Spruce Pirate

Non tree specific jacks have been used for felling for ages and have finally been recognised by the powers that be. Provided certain criteria are met the jack falls within the allowed scope - you can't modify the jack but it must have a removable top plate which can't deform and must have a collar attached. FISA Technical Note 001 _ Tree Jacking - August 2021 (1).pdf

I've a 2.4 and it does about 30ish on a long run if that's any help. Dips into the 20's on short runs or if towing a trailer or if you're doing a lot of miles in lower gears in the wood.

Can you do 39 without 30 / 31?

I got a Portable Winch version. Great bit of kit, really useful in the right situation. I got it from Jones before they went bust, don't know where/if to get one now. I like it, but if I had my time over I'd get one with a clutch if possible, although the Portable Winch does have the advantages that it's (relatively) cheap and runs on any rope, normally a retired climbing rope.

Never used the wee skid-loaders, but would reiterate what others have said that the mini-digger is a great tool in the woods. If you're worried about tearing the ground up you can always work stuff out slowly with it so you're only tracking over the ground once. Take material, slew round with it and stack it as far as you can reach, track back and repeat. Works well with logs, wouldn't think it would work so well with brash. You can also reach over and around things better with the digger I'd think, so you could lift over a fence with it rather than having to track around it with a loader. All depends on the job I suppose, in an ideal world you'd get both, and a tractor, and a unimog, and a lorry, and a lightsabre, and, and, and, and........ My list of things I need seems to be never ending!

Our old accountant reckoned I could buy a Rolls Royce as a work truck as a sole trader as the HMRC test is slightly different for sole trader vs company, but a) I couldn't and can't afford a Rolls Royce in roadworthy condition and b) it wouldn't be very practical. The theory still stands though, you can buy anything for work if you meet the criteria, although I'd still check it out with the accountant if I actually wanted to do it. (note the old accountant was perfectly trustworthy and the only reason he isn't still our accountant is due to him being deceased rather than any dodgy advice he gave us about vehicles)

Yes, they do. But some also get hotels, depends who you're working for and where the site is. It's been years since I was staying away in the caravan, but it used to be OK so long as it wasn't all the time. Most folk I know tend to get a mix of jobs close to home and further away so they're not staying on site year round.

We watched it. Loved Chris' stuff, but to be fair there's a lot of good carvers on it. And a lot of good carvers who aren't on it.

Doesn't look particularly like DNB, or red band if you prefer, to me, but I've no ideas what it might be.

Quite possibly. I'm only blindly repeating what I was told, thought it was to do with the shimmer on the end of the leaves at that time of year. I've never heard of senescence before, but I've looked it up. Every day is a school day!

Quite a while ago we used to spray it with glyphosate in Round-Up form. It always seemed to shrug it off unless sprayed later in the year when it went into effervescence. Never seemed to have much effect when sprayed earlier in the year so interested to hear different stories of how to treat. Haven't done it in years, but do have a wee bit to treat now so I might try hitting it early.

Any that are parked up.

Skyline not really my field of expertise, but dragging 30-40t a day isn't bad I think. Again, depends on the length of the drag, size of the tree, size of the winch, number of people in the crew, etc, etc.

I can't speak for JDon, but in my experience timber is measured through the head of the harvester when it's processed. Then often paid for by the ton. Amounts pulled in a day can vary hugely depending on the terrain, difficulty and trees. Some days you'll get hardly anything, some days can be quite productive, it does depend on who's cutting and who's on the winch.100m3 plus is possible, but I rarely actually ask what is coming out when doing this type of work. Main contractor sometimes swallows the cost of the winching within their overall costs or will sometimes charge it as a separate part of the contract, normally if it is complex work, such as around roads, powerlines, paths, houses, etc Most cutters are paid by the day, including all saws and fuel. Sometimes you'll get oil supplied, occasionally fuel and oil, but most of the time it's a day rate you agree with the contractor and that includes everything.

I got a pair of Lavono (? spelling ?) boots with caulks a while back. They've been good boots, great grip if you're walking on logs. Haven't been able to find a pair since. The thousand dollar price tag on those ones seems a bit steep for boots.

Fair play, sir. You win!

Was in Auchentorlie not long ago, just wee stuff to waste though. I'll see if I can find a picture.

The plate has three grousers welded across the top for a bit of grip and a ring on the bottom for the jack to seat into. The tree didn't look all that much, but it was heavy. Cutting mostly central belt, occasional forays further south or north, sometimes even into Argyll.😵

This hairy back leaner couldn't go the way it wanted so had to be jacked in. It put up a bit of a fight! Think the base of the jack was about an inch into the stump.

