gdh

Our tractors at work doing a bit of everything.

2.4 used to be the standard but a lot are going 3 or 3.6m to save on the handling. I don't mind the 3m but the 3.6 are a bit long on long decks and I can only get one bay on the trailer so it's worth asking before delivery.

It's definitely been a wet few months, we also do contract baling and this is the first year we didn't finish. A few customers didn't find a dry period to cut and had to sacrifice the crops.

I haven't noticed the wind but as with all weather we only notice the peaks/extremes not the average. We've had a few bad storms but that doesn't help drying at all.

Luckily we have a kiln for firewood so we can keep drying through the winter but the wood going in seems soaking this year.

If you've got a good dealer locally I would stick with them. I've always preferred husqvarna but good back up is more critical.

550 MK2 is a good saw on a 15inch bar as is the 560 but everyone's going to have different preferences in that size range so just go with what you're happy with.

Personally I would stick with one brand because it's surprising how many small parts are interchangeable between models.

The problem is there's multiple sizes of builders bags and they all stretch.

The traditional ones are 90x90x90cm which is.73cube but actually about .85-.9 when filled.

Then people got sneaky and dropped to 85cm and now a lot are down to 80x80x80 which is just under .6 cube when filled.

7 minutes ago, JDon said:

4K isn't bad at all really. I'm doing 15 chains on this Oregon one for a fella I cut firewood for. 4 quid a chain. It'd be grand to scale this side hustle up to buying that sort of machine

To be honest it's basically a luxury for me. After hand sharpening thousands of times it's nice to be able to just put one on when I walk past and it frees up my Sundays a bit instead of having a pile of chains at the end of the week.

I thought about doing it more for others but I don't want to deal with all the postage and having to swap the chain every 10 minutes would be a pain if I'm not working near it.

3 hours ago, adw said:

Oh my god, you can actually see the cutters going blue, yet another chain ruined!

Don't panic! The chain is healthy and still in use on our processor.

The video is the only one I had to hand, it's the first time I used it and it was taking too much but I've got it set up nicely now.

15 minutes ago, JDon said:

I'm guessing a lot of chain grinders are air cooled rather than slitter a load of coolant and oil everywhere. I know when I used to be an engineer using a lathe or a mill used to have coolant all over the place. Be worse with something like that...

 

how much was that machine? @gdh

Yes, no coolant on this machine, so only filings to clean up thankfully.

I think it's about 4k now. It's the mid range one so it does the depth gauges at the same time but hasn't got a sensor for double teeth.

2 hours ago, AHPP said:

What machine is it?

Markusson triplematic. I've always preferred hand sharpening but this actually seems as good.

8 hours ago, JDon said:

I'm sure a fella near me has an automatic one and he is around 5 a chain vat included... 2.50 seems very cheap!

Yeah, I would be £2.50 plus vat and more for a 404 chain. It's a guess to be honest because I only got it around the beginning of the year.

There's not much time involved, whenever I walk past I just hang another chain on and leave it going . I'm not looking at doing it as a big thing, just if someone asks I might as well make use of the machine.

14 minutes ago, AHPP said:

You’re talking about Rotatech £12 chain. I’ve always been an ardent Stihl user but have heard reports of bad metal recently. Points not holding, chrome flaking off the top plate. Has anyone here seen that? If it’s the case then firstly I’ll be depressed as hell and secondly I’ll be thinking why not buy crap as long as it’s cheap crap.

I haven't heard anything bad recently but I haven't used Stihl for years. I used to use Stihl and Oregon but for the last 5 plus years I've been completely Rotatech. I did a few comparisons on durability and there was nothing in it so I couldn't see the point in spending triple the money.

28 minutes ago, JDon said:

Aye am well aware of overheating things drilling holes etc. Can always go around it twice if its bad taking half at a time. 
 

 

Does anyone do this for other people, how much are you charging per chain?

I've got an automatic sharpener, only just looking at sharpening for others but I think £2.50 for an 84 link 7/32 chain. They're only £12 new so by the time you add postage you can't justify a lot.

1 hour ago, JDon said:

I'm guessing you own a harvester, do you not add the cost of a cutter and a little more on to the job?

 

Also what would you expect out of a cutter on 250 a day in Sitka/outside edge trees? I.E how many per shift etc. 

 

I got you and @Pete Mctree mixed up I think. 

Haha, I wish. I'm mostly firewood processing, we just do a few smaller hardwood felling jobs in the summer with a digger, winch and forwarding trailer. I hire extra cutters when needed but I'm normally buying the wood so I only pay the customer for the standing timber.

51 minutes ago, Ledburyjosh said:

And is that what is paid to the cutters or charged to the customer?

That's to the customer, although it's the same thing for me as they're self employed.

I think £250 is top money in forestry. £150-200 is probably more realistic and seems to be the going rate locally (mid-Wales).

2 hours ago, Jack Taylor-Day said:

We are a small arb company based in Derby. We process all our waste wood into firewood but we sell out every year which has made me think about buying timber in and upgrading our current splitter. 
 

my question is, if I were to buy in 26T of ash cordwood how many 90x90 vented bags would I expect to get per tonne? 
 

Any help on this would be great.

You would get roughly 50 from fresh ash, I work off 1.8 cube of firewood per ton (the bags stretch).

We use a Tajfun electric extractor, it's done thousands of cube with no issues and takes the sawdust about 20ft

You do need a strong one because they can suck bits of kindling through which would wreck a standard fan. If you're bagging the sawdust you'll want a cyclone on the end to avoid it blowing everything out the bag.

Yes, we changed to purely Rotatech, I think, 8 years ago and the chains have been brilliant

I didn't get on with the bars but that was a long time ago.

Once I got used to the 27° sharpening they stay sharp a long time although I've gone lazy now and bought an automatic sharpener...

If it's straight lengths and between 4 and 18inch diameter probably £65 a ton roadside. Assuming that they're decent lengths not arb waste.

I only do standard livestock netting but assuming there's no gates or anything I would guess around 2k plus vat. Ideally you want a digger knocker for the high stakes but actual erection costs shouldn't be massively high.

I use one on our heizohack after having problems with loose blades. It's 1020nm so we also have a 5 to 1 multiplier which is useful. If I pull on a 4ft bar it's basically identical but it's nice to be sure.

You could borrow a torque wrench to check once. They're pretty expensive to buy.

1 minute ago, john87 said:

What i mean is, apparently, for example they want you to remove the air filter and clean it. Well, others can do as they like, but;

 

1, I am not taking the air filter off unless they have an air line so i can blow out all the internals of the saw first,

 

and 2, i am most certainly not brushing the dust off the thing.

 

The saw i would use, has a funny papery sort of filter. I DID try to brush it once, but all you do is to smear the oily stuff that accumulates on it into the filter medium..

 

john..

I can't see the problem personally but the maintenance will be the first part of the course so your saw should be clean to take apart anyway.

The air filter and spark plug is very basic and only needs a standard chainsaw tool. If you want your saw to stay pristine (that's unlikely felling anyway) then it's important to know. They use the colour of the spark plug to check the fuel mix is why they remove it 

Starter cord is a bit more work but you'll probably just take the cover off and it's very useful to know how it works.

Cs30 includes basic maintenance so I can't see you'll get out of it and it's really not much work anyway.

You'll probably lose a few customers but it's not as bad as it first looks because you're not actually going to need to charge 20% more. Most of your costs will have 20% vat removed so I'm reality it will only be a few percent increase and you can explain that to customers.

You just have to get used to reading prices excluding vat when do costings which is actually a nice feeling seeing how much cheaper it is at first. 😉

10 hours ago, Malus said:

Nice one, thanks @doobin Sounds daft but it hadn't crossed my mind to mount it inline with the dipper... I guess I got blinded by the fact all the commercial ones I've seen are off set. I'll make up a mount and give it a go. 

 

It's not so much that I can't lift it over a post, more that when it's set up as in the photo above with the weight facing the cab, the geometry means it's impossible to keep the mast vertical when you lift it high. I think I'll stick with it facing out since you both have made some good points.

 

Tell me about it. I had been looking for a used one for about three months but I didn't find anything within a reasonable distance from home until I found a second hand p18 at auction. Got outbid and I think it sold close to £2.5k so that tipped me over the edge to make one. Optimistically thought it would take a day or two to build but probably more like five after doing all the fiddly bits. Althought it was all done in the evenings after work etc. Total cost under 1k Inc vat so happy enough and certainly learnt a thing or two.

I think commercial ones are offset so you can use them at any angle without the lift ram hitting the boom (depending on design). 

I hadn't realised how expensive they were now, we only paid £2400 for protech 300 about 6 years ago and that was new.

Yes, we always use two people so it's a bit different for us. One in the machine and one eyeing in the stake, it's worth the extra person because we can hit 100 an hour on a good day. Although we do space the stakes out on the floor first.

I looked at chaining to the mast but we knock a lot of 8ft strainers and gate posts and it would make that awkward, especially doing big hits on soft ground.