AHPP

Beautifully illustrates the idiocy of 3.5 tonne licenses. Someone who passed after 1997 would be compelled to keep going with the inappropriate vehicle. Everybody loses.

The swing one, to me, is many many magnitudes more scary!

That's 7 years worth of growth?! Very thin rods (2" at base?). How old is the stool?

Mixed sizes will slow down a processor so sort it (I'm assuming you have a crane, grab, loader of some kind). Consistent stuff of the correct size onto a rack/table to feed a processor. Run the sorting and processor yourself so kit is looked after and used safely. Smaller stuff onto a rack/table to feed a sawbench. Run yourself for aforementioned reasons. Sawbench produces rounds. Get a couple of donks to do those with axes (one loader, one axeman, several blocks with tyres - swap roles every 15 minutes to keep them fresh and competitive). They only need steel toecaps and minimal training. Get a friend to do a mock shift with you to establish projected donk productivity (PDP - well known TLA at the likes of the LSE) then set a piece rate. Only have them at it for short periods (couple of hours). If they get tired and slow down, they'll make less money and you'll make less finished product. Big wood, save it up and hire bigger kit every so often. Clever money goes on conveyors, elevators, etc I think.

Hell of a commute from Essex!

Or is it a New Coke manoeuvre?!

I know it pollards well so that does make sense. Further investigation required!

Thanks. I generally want fvck all to do with the gov but I will have a look and see if any of this officialdom constitutes an offer I can't refuse!

Suffolk clay (bit chalky). That should be mildly alkaline?

Pretty much my first take on the subject but I'd be kicking myself when Apocalyptic Sycamore Disease killed everything I had. Diversity might be less efficient but it might be more productive. You could of course just replant but that's cost, hassle and rather defeats the point of coppice. Nice to hear more support for sycamore though.

Cheers. Keep the links coming!

More to add to my reading list. Field maple and lime though. Yuck to both! Rough, covered in twigs, everything elbow shaped (unless they grow much nicer as coppice poles than they do as trees). I think no-split simplifies things beautifully. Fell a line of trees. Buck where necessary (for manual handling). Drive a tractor with a 3 point linkage sawbench or branchwood logger along the line. Finished logs drop into trailer/bags/crates via wheelbarrow(s)/conveyor. Add barrows, add trailers, add vehicles, add (unskilled) men. Lots of options for how fast you want to work. No skidding (no winch), no forwarding (no crane), less driving distance, less going over the same ground more than once (less ground damage), less product rehandling, quickest drying (maximum endgrain surface area per tonne) straight off the bat.

Winch it back up, loads of radial guy lines, army surplus parachute, scissors, wigwam!

Everybody else will be thinking that though. Get one of the massive Silkys and clean up!

With some reference to it being said on this thread you can get logs from poplar and willow after 4 or 5 years, there's something else I'd like people's thoughts on. I've been thinking that relatively short rotations could be a good idea anyway. Aim to harvest a pole when at about 4"/10cm diameter at breast height (DBH) and cut to chosen lengths. Most importantly, no splitting (huge labour and time saver). You get 4 or 5 rounds from floor to breast height which are decent sized logs and everything above that going up the pole is obviously smaller and smaller diameter (still unsplit). You get a decent selection of log/stick/kindling sizes from each pole. Excellent branchwood logger territory, I'd have thought. How does this fit in with how trees grow and coppice? I'd like to believe this system of harvesting when at 4"/10cm DBH lends itself very well to growing from a stool. Loads of roots and energy from the stool gives quick early growth (and we're not interested in the later, more steady growth). Thoughts?

I'd originally discounted silver birch because whenever I've seen it it's either live and kicking or soft rotten - no middle ground! Does it coppice well? How fast does it grow in comparison to the other species we've been discussing? You've go me thinking about willow and poplar again. A monoculture block of each and maybe a block of the two mixed could run as a sub-system on its own (shorter) rotation. I clearly need to do more research on softwoods and hedging so that I can ask better questions.

Thanks for responses so far. I was originally thinking just get the fastest growing stuff and plant all that but considering ash dieback etc thought diversity might be best! I hadn't considered going with anything that wouldn't coppice but that would give me the option for a block of cherry (let the suckers grow instead of the stool?) and maybe even a block of softwood (which I know very little about). I'm all ears to other suggestions for the perimeter screen. At one extreme, leylandii would be a great screen but of no other use and brings maintenance and shading problems with it. Something that is 80% as effective as a screen but is more easily manageable and/or still usable for firewood would be great. I'm aware of the short rotation coppice willows and poplars for mechanically-harvested biomass but that's not what I'm planning. Tell me more about using willow and poplar as conventional coppice and firewood though. They both have a pretty poor reputation as firewood as far as I am aware. I'm not totally clear on how fast people are saying hornbeam grows. Fast? Slow? Comparable with what? As for aesthetics, I like straight lines, intensive management and high yields!

Maybe cherry. Will it coppice?

Feel free to add your own maps/planting plans for your woodland (real, planned or hypothetical).

Say you were wanting to plant a new woodland to use mainly for firewood and had identified: alder ash sycamore sweet chestnut robinia eucalyptus (monoculture only) hornbeam hazel to be planted in monoculture blocks and mixed blocks. Every year you harvest a monoculture block (or maybe two halves of different monoculture blocks) and a mixed block. Look good? What other species could you include, either to add diversity to the firewood crop or for any other benefit? In the example below: Brown - mixed species Colours - monocultures Grey - unplanted White - hazel (primarily for wind/sight/access shield - is hazel the best for being a dense screen?) The blocks are 50mx50m (0.25 hectares/0.6 acre) each. The hazel perimeter is 10m deep. Total area is 250mx250m (6.25 hectares/15 acres).

The tyre method sounds like it won't really save much time but it really does. Most efficiency gain for a given cost available!

I went today. Good day out. Much bigger than I was expecting. This chap, Stuart, was giving very interesting and down to earth bodging demos. Split, hew, shave, turn. Nice guy and had plenty of time to talk and expertise to share. He was even kind enough to let me have a blast on one of his lathes. I made a thing and plenty of sycamore shavings.

Went to the Hadleigh show today. Planning on hitting Stowmarket tomorrow. I appear to have missed anyone who's anyone but I'm sure it'll be good nonetheless!

There must be some sort of netting or strands of something available dirt cheap. Bale stuff maybe. Use like plastic packing wrap, giving a few wraps to get the tension. Almost certainly best done stacking the billets vertically of course. Rotate the package: Or rotate the wrap around the package: Lower tech is to just walk around the package but that gets old fast. I'm not totally convinced by the billet system btw. Unless you're bundling to load into kilns or something, I can't see the advantage over making chunks which can be scooped in loader buckets or moved on conveyor belts/elevators (where orientation doesn't matter). Sure, you could stack high but realistically does that outweigh the outrageous rehandling? Please feel free to put me right. I'd be interested to hear what you like about the system.

Yep. On the calendar.