Whereabouts is your windblow course? Many years ago when I was trying to get into forestry work I called all the FC offices. None of them had any work, but some of them gave me the names of contractors working in their areas. You could try calling them, along with any estates or management companies you can think of, they might be able to point you in the direction of someone who is good. You could also try the FCA (Forestry Contracting Association) Directory, you can search geographically on that. Remember there's quite a big difference between the ticket and the actual work, it's the old driving test analogy of actually learning after you've got the ticket. Be prepared to travel, most cutting work is for contractors and they're seldom in one area for all that long, cutters working for big outfits might be on five sites in one week. Keep stumps low, snedding tight, remember in timber cutting wood = money for the contractor, production and efficiency are important. Know your log sizes and specifications. Take any work you can get, it's all experience, all trigger time and if you can do the crappy mundane jobs they may eventually lead to where you want to be. That's about all the useful advice I can think of, expect to be overworked, underpaid, never happy with the weather and always in debt with the local saw shop.

Ah, but was it a BT pole before it was a post.......?

Yeah, way out of area - I'm not really even sure where Gloucestershire is! Generally I steer folk towards the merchants if it's a clearfell, for smaller thinnings like this it might be possible to find a firewood merchant who'd be interested. Biomass can be an awkward market now due to the nonsense that is Woodsure, so I'd guess firewood is probably your best bet. Don't know anyone down there who'd be interested, but you could try trawling through the firewood suppliers groups on Facebook, you might be able to sell it through there. Do you know roughly how many tons / cubes you're trying to sell? Species?

I think a lot of the Loch Lomond oak woods, certainly on the east side, date back a long while for charcoal making for tanning and then smelting. You can still see a lot of overgrown coppice stools if you wander through them. Ship builders of old seem to be either hailed as guardians of the forest, making sure enough was left to maintain their future needs or as total rapists, destroying everything in sight to build a navy. Depends who you speak to. Certainly changed days in terms of how woods are managed though. Sorry J, I'm really not trying to pick a fight. 😂 What you've said in the two posts above is very much the crux of the matter. If we want to protect the natural environment then we should be looking to native species. Oak, for example, as we're talking about it, support a huge variety of species in addition to producing timber - this is the trade off for growing slowly and being difficult to dry out. It's a problem of having a very limited number of native species, and probably why we've been introducing things since at least Roman times. I'm not disagreeing that a lot of Victorian introductions have been disastrous (although Doug fir is a bit of a success at least). Of course, if climate change really does bite then we have to look at the long term prospects for all species - oak could be out altogether and we could be growing gum trees? cedars? Corsican pine could make a big leap in the productive species league tables Again, out of curiosity, are there many non-natives in Swedish forestry? I always imagine it dominated by Scots, Norway and birch, but that could easily be wrong. What's the average rotation age?

Yes, approximately 3' spacing as I was saying earlier. That's a fair point Jon, BUT, remember we're dealing with a very long term product here. History suggests that good quality hardwood such as oak will always sell, and always fetch a good price. Good quality, not average, not poor, properly grown oaks of good quality. Such being the case there should always be a decent return on the investment in the future. Remember the planting costs are only one of the costs of growing quality hardwood. Formative pruning around year 3 -5 with regular pruning and high pruning up to thinnings stage all eat up the cash. Also remember that at high density nobody's tubing and staking, fencing becomes the only feasible option at these densities - if you take a square hectare and plant it at 1100/ha each tree is paying for 36cm of fencing, at 13400/ha each tree is only paying for less than 3cm of fencing, a significant economy of scale. It would have been correspondingly cheaper to plant at 3m spacing in the 1930's compared to planting at 3' spacing, just the same as it is now. The main difference seems to be that between the wars and immediately post war people valued timber production as it was a very necessary resource. We seem to have lost sight of the fact that unless we plant trees we won't have any timber, and if we continue to plant at ridiculously low densities all we'll end up with is a firewood crop. I'd imagine your days of sawmilling would give a fair insight into different planting regimes and their relative impacts on timber quality? Out of curiosity, what's the planting / restocking like in Sweden? I don't know much about it, but from what I've seen in pictures and videos I'd guess a fairly high density?

I don't know if there's much evidence or study on reds and damage to trees. But my money is with yours, I reckon almost as bad as greys if not as bad.