Spruce Pirate

They're questioning whether PPE is an allowable expense? I'm including waterproofs as PPE - when working outside you need to be protected from the elements. I've had three different accountants (died, retired, current) and none have even thought of questioning this. To my mind any and all work clothing is an allowable expense and the accountants have always backed this up. The rest of your queries seem reasonable to me, but I've no direct experience of them, and I'm not an accountant. I might think of looking for another accountant if I were you.

Yes, everyone who has suggested planting a new tree is right. It would be cheaper. It would be easier. Point is the Laird wants the one they've got moving, so the one they've got is going to move. Estates are like that. Besides there's more fun in trying to move the tree than just popping town to the nursery and sticking a new on in. I'll base my digging on a 1.8m radius to start off with and see how it goes. I think we'll probably end up with a smaller root ball to make it liftable, but seems sensible to start off big when seeing how far the roots actually spread. All my hi-vis jacket are dirty, this might explain why I've never made it into management. This is very encouraging, as despite all the good intentions of hand digging and figuring out how it should be done, I have a feeling it may come down to what becomes practical to do on the day.

Enjoyed that. Logbullet looks as thought it beats the Hell out of a breaking bar getting spruce thinnings down!

1m in diameter? This seems quite small for a tree this size, I was assuming it to be nearer 2m diameter. Buying in isn't an option I think as the laird fancies the idea of moving the one they've got. I'll do a bit of exploring, I expect the soil to be heavy, clingy and wet. I'll do some spade work, or see if I can persuade someone else to do some spade work while I "supervise". Tree spade isn't in the budget I think (I'm only guessing as I don't know how much a tree spade costs), a quick Google doesn't come up with anyone local that might do it, I think Ruskins do national coverage but not sure. I'd agree a spade would be the best option but I think yokel power will be the actual solution somehow. Whereabouts are you? Do you hire out the frame? Many thanks for all the advice, I'll do a bit of digging with the spade and see how it looks for starters. Any further advice welcome, if I remember I'll take some photo's of the excavations and see what folk think.

I'm looking for advice on moving a lime standard. The tree is a common lime, I believe, approximately 20 years old, I think about 18 from memory, but say 17 - 20. It is about 13' tall and about 15cm dbh. The local estate planted a lime avenue in 2000 which has done fairly well but a couple of trees have failed over the years. Several replacement trees were got and put in in subsequent years and this is the last one which they have decided now to move to replace one of the trees which isn't doing quite so well. We replaced some a number of years ago (at least 10 years ago) but at the time the replacements were much smaller and I've never done one quite this big before. Access to machinery and trailers isn't a problem, what I really want to know is how big a root ball we should be leaving. I'm guessing as big as possible. Any advice on lifting the tree, wrapping roots or anything else much appreciated. The tree only has to move a couple of hundred meters, all on estate roads so no need to secure it to a lorry, worry about low bridges or anything like that. Photo's of tree to be moved in it's current position should be attached below.

If there's enough to make it worthwhile that's fine, and probably what would happen. Most of the time we fell downhill whenever possible, but sometimes you get a steep wee snap that simply won't reach the bottom of the hill and the only option is to fell uphill. Unless the volume of timber is there to justify bringing a skyline or a winch in the easiest thing is to fell uphill - and take care. Provided you know what you're doing the risks are manageable in my opinion, but you definitely need to be paying attention and it's not a job for someone straight off a chainsaw training course. Skylining, or other means of winching are also not without risk so it is a balancing act between putting a few trees uphill with the risk there, or setting up a winch with its associated risks. For relatively small amounts I'd just tip them up the hill and run every time.

What you can do sometimes is get the harvester to hold the tree while you take the hinge off. Only works sometimes if the tree is lying right. It can save the tree taking off, but won't help to stop it springing. Sometimes it could make the butt spring worse.

Never used the Humbolt for uphill felling, need to have too high a stump to get the gub in the stump. Personally I use the sap wood cuts as you describe, narrow gub and leave as thin a hinge as possible. Forward leaning trees sometimes worthwhile boring in and setting the hinge nice and thin first. Wouldn't bother messing around with straps at the back, just come straight out. Most trees uphill will need a wedge in my experience normally means you end up chasing the hinge to get it as thin as possible and then making a swift retreat, not always easy on a steep slippy slope. Generally don't like uphill felling but sometimes needs must. There aren't many experiences as scary as you describe of a butt pinging 15' in the air and then taking off down the hill as you sever the hinge if it stays on.

My old boss was always in a hell of a hurry. If he arrived at a set of temporary lights, normally screeching to a halt, he'd quite happily reverse back (providing nobody behind him) and then drive towards them again at high speed to try and trigger the sensor. He'd do this basically until the light changed or someone came up behind him. Used to hate going anywhere in a car with him.

