in additional space for all trees in all racks between the main racks (with extra space in lines 2, 3, 4 and 5, with additional space already present in lines 1 and 6 from the previous rack thinning). My thoughts regarding the advantages are as follows: It's very simple for the cutters to grasp. No need for them to selectively thin, as they'll have a rigid structure to work to It creates a slightly more organic feel to the thinning than putting in another rack, as the hit and miss approach means you won't see a straight rack It creates extra space and light for every tree between the existing racks It suits my winch processor setup as it's super easy for me to do but you be a complete PITA for a harvester. My justification for going in relatively soon after the last thinning is that it's a sitka stand of not especially good form or YC. The ground is generally too dry and the trees at a little over 20 years old are only averaging 40-45ft, and I reckon are around 0.17-0.2 cube per tree. In performing a 15% thin, I think we can increase the growth rate of what remains, and we're offering £6/t for it standing, which I don't think is too bad for a low impact approach on a sensitive site. My hope is that if this method proves successful on this site, it could be used on other first thinnings. I'd then propose putting racks in at 1 in 14 intervals, with hit and miss thinning inbetween. Fewer racks is something I can get away with wiht the winch processor and it leaves a less mechanised finish for the landowner. If you disagree with the approach, please say. I have a lot of time in machines to think about these things and I'm happy to be told when something is a shit idea!

Really appreciate the pointers. Many thanks for that. I don't think (though I may be wrong) that it's been used for double bays, as the capacities quoted to me by the owner were 12t of 4.9s, 10t of 3.7s and 8t of 3.1s, implying to me that that is all it's been used for. It's first job is a majority cedar thinning, with some douglas and spruce. Mostly just collecting from a track from winched material, with some tricky racks too.

Just the wrong time of year, for sure. We had horrible ground conditions in a valley in January with the little forwarder and it made a right mess. I don't think you could have done anything with any machine at that time of year on that ground without creating a mess. Lesson learned though - if you have to work on clay, make sure it's dry. UPDATE: Due to an increasing volume of larger clearfells and thinnings, I'm in the process of sorting out the purchase (well, finance) of a Komatsu 840TX. It's classed as a thinnings forwarder, but it's still huge, carrying 12t. We need it though as whilst the Valtra tractor is good, it's not suited to some of the jobs we've got coming up in the next 12 months,

Typically just over a litre of red diesel per tonne on average, including winching when required. Not a good finish on the site in the photo. Wrong machines for the ground conditions

Not certified no. Very expensive process for a small manufacturer. You'd have to work spectacularly hard to roll the cab section as the bunk can roll fully without pulling the cab over. The centre of gravity is very low on the cab.

If anyone has £30k burning a hole in their pocket and want a big, high production Stenner bandmill, Helmdon sawmills are taking their smaller mill out to replace it with something newer and faster. It's an 80cm cut, twice heads if required, big hydraulic feed table and outfeed table too, 4m carriage. Computer and joystick controlled. I don't know much about it, but it's a hell of a lot of kit for the money. I was up there yesterday as I've some oak with them for milling at present.

The mad thing is that that isn't even half of it. It gets so tough to stack neatly once you're 4m up as well. Thanks for taking the photos

It's OK. I'm too tired to get anything other than direct critique or praise! My capacity for cryptic clues went some hours ago! The guys have been working with the stroke head processor all week (I've been jealous, stuck in the tractor as I've been). Going to check the site in the morning, and then moving on to a fortnight of oversized hardwoods. Dead, dangerous and windblown. Fun, fun, fun!

Don't follow the rhododendron reference?

You get little clumps if you do it that infrequently, but once a week or 10 days and the finish should be spot on. I've only used it once so far, and it was quite long when I took it for it's first outing.