rowan lee

A waste compactor.

A family member just bought this little Duetz (Agroplus 70) for his farm. Lovely nimble size, quite jealous.

Mostly windblown birch, willow and rowan through June and July. I've got some nice stacks dotted round the estate woodlands now. The last picture is an overview of the woodlands I work. You may be able to spot the big white house which is the main property on the estate. Its a lovely area.

Been driving the Aunts 40's series over the last few days. I took AL to help with the silage, I am a sad git.

I still don't think you can beat the wp36 for value and design. My brother in law mentioned recently that his employer bought one of the Lumag machines to supplement his tree surgeon/forestry business. I haven't seen it in the flesh, but from the video's available online looks a basic machine yet capable. Does anybody on here use them - wondering about pros/cons. I note they are a cheap machine about 4.5k + vat new which might say it all.

https://www.misupplies.co.uk/clothing-c12/snickers-6903-flexiwork-work-trousers-p15821/s187503?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=snickers-6903-flexiwork-work-trousers-black-inside-leg-30-quot-w-colour-black-size-36-inside-leg-30-sn69030404104&utm_campaign=product%2Blisting%2Bads&cid=EUR&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3q3ig4ms4gIV5pXtCh2-VQ9bEAQYBCABEgL-w_D_BwE These are the snickers ones I have Beau. Nice and light weight compared to some of the other stuff they do.

A big hairy windblown spruce this weekend. Very knotty. The last 3 meters where caught up in holly and alder but managed to snip this off (thankfully no side tension) and it fell gracefully to ground level making it easier to ring up working back towards the root plate.

Tog 24 trousers are nice, one downside is the mesh lined hand pockets ( I went for these after Crags went downhill a few years back). Snickers do a nice light pair of non holster trousers as well. Slightly heavier material for summer wear though.

Clearing endless Laurel down the jungle, a small windblown beech tree beside the saw rack, another windblown hung up sycamore tree in the mud, and soon I will make a start on this large beech tree that failed last winter in the bluebells.

Jeez nightmare, you kinda expect these things to work out of the box. Nothing worse then having a new toy and the electronics screw you over on the 1st day.

Yeah, you can't beat a bit of quality control and pick out any crude as you prepare for delivery, that and manual splitting on a machine which means you get the perfect shaped log for your customer every time ( and charge correctly for a real premium product).

I built my rounds up from about 10 loads a year to friends and family. I also just started with processing into a heap, but the game changer for me was investing in the cages. I started off with 10 IBCs I got for free from work, and bought a cheap set of pallet toes for the massey to sit on the 3 pt linkage. I also thought about a front end loader tractor, but settled on the £200 pallet toes instead to see how things would go. 10 years on I still have those same pallet forks, that serve me well and sourced another 40 or so cages along the way. The beauty of the cages is the drying time increases massively, you can have a 6-7 month turnaround pending on when you split your logs. And they are pretty robust, you can move them about easily with a small tractor. Because they are mobile, I tend to fell, ring up and split straight into the cages all at once insitu down the woods. This immediately cuts down on the number of times the wood has to be rehandled, which saves time, money and physical stresses on the body. Sometimes I can get away with only touching a log once - i.e fell tree in woods, lift up tree on pallet toes, debranch and ring up insitu, pick sawn ring up, split and toss over into the cage for drying, 12 months later deliver cage locally on tractor, and tip out using the tractors hydraulics.

How do you get the logs of the pickup truck Charlie? Is it a tipper, or do you use a roller mat/ or handball. I can't vouch for the bucket loader method as I use cages. The low tech system I use is this - deliver IBC cage of logs on a trailer (I load onto trailer with tractor and 3 pt hitch pallet toes). When I arrive at customers I unload the top half of the cage by hand, at this stage the cage is reasonably light enough to heal over and off the back of the trailer thus emptying the remaining contents fairly effortlessly. Not sure I would continue using this system is I was doing more then 100 loads a year (I'm small time as well).

If you really wanted to mechanise it I reckon you would have to get something fabricated in a local engineering place, as a once off build. I would design a small horizontal ram setup pushing logs through a sharpened grid type setup say 10 inch by 10inch with 1/2 inch spacing between the cells (I'm picturing a butchers mincing machine here). That way you wont have to line up each log accurately, you can just drop into splitting chamber and pull the lever. The plus side is you wont need much tonnage on a ram for splitting twigs, I'm thinking something like a shear grab/silage grab open/close ram, which will make the cycle fast.

It got muddy this month. Splitting pre-cut rings of laurel, felled during late 2018.

Hahaha I know Stubby the price of cod these days ffs. (that was a classic thread alright)

Great little demo Beau. I remember your old branch logging video. You have come along way since then with machinery. Very impressive branch logging setup.

Or just lie. I do sometimes. Seasoned air dried burns the same as seasoned kiln dried. Punter none the wiser and nobody looses out.

Thanks Boys.

Nice day for it. 10 in a shift isn't bad for someone who is working for you. Looks like nice stuff for splitting.

Have to say there are times when a little conveyor off to the side would be great. The roller idea mentioned here and in previous posts is a good one as well.

Yeah thats a 4-way. Its a stock item from Thor, I purchased it through M Large. http://mlarge.com/home/services/contact-us/

I think you have it bang on Beau. Presume you have a nice powerful saw for oversize ringing? One small thing I might change, the trailer system. I would prefer to log up on a concrete surface with a solid bulkhead back ( If I had an area like this) and scoop up bucket loads with your articulated loader and have those right at my side by the splitter. I know you have the trailer right there as well but I'm sure there is always that little bit of awkward stretching and pulling that needs to be done to fish rings out of the corners, etc to haul across to the splitter table. This system might also eliminate jumping up and down off the trailer as you saw up (presuming you don't operate the saw from the side?).

I have been busy weekends of recent cutting out new rides through a boggy wild woodland, getting through leggy birch and rowan mostly. Here's a few videos detailing the process from standing tree to split log. Please excuse the crappy editing, grainy footage, poor sound quality in these plus the double speed effect. https://youtu.be/ag4fHC4LOs4 https://youtu.be/Hjf6VotN7Kw