Got a call this evening from a boy I did a job with a couple of years back who needs a tree report done in Lochgilphead. Seems some trees have been felled, leaving the neighbour's trees (his brother-in-laws) exposed and likely to fall over. No problem felling the trees, but apparently they're TPO'd so needs a report done to get permission to fell, don't think there will be any issue with replanting. Anyone on here around about that area could do a tree report? Drop me a PM and I can put both parties in touch. Cheers

Sounds interesting J. I've often wondered about a similar set up for 1st thinnings in spruce, but never got as far as actually costing anything. A couple of thoughts...… When you load the whole tree onto the forwarding trailer, with them being largely dead, brittle ash you're likely to break a lot of the branches off. Some of these will get left behind in the wood, mostly the smaller ones, but hopefully you'll retain many in the bunk. This might actually increase the capacity per load if I'm not mistaken? The same at the point of chipping, hopefully it will be more compact, resulting in more material per grab getting fed into the chipper. Jenkys are extracting brash from the mats along the road for us and chipping into walking floors in the wood, so there must be some sort of money in it. Clearfell, after everything has been extracted the forwarder lifts all the mats, stacks brash at roadside, tracked chipper comes in, loaded by excavator with grab straight into a walking floor. Commercial operation, non-grant aided as far as I know, customer getting a return on the brash. On a slight downside, if the spacing is that tight then a 30' pole is going to be quite something to manoeuvre around! Either you're going to skin the retained trees which isn't going to be good or you're going to break the poles, especially as they're brittle ash. Realistically I'd think you'd probably do both which is the worst combination. There are good reasons for short-wood working in thinnings as opposed to long-wood. Be interested to see how you get on with it and if the figures add up.

Understand now.

Knowing practically nothing about coppicing I have a romantic image of hand-cutting and brash bonfires. That said there's a bit along the road that's grown for biomass which is cut with a forager. Is it a forage harvester you're talking about or forestry harvester or specific coppice harvester?

Plenty of narrow roads on the continent: By now you really should have learned that everything is better up here!!!

FC are now running Peugeot Partners with 4*4 around here. Look good vans, good enough ground clearance, 4*4 if it's a bit greasy. Towing not great obviously, but look good vans for the woods.

Is this like a sweepstake? Is there a prize for closest guess? 15:47 on the 31st of this month - N/S wingmirror.

I think a good assessor will decide whether someone is competent pretty quickly. How a person looks, acts, what condition their kit is in, what kit they've got all help to inform an assessor whether or not the candidate knows what they're doing or not. That is if the assessor themselves knows what they're about. The blethering and having a cup of tea should then confirm experiencea and underlying knowledge. After that a good assessor should know if they need to spend 45 minutes cutting a couple of trees to confirm what they think or whether they want to do lots of trees to make sure someone is actually up to scratch. So either you have a full day cutting getting refreshed or you only do a wee bit followed by a lot of gossip, reminiscing and drinking tea. This last part should still count as refresher as it is more than likely vocational and will cover all sorts of different scenarios and how they were / should have been dealt with. Never underestimate the importance of a good blether!

Dendroctonus micans? Great spruce bark beetle, plenty of info on FC site about them.

Bottle jack and a plate is by far the cheapest option. You can get a Tree Jack, but they're 5*, 6*, 10* the price. As above a slight angle down toward the felling direction helps keep it in place. Back it up with wedges.

It's the last day of my easter "holiday" and I need to be up early tomorrow so I'll re-read your post tomorrow when my brain is working properly. All I can remember right now is that the yield models show as little as 3 years between thinnings for sitka so you're not totally out with going in so soon.

Trouble is....... What is classed as a thinning machine? In Conor's example an Ergo isn't exactly a small machine, certainly not in first thinnings. Put almost any off the shelf machine from any of the big manuracturers into first thinnings and it'll look HUGE. What the manufacturers class as thinnings machines are, in my opinion, really more suited to later thinnings. In order to do first thinnings properly you're looking as specialist small scale machinery (such as yours J) or going back to hand cutting - or a combination of both. Problem then is a lack of funds to cover the costs. Problem if you put machines that are too big in is you end up skinning trees and damaging the ground , you end up with butt rot and potentially unstable crops. The result can be seen all over the place either non-thin regime or a delayed thin, more instability followed by premature clearfell. There's still quite a bit of figuring out to be done in the thinning conundrum, small scale equipment seems to be getting better, but I thing there's still a bit to do to persuade people (owners / investors) that it's worthwhile doing properly. I should add that I'm talking really about upland spruce (sitka) forests, those who are luckier to be lower down with better soils and more diverse crops may be able to make thinnings work easier.

What machines were used there?

I don't think that's really any new news as far as the industry is concerned. Been found more on native pine largely due to looking for it more rather than any big jump in spread as far as I can see. It is now so endemic in plantation stuff that its no longer surveyed for by the FC in plantations. The native pinewoods it could have an effect on, especially in tight canopys and thicket stages. Stuff we looked at in Tentsmuir Forest a few years ago that was really badly infected and very sparse in needle coverage has recovered very well thanks to intensive thinning to let the air flow through. Native pinewoods with non-intervention managment policies might suffer quite badly if there are areas of dense canopy. On the other hand, as I understand it, it's very rarely fatal to trees so they might be able to withstand it.

Outside the house last year.

Dothistroma has been found on spruces, but not to any significant degree as far as I'm aware. The pictures looks more like Elatobium (spruce aphid) to me, but I'm not totally sure. Could also be wind blast if there's been a particularly cold east wind? Just scrolled up to look at pictures again and saw your post, so yes, I'd agree with that.