the village idiot

Wide Ridening XVIII: While I'm at it I'm sure you're all on tenterhooks waiting to hear how the ride edges are getting on! It's been a while so first a quick recap. Stage one was to clear the ride edges of most of the trees: Stage 2 was the monster mucher to take out the stumps over half the newly cleared area: Stage 3 was to selectively mow to encourage the desired three zone growth profile: Now that everything has started to settle down after this admittedly 'heavy handed' intervention we are starting to reap the rewards. We are getting fantastic wild flower swards in the two zones closest to the centre and the third zone which wasn't mulched is developing into excellent coppice like nesting habitat. These ride edges were previously very floristically poor due to the decades of heavy shading. For more info on exactly why this work was undertaken have a quick shufti back at page 16.

Oaky bloke: Part of our winter felling activities last year included a handful of Oak stems. These are taken out of coppice compartments and along ride edges if we feel they are over represented and casting too much shade for the regeneration to get away. Another friend of ours helped us with a good few days of coppicing and ringing up. In return I offered him three standing Oaks that we wanted to come down. He felled the trees, milled them up and then built this for one of his customers. Pretty darn good I thought, especially as it is his first attempt at Oak timber framing. It's really nice to see where some of the millable timber that comes out of the Wood ends up. Ordinarily it gets taken away on a big timber lorry never to be seen again. Also nice for our friend to be able to carry out the whole process from tree felling to finished building.

As ever our good friend John Shipp has been on hand to do the extraction for us again. This spring (particularly May) has been very tricky with all the rain. Luckily John is an excellent contractor and has stopped his activities in the Wood until things dry up again. Some operators would have pushed to carry on, causing awful damage to the precious ancient woodland soils. John is one of the good guys, he understands the importance of sensitive sites.

Digger Vigour: This time of year we are in full firewood production mode. It's bird nesting season so no tree felling going on. Also, it gets far too hot for chainsaw trousers. Before we can start processing we have to remove the monumental amount of sawdust accumulation from the previous year. We hire in a 5ton digger to help with this task. After the concrete rides are clear we swap the ditching bucket for a timber grab and set to ringing up the cordwood stack with a couple of happy helpers.

A few more recent woody shots. This time of year is just magic. All courtesy of Dave Townrow:

Very flat where I am so no slope issues. Our volunteer extroadinaire used to use a 3 ton Riko trailer behind one of the smaller AGT's (35hp I think) without any problems. I'd be surprised if you could get more than 2 ton of hardwoods onto a 3 ton capacity trailer mind.

https://arbtalk.co.uk/forums/topic/118123-an-idiots-guide-to-ancient-woodland-management/?do=findComment&comment=1761211

Oops!😁

Blimey Mark, that's some staying power you have. Glad you enjoyed the read. Really appreciate you making the effort to get in touch. Your post made my day in fact. This forum is a great source of tree knowledge. Just ignore the Scots!😄

Excellent stuff! Why was it a mistake not to have a ladder chassis? Do your smaller wheels ride over small logs and stumps OK?

Nice idea, The bridge is pretty long. It goes over a deep railway cutting which is now a council owned public footpath. I don't fancy my chances of getting permission to put a new bridge in.

Yes, they all do in this size range. I think they are more capable than they look.

In principle I totally agree with you. Unfortunately we are limited in size by a narrow bridge that we have to extract over. There is an alternative route but it is ridiculously long and involves a stretch of public road which would be nice to avoid.

Hi folks, I am considering purchasing a small timber trailer with crane to go behind my 49hp alpine tractor. Looking at around 3 ton load capacity with a width of no more than 1.6mtrs (I have a narrow bridge in the woodland that I need to be able to fit over). Does anyone have any good recommendations? Have been looking at the usual suspects (Riko, Kranman etc). Quite like the look of the Kilworth Machinery one but wondered if the wheels might be a little bit small? Any thoughts and experiences of trailers similar to this much appreciated. TVI.

Quick update on this. We have isolated the cause of our disturbingly high bar turnover. It was the bar oil as several of you suggested. We switched to mineral oil a couple of weeks ago and the difference has been night and day. I think bio-oil is probably fine for typical day to day use but if you are working the saws extremely hard (as we do when ringing up cordwood) then mineral oil seems to be vastly superior. I'm sure we will see even more benefit from more regular sprocket changes too, but it was definitely the oil that was causing the biggest problem. Thanks to all of you for your input!👍🙂

I'm also £65/m3 for semi seasoned, and also too far from you I'm afraid.

Yes, material will be all in one location and access is fine for a lorry. Do you know the going rate for getting one of these big chippers in for half a day?

Quick question: I'm putting together a project proposal. Has anyone got a ballpark figure for the amount of fuel required to chip 100 tonnes of small diameter poplar with a 9" chipper? Also roughly how much time would this take (hand feeding). Would also be useful to know if a 'free standing' chipper or tractor mounted pto powered chipper would be best for this job? Many thanks, TVI

Too far from me unfortunately.

Hi James, How far are you guys willing to travel?

Yup, thanks Rob. Have tried numerous new bar and chain combo's but never the holy trinity.

Thanks Rob, Will definitely try the sprocket change. I recently bought a granberg sharpener from you so my chains are properly sharpened. Excellent tool by the way.

Yes, bar top rails and burrs are filed when dressing the bar. Those specialised right angle bar dressing files do a good job of this. I'll take some pictures of the chains and sprockets. There really is nothing to see on the bars, they look pristine.

Can't really see the wear as it is down in the groove. Rails are in good nick. From wobbling a new chain in the worn bars it feels like there is wear all the way along the groove.

You may well be right. I could be asking too much of the equipment. It will be interesting to try some mineral oil to see if it makes a difference.