openspaceman

Chap up the road from me seems to do well out of it £200 for a 10 tonne tipper load and he wins some of it from his skip business. He often has a struggle supplying during wet weather as the screen cannot cope.

Fine and easilly checked by chucking a log into a water butt. Are we assuming this solid m3 does not then shrink as it dries to 20%? Blue book give the basic density of beech and oak at .55 and .56 and defines the basic density as oven dry weight divided by green solid volume. so the green solid m3 has about 550kg of oven dry wood in it. OK that allows 30% air spaces, seems reasonable The weight of the solid m3 of hardwood is now 550kg plus the 20%moisture, so total weight is 687.5kg, i.e. it has lost 312.5kg water whilst seasoning. It now occupies a space of 1.429m3 stacked. So a 1m3 stack of 20% mc wood will weigh 481.25kg

Rod is spot on, problems tend to build up so just one out of spec piece is unlikely to jam the system, I managed to lose a 13mm combination spanner and the auger passed that even though it was longer than the pitch of the flights. Over time we had more problem with fines packing in the auger trough than twigs jamming. Having said that I would advocate a simple oscillating screen to get over length stuff out of the heap but I have never had a budget to do it. More of a problem is with fine material not having pore spaces to allow primary combustion air up from the grate. This is exacerbated with damp chip which needs much more primary air. Essentially burning wood with a <25% mc is a doddle because it really only needs over fire (secondary) air as worse case is you carry char over to the ash which is good for the soil (biochar). On the large scale very dry wood can cause problems with slagging on the grate or overheating the grate which meant some flue gas recirculation may be necessary. Of course an arb chipper can be used, I've managed to stick a tonne of ash wood through a Forst into my hopper in less than an hour. With the roller speed set low it produces a fine chip.

I've had mixed results with weedwiping but not a problem from run off. Back a while farmers would hand rogue wild oats in a corn crop and later a glove with a built in weed wipe was developed. I'd always wanted to try one to increase the contact area delivered with chemical. I'd try some sort of weed wipe, wait 15 days and then strim.

Same here. Sometimes we would fell and take the cordwood as payment.

As I read it they can gross 3500kg on the truck and still pull 750 trailer. Also can pull a heavier trailer as long as the MAM of vehicle plus MAM of trailer do not exceed 3500kg. The bit that changed seems to be that tests passed after 2013 cannot pull a trailer heavier than the unladen weight of the vehicle. It still strikes me that anyone intending to work in this industry would be advised to get the B+E licence in quick succession whilst the test mentality is still fresh. My last driving test was 45 years ago and I would have to work hard to pass one again.

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My TP960 chipper produces a nice chip and is very adjustable, Runs OK at 100hp. I also have seen a damaged repairable TP280 recently.

That's what I've done, but not often as it is time consuming. I used stuff grown from coppice to get the basal curve. I didn't know the 8 rings per inch, I thought the faster grown the better. Holly was also used for hammer handles as this is also apparently springy. There was a good trade for ash for hammer handles up till a steel strike in about 1984 when production of whole hammers was shifted abroad.

We knew it as the Norwegian Flip Flop winch, I asked Ted Radford at FASTCO if it could be included with wedges and felling levers as a tool for assisted felling but got nowhere.

Ah, ok it's more what the eye doesn't see... Ducts still make sense for this though and if you lose the string a sandwich bag and a leafblower works for 100 metres.

I'm late to this and others have advised using ducts. If you are going to need to deal with any of the utility suppliers, gas, electricity openreach and water then you might have problems putting it all in one trench. UKPower networks required a 2m wayleave to bring a 72kVA supply to our site and would allow no other utilities to share. There is a 2003 NJUG leaflet which describes the separation of utilities in a 2m footway, basically you need about 300mm separation between ducts.

I don't think so: any trailer over 750kg requires brakes on half the axles and if the tractor is post1986 they must be operated by the service brake.

No straps on the grapple or timber would attract a bit of undue attention.

Yes but how significant it is depends on what you are forwarding. I wouldn't advise it for softwood thinnings but managed for years on hardwood and softwood sawlogs and cordwood. 6 lever controls beside the seat and occasionally kneeling on the seat.

As far as I know you only need additional lights if the load obscures existing lights or the load extends 2m past the existing lights.

It will need to move with the wind in order for the new growth to form and put strength in the right places.

It looks like there's enough intact bark on one side for the tree to survive if it can put on enough callus to withstand breaking off.

It's a fair parcel for a small woodland but maybe not for the big estates and FC. The bit about the part load is a good point, I used to teach that the part load would often fall in value to the next (lower) grade in the assortment. e.g. a remaining part load of beech seconds (for framing) would have to be sent in with mining timber, it was often only fetching 25p/Hft over mining timber when that sold at 50p/Hft.

These people were very helpful to me Controls Hindle Controls but on a different machine. If they are simple Bowden cables then our local motorcycle shop gets them from Venhill Engineering Limited

This latter need not always be the case but it will put buyers off. If you are prepared to sell the second lengths delivered in with some beams as long as the mill can get some posts or scantling off them they were still worth £2/Hft+ and selling off butts at £4/Hf (all 1990 prices as I've been out of it a long time) meant you had to do your sums before making a decision. The mills that want planking butts will normally sell off the second lengths to another mill. Yes they tended to be separate markets Lots of beams less than 500Ht are more attractive to people with mobile mills and decent oak through the log seems to attract £3.50/Hft

I agree with that having seen them taken to some amazing side inclines. I've never seen or tried a Bandit. The Forst is let down by its tracking but no problem for short runs.

The problem with simply winching it upright is that the soil will have moved and this will create a fulcrum to stress the roots which are simply bent atm. I'd excavate a trench to relive this and backfill with something the roots will easily regrow into. Also keep any guy as near the bottom as you dare. Yes it looks well doable.

I remember the older McConnel flail hedgers had a simple make up valve that enabled them to run the pto pump using the linkage pump in parallel, if you do something like this ALWAYS return flow to tank into a zero back pressure point and NEVER via a spool valve. It also should return at a point below the oil level. The difference between running a flail and the splitter is that the flail always returns the same as what it takes but the splitter will be returning less on the out stroke so the linkage pump would have to supply the difference to prevent cavitation or sucking air. Assuming constant pumping open circuit system: Using0 this means the spool valve should not be a regenerative type.

It sounds like quality timber. I found if there was a decent proportion of planking buts or beams it paid to sell them presented at stump and dressed out. If possible remove any that are too poor for sawing from the parcel. Measure and list each stem. The invite 3 or 4 buyers to make offers. I've been caught a number of times by "friendly" buyers wishing to uplift and pay on monthly account. I also found there was much less ground damage if I undertook the extraction, which is often not a high portion of the value, even a farm tractor can pull 1000Hft a day off an easy site. Fencing oak or framing beech I would just deliver straight in to a mill. Buyers of the better grades still seem to be out there, Chantler, Whitmore, Vastern, EW at Cocking, Wests, the chap on here from Bedford and many more but you won't be thanked for asking them all to have a look.