Big J

I don't know if you've been up, but I saw Willie Dobie's in action at his sawmill (Abbey Timber) at Abbey St Bathans in SE Scotland. Fast and consistent mill. We've a profusion of douglas fir at the moment if it's of any use, and a large volume of good larch coming later in the year.

Very nice mills are Mebors. Welcome to the forum

Not quite on that scale, but some large elm and larch we did a few years back. Sorry for the poor quality pics.

It's not. It's very quick to get into position. You then winch 5-8 trees to one point (radio winch) creating a stack large enough to fill the forwarder. You're never winching more than 20m, and it's a fast winch. 12-15 trees per hour, minimum. Once you've a large enough stack, move up the rack to the start of the felled trees and repeat. Compared to hand felling, it's more than twice as quick (per tonne, per man), the presentation is far better for forwarding and it's much less physically demanding for the cutters as there is zero stacking. Again, I appreciate your experience in the matter, but the low impact angle is a niche of forestry that isn't ever going to be most economically viable, but for a great many landowners (especially in these parts) it's of more importance than financial return. It is still viable, and we can break even on first thinnings with a much, much lower impact on the stand (as well as a tidier finish).

The machine is small enough and manoeuvrable enough to be able to turn 90 degrees to the felled line within the rack. It's only 4m long and 1.45m wide. So, you drive into the rack, turn 90 degrees (or as close to that as you need to) and process away. No problemo.

Ah, I see, apologies. The machine is incredibly manoeuvrable, and it's only 1.45m wide, so can slip between trees in the next rack as required and can easily turn within a rack. You'd process however many trees are required to fill the forwarder to one point, then move on. That way, the forwarder only has to stop once for each load.

The machine works in conjunction with my mini forwarder (Logbullet, weighs 2t, carries a little less) so I don't need to turn the tree. I can pick up the logs from where ever they land. 90 degrees to the rack is fine.

You just level the rack from one end to the other, starting with the last one you felled. When pulling trees from the matrix, you don't need to get them on the deck as the winch pulls them out to the head. The stroke processing head can handle some fairly large branches too.

With the machine in the video? That's not me, just a Youtube video. On first thinnings, you'll do a tree every 3-4 minutes (processing time per tree once the stem is in the head is less than 45 seconds), with a cutter knocking them over ahead of you. Assuming 0.2 tonnes per tree, you'll do 3-4 tonnes an hour. The great thing is (and this theory, as I've not yet found large enough sites to test it) that your cutter and machine operator can swop over every couple of hours. Much less tiring than hand processing, no stacking and on rack thinning with selective removal from the matrix, it should be able to do a lorry load a day.

£23k. Handles trees up to about 35cm, but in order to winch something that size into the head, you need a bit of a gravity assist. It won't winch it up a hill. I bought it with a lot of contracting work in southern Scotland in mind, but found loads of work down here that was mostly hardwood, so it's only done about 20hrs so far. Have a whole load of pine I could do with it later in autumn though

I have one of these already: It's a bit faster than the demo video would suggest and it's great for chipwood. Don't get to use it as much as I'd like.

The site is too small for it to be economical for larger machines to be transported to site. 300 cube, or thereabouts.

The big companies aren't offering enough for harvesting, IMO. I was asked to look at a DF thinning job on a banking where they were offering £28/t to cut and extract on 0.6m cube trees. It's not enough, and I wouldn't make enough once the cutters have been paid.

I do agree that cutters are on the whole completely undervalued. The chap staying in the caravan on site is in the caravan because there is no accommodation nearby and he doesn't drive. What other option would he have? I started out on self-select hardwood thinning and if I do say so myself, I am very good at it. Softwood felling isn't my forte but put me on 70ft 12" dbh beech, ash, oak or sycamore, and very few people will outcut me. My point is that I'm not a machine operator that doesn't have cutting experience. Can we just agree that cutter rates need to go up across the board and that whilst my rates are good, they could go up too? You've rather derailed my thread, which I'm not entirely happy about.

It's a shame really as a basis in forestry would mean that they are far better equipped when working in Arb. But many just don't want to do it. I had a young lad on a site a while back, came with another cutter. This young lad was a tree surgeon but really, really struggled in the woods. Production rate was about 10-15% of what my usual cutters were doing, and he was hanging tree ups constantly. After a day, I was getting to the end of my tether, and as I drove past him starting on a tree (15" DBH, if I was to guess) taking off the first buttress when it didn't need to be debuttressed. I drove down to the loading bay and then passed him on the way back up 7-8 min later. Taking off the third buttress. He then misjudged the fell, the tree sat back on his saw and it had to be winched over. After that, I put him with my best cutter for the afternoon and his production rate tripled. I said that I couldn't have him back under the current arrangement, but I'd be prepared to pay him £100/day to work alongside my best cutter for a week. It wasn't something that would benefit me, but it would be very valuable for him. He declined and is as far as I know back to doing small garden trees and hedges. My point is, that you can lead a horse to water, but can't make him drink. There are some excellent tree surgeons out there, but I think most of them have some forestry experience. Having that ability to cut effectively means that a lot of the cross over jobs (site clearances, estate work) can be very profitable and a lot less hassle than domestic arb.

No, he's cutting extremely well and he doesn't need guidance. He has however been working with me off and on for 7 years, and we've got a very good understanding. You also have to think that if he's on site without transport and I'm collecting him from the airport, transporting him to site, buying him a caravan, fetching his gas bottles and taking him shopping for his food (as well as collecting fuel), then my costs are more than the £200/day I'm paying him. He is also working under my insurance. I agree that wages need to go up overall and that there is a shortage of cutters. The issue is that the pricing of jobs hasn't yet caught up to that fact so it's not something that can be done overnight. £35/hr might be feasible for the top 1%, but most cutters aren't worth that. Personally, I'd much rather stay in a caravan on site than have to commute back and forth or use a B and B. The main issue is that most folk when they think of chainsaw work just jump straight into tree surgery. There is much more work and indeed money in hand cutting, but very few tree surgeons can do production felling to any standard. I think we agree in principle on a lot, but it still feels like you're having a go at me when I'm paying more than most, offering working conditions that are very good on sites that are interesting and varied.

That is fair enough. I am planning to increase my wages once the guys working for me have more experience working to my specs, have more tickets and are more independent of me in terms of accommodation. For instance, two chaps that came down from northern Scotland for work in January and February were each paid £200/day, but had accommodation pretty much onsite paid for them, as well as fuel money for driving down. A different chap from central Scotland who's on this site had half his flight money paid for (and collected from the airport and taken shopping enroute to site), a caravan bought for him and also £200/day pay. I don't think that £1000 a week with the only cost machine wear and petrol is shabby at all. The other issue is that tonnage rate isn't often possible as we rarely work sites as easy as this one. The last one was a 2-month job on steep banking, 500t of it was ash thinnings with minimal sawlogs and 300t of it was oak with 50% sawlogs. 75% of the total timber was winched, and the ground conditions were poor. Dayrate cutting means consistency of income for the cutters, with me assuming the risk for production rates. My profit wasn't great on the ash thinning job, not at all, but my cutters still made the same. I make more from the current site, and my cutters still make the same dayrate. The chap from Central Scotland is coming down to work 2 weeks on, 1 week off from now on (but works 6 day weeks). That means that he's clearing an average of £3600/month, which I genuinely think is a good rate.

You are the first person I have come across to suggest that £200 is below market rate. I know of one cutter (not local) who is on more than that generally, but he is extremely experienced doing specialised work. For run of the mill cutting, in a variety of scenarios (production based and day rate based), £200 is well above average for this part of the country.

ESS, I respect your experience in the industry but I wouldn't work for those rates. For too long forestry has made too little money and it's a skilled and risky business. The price of timber roadside is high enough for everyone to do well on it and I pride myself on doing a good job, but not being the cheapest.

Thanks for the encouragement Colin, it's a wonderful place to work ?

This is a slightly below average weight load as it contains no 4.9s and the 3.7s were a touch smaller than average. Also, so general scenery shots. Managed 11 loads today (around 65 tonnes) but that was extracting directly from felling, instead of from stacks created by the forwarder.

I hope you appreciated the setup there ?

I have to say, I wasn't expecting that.

It's an estimate based on the whole site. We've one awkward corner to do with some winching, where production will be greatly reduced and cost increased. Also, one of the chaps cutting for me is down from Scotland, so I've paid some of his costs. You ask a lot of questions. Can you not just be happy that it's a lovely job to work on, I'm making good money, the landowner is happy and my cutters are happy and well compensated?

We work 07:15 to 17:00 with lunch and breaks, so they are effectively working just under 9hrs. The two fast cutters (who are on day rate) are doing around 30t/day and the trainee is on production rate and isn't anywhere near that. There are perks beyond the day rate. I know that there are some that pay more, but not that I've heard of locally. I prefer to work on day rate as I can't be bothered to try to work out who has cut what and I also prefer a slightly slower, tidier work rate than one where the timber is banged over quickly to maximise return.