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The protech ones come with bolts to go either way. I like ours facing out so when you're knocking stakes you can just push up to the netting instead of lifting over. Also if a stake ever snaps it's less likely to get you or anyone nearby.

If it's easy to get to I would offer £30 standing for hand felled softwood. Worth remembering that 50% of small trees will be chip wood anyway so £50 roadside.

Phytophara licence is free (or was) but is a lot of work with records, clearing up bark and other regulations. I think a lot ignore it anyway if the wood hasn't got a notice on it.

Personally I would want 12inch minimum at base for milling.

If you are felling yourself make sure you get an agreement on what's being done with brash and stumps and how small you'll cut down to. It's easy to fall out over the little details.

Edit: people will fell and extra for £10 a ton but that's large scale harvester work.

Wait until you see the guarding required on the big horizontal splitters now. You ironically have to climb over it to get fallen logs.. 

Are the trees already felled? It's a lot easier to push the tree over then cut the stump off if that's an option. Although on small diameter trees it shouldn't be too hard either way.

We've got a multi fuel (18kw Aarow) that we only burn wood on and it's done well for 20 years. The extra air flow means it's easy to light and adjust and if you're careful you can clean the ash without letting it go out which we do once a week.

It depends what you're mostly cutting. My go to saws are a 550 with a 15inch bar and a 572 with a 24inch bar and that covers 95% of what I cut.

I should probably add that we don't look for work hedge trimming, just do odd bits so it'd easy for me to say £60 is just what I think it should be for a decent sized machine based on costs - £10-15 depreciation on the tractor, £10 fuel, £2 insurance, £5 repairs, £2 tyres, £15 driver, £10+ for the hedge trimmer off the top of my head.

With a tractor it would normally be per hour. You can't really charge per meter because it depends on how many swipes, how thick the hedge is and obstacles like telegraph poles.

I would probably want £60 but there's a lot of contractors and people with older machines doing it for much less to keep getting work in the autumn.

I don't think anyone really cares if you call it cordwood, I hear it often enough, but usually you would just say you're looking for a load of hardwood or softwood. Most people buy and sell by ton.

Hardwood has gone very expensive at the moment but best thing would be to phone hauliers if you don't want much as they'll have more contacts than asking every landowner.

If you don't care about quality you could also try tree surgery waste.

There's not a huge difference in pro chains, I use Rotatech for commercial production because they're the best value but Stihl, Oregon and Husqvarna are all good. 

Main thing is to avoid any mud or stones and a chain should last a long time if you're only cutting across logs. Keep an eye that that the bar doesn't wear too much as that can affect cutting as much as the chain when it gets really bad.

If you can't justify a splitter it might be worth investing in a good axe depending on what you have.

Not sure if anyone will want to take a trailer off but you might get someone to bring just a lorry. R K haulage are close and he might be willing.

Depending how you're cutting it there's also dc2 in Llangadog who produce woodchip and might have oversized.

I normally only sell firewood but we are nearby with a timber trailer if you're struggling with access and need stuff moved.

I made an effort to watch all the headliners this year and I'm glad I did.

I thought Artic Monkeys were enjoyable but nothing stood out as spectacular, GnR were a proper headline act and although the vocals weren't perfect they still worked and Slash was obviously brilliant and Elton John was a great way to end. An amazing performance and nice to see the hits one last time.

Saw a few other bits I liked as well, the Lewis Capaldi performance was a tough watch because he comes across as genuinely trying to keep going.

One year I might actually go...

6 hours ago, htb said:

We are thinking of moving into Beacons national park near Llangadog. Web are looking for leads for a wagon and drag load of timber for firewood. It would be for the latter half of the year. Cannot get an artic into location. Wagon and drag would need to drop trailer off to get in. Any leads or offers gratefully received.

If you want firewood that's already processed give me a message, I'm only 15minutes from Llangadog.

There's a few hauliers based nearby but it's a pain to get hold of hardwood at the moment.

4 minutes ago, Trailoftears said:

I've taken an extremely long hard look at the range of makita battery mowers and also the stihl range.Obviously for daily work they need to be  (reasonably) robust/with a decent steel blade between 18-21",and it goes without saying-s.propelled!I simply cannot see anything out there that comes close to my pair of petrol mowers-stihl series 2 20" for bog standard typical suburban 'rectangles' on the flat,plus a kubota 21" kaaz derived mower for steep up and downs/the odd lawns up to tennis court size x 3/bouncing over woodland lawn areas with perched tree roots plus a generous scattering of big pine cones,then come late Autumn,a liberal depth of bullet -like beech mast.Batterywise as far as I can see, there's no credible choices out there yet?

Does it have to be Makita? Milwaukee do one and Ego have a range.

9 hours ago, Trailoftears said:

The problem with battery mowers I see is they have to be lightweight,which means plasticky and non-durable from a commercial point of view, also,some aren't s.propelled which is a no-go work-wise.I would think there's a long road to go before they're acceptable to the commercial community unless you have the luxury to carry 2 or even 3 mowers for your daily schedule 

The Milwaukee is self propelled, steel deck, equivalent to 200cc and a three year warranty which is what I'm looking at.

The commercial outfits I know use Ego because they have the full range of battery tools for gardening right up to ride ons.

I think the Husqvarna/Stihl battery saws are better than the Milwaukee ones (for example) because they don't need to be compatible with everything else and obviously they have more experience with the saw itself.

For something like an impact wrench you can't really beat a Milwaukee, which are even better than air ones now, but while I'm glad they've stuck to 18v batteries that's probably holding them back with saws because even with 12ah batteries it's not quite enough for bigger saws.

I've swapped all my power tools for batteries and it's brilliant; plenty of power, can take them anywhere and all batteries fit everything. There's even a Milwaukee lawnmower now that will beat petrol which I didn't think would happen but saws are too unique to be just another product in a range.

Milwaukee make a big cut off saw that's equivalent of petrol but at 17kg and £1800 it's not going to replace chainsaws yet although I would be interested to see them try.

MX FUEL™ 350mm Cut-off saw | MXF COS350 | Cordless Cut-off saw | Milwaukee Tool UK

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MX FUEL™ 350 mm cut-off saw. The world's first 350 mm battery powered cut-off saw to deliver the power to cut...

The Milwaukee rear handle I have is good to keep in the cab and cuts well enough for small jobs but the chain speed is too slow to compete with Pro saws. Hopefully they release an upgraded one with their mx fuel battery soon.

8 hours ago, cessna said:

I have been hauling  some cordwood  recently with forwarding trailer  and weighing each load over  an estates  weighbridge. I have been a bit surprised as to how much the loads have been weighing ,  on the light side compared to what expected . I assume it is because the cordwood is quite small diameter and some quite bent which means there is a lot of  air in a load.   If by any chance any one who reads this hauls a lot of timber do you find that the weight you get on your timber truck varies quite dramatically on the diameter of  the timber you have on your timber truck. Many thanks for any info.    

Yes, you'll always get less with bent and smaller diameