Big J

We have a stroke processing head on our Kranman P25B processor. It's quite quick, but quicker than most of the ones that I've seen for excavators on account of the 103cm stroke. The heads for excavators tend to be 50cm or so and seem painfully slow. Would you need such a large machine for harvesting such small trees?

No use to me, but I'd be curious to see the planks, if indeed they are milled. Substantial sticks.

Tendons are most of the way healed, but it takes ages. I'm fragile and have a tendency to overdo it. A bad combination.

I was! Then overdid it and hurt tendons in my elbows. Cubital tunnel syndrome I believe. That being said, my back is still a lot better than it was before my 6-8 months back at the gym. Lost most of the muscle I regained, and really need to get back to it but struggle for time and motivation.

If it's clean, I might have a contact for it up near the Lake of Menteith. Boat skin

According to the Netatmo network of online weather stations, Cullompton (where we live) was the hottest place today in the UK at 30.8c. Not too unpleasant though as we had a strong breeze. The 12ft paddling pool is out now, and having only filled it with spring water this morning, it got up to 22c this evening and the girls were delighted. A few degrees cooler wouldn't go amiss though as it's hard to work in 30c.

Not really, no. Generally a bit too big I think. I'll reexamine them again with hurleys in mind. I always forget to consider the hurleys.

Some photos of the Poplar

It's Scots pine, rather than Scotch. It can be very dense, and the high resin content will slow the cut down too. 2.5 tanks is too much though. Which powerhead are you running on the mill? On a 38" wide cut it would want to be either a 3120XP or an MS880.

And quite right Stubby. It is the only way I'll learn! ?

I stand corrected! I am sure that I knew that, but it's funny how things get contorted in your head

Lovely cabin Billhook. I work with Dan quite a lot these days. Sell him timber, he saws timber for me

One of the potential avenues for usage for poplar is low grade timber to form structural walls using a method called Brettstapel: http://www.brettstapel.org/Brettstapel/What_is_it.html My wife's old practice did two Brettstapel buildings in Scotland, and as well as being ecologically superb, it does make use of low-grade timber. I'm not precisely sure how poplar would perform in this scenario, but it's worth investigating. One thing that occured to me is that it could perhaps be used as part of a wall with a designed moisture gradient. As we all know, poplar is super hydroscopic, so potentially you build a timber cassette (essentially a SIPs panel) with poplar forming the inside wall and spruce on the outside. The poplar would suck excess moisture from the air inside the rooms for it to move through the wall outside. Just ideas, but I find it interesting!

Very interesting to hear. There is a random block of about 110 such poplar just by the motorway here. They will be an absolute pig to get out due to lack of access, so I've no idea why they were planted there. As I said before, at least with biomass there is a viable outlet for such timber now.

It might be worth having a conversation with the woodland officer to see what is threatening them down here. As far as I can tell, if it's vaguely tidy timber, chip is the bottom of the market down here. The fall back position if you will. I can't see that they'd turn it away in Kent at Sandwich.

There is a bloody pest/disease for every species! Thanks for the input though. No issue shifting it for biomass here, I don't think.

That's very helpful. Thanks for the link. I'll study it with more detail later this evening. The site is clay based, but surprisingly dry. I'd have to compare the soil maps for there and around home for comparison. Poplar just seems to do really well around here - I've seen some true monsters.

These are my rough calculations for this particular strain of poplar (I reserve the right to admit that my figures are completely out if indeed they are completely out!) : Planted at 2000/hectare (4 hectares) 10% loss on planting (1800/h) First thin at 7 years. Trees 0.25 cubic metres, racks at 1 in 7 put in. 257 cubic metres, around £3k profit. (1543 trees/h) 2nd thin at 10 years. Trees at 0.5 cubic metres, step rack 3/4. 515 cubic metres, around £10k profit. (1286 trees/h) 3rd thin at 13 years. Trees at 0.75 cubic metres. Selective, 1 in 4. 964 cubic metres, around £22k profit (964 trees/h) 4th thin at 16 years. Trees at 1 cubic metre. Selective, 1 in 3. 1273 cubic metres, around £32k profit (636 trees/h) 5th thin at 19 years. Trees at 1.25 cubic metres. Selective, 1 in 3. 1050 cubic metres, around £26k profit (420 trees/h) 6th thin at 22 years. Trees at 1.5 cubic metres. Selective, 1 in 3. 694 cubic metres, around £17k profit (277 trees/h) Clearfell at 25 years. Trees at 2 cubic metres. 2216 cubic metres. £55k profit. That's with a harvesting cost of about £30/t on the first thinning, reducing to £25 ish on second and then £20/t thereafter. The figures are fairly conservative as the 30-year-old poplar on this site are nearer 4 cube than 2. Profitable enterprise and if I was a landowner with 20 hectares of spare grazing, planting poplar would be something I'd seriously look into

That's just lunacy Murray. Why on earth isn't it being planted en-mass to supply the biomass market? My best calculations put it at about YC70 (yield class, so 70 cubic metres per hectare, per year), which is double the best softwood output. The vast majority of the trees I've seen in this compartment are harvester processable too. I just need to find a landowner willing to chuck a couple of acres of low-grade farmland at me so I can experiment!

It would be more valuable as part of a larger load. I'd say you'd get £60/t for it now if it was a full load of similar sticks. Plus haulage.

I did wonder if it was a bit too quickly grown to be aspen. But then neither myself or the forestry manager (more experienced than me) could quite put our finger on what it was. I'll get photos. I did some quick calculations/projections on the basis of the final crop at 25 years being half the volume of what I'm seeing in this stand (trying to err on the side of caution) and it worked out that starting with your first thin at 7 years, thinning every 3 years and clearfelling at 25 years, you should be able to profit (after harvesting costs) £1700/hectare per year (not including planting costs). Given that farmland is around £15k/hectare around here, it's quite a good rate of returns, especially considering there is no replanting cost as it coppices so readily. That said, I'd need to confirm the precise growth rates as the trees I've seen on site are so far beyond the size of any normal forestry tree species, they don't fit in any yield class chart I've seen.

We're working a primarily larch site at the moment which has a strip of stunted spruce at the foot of the hill. The spruce is being 80-90% removed as the hybrid poplar species (I think, possibly aspen, need confirmation) that is planted amongst the spruce absolutely towers over it. The whole plantation is 30 years old. The larch has done quite well, averaging 0.4 cube or a touch over, at 60ft height. The spruce has been suppressed so is only about half that size, but the poplar (same planting year) averages about 3-4 cube, 100ft + tall and some trees are nudging 6-7 cube. It has also grown with perfect form and would fly through a (very large) harvester head. They had to clearfell the neighbouring block due to the poplar towering over the spruce, and them being unable to get the poplar out without smashing the softwood. The funny thing is that all of the poplar stumps have regenerated and even the brash from the poplar has rooted and is growing with great gusto. That operation was done 2 years ago, and the douglas fir that has been replanted is only 2ft tall and the poplar is over 12ft or more, and that's with efforts by the forestry management company to kill it. This epic growth rate and relentless determination to not be killed off has got my brain cogs going and I'd love to establish a little plantation block with the stuff. I'll get some photos of the trees next week for species confirmation, but has anyone planted a poplar plantation for biomass and what sort of growth rate did they achieve? This particular strain seems to be way off the charts as regards normal yield class. A 60cm DBH tree at 100ft just isn't normal for 30 years old.

I completely agree Steve, and you did a great job with that. It's not the easiest to work though, and you need the clean, knot free first length to realise anything of quality.

No. That's western red cedar. True cedars aren't commercially grown in the UK, and whilst they might be suitable for hobby production, they aren't commercially viable.

It's a nice stick, not 5 tonnes, but big enough. Value wise, it's not worth much I'm afraid. When I ran the sawmill I would have offered to pick it up for free to clear the site, but the cost of the HIAB is going to be as much as the log is worth. I had a bit of Deodar cedar through the yard over the years and it's lovely when it's good quality, but it fractures easily around knots and is quite brittle. It's ideal for oversized garden furniture, due to it's durability, but not much demand other than drawer boxes beyond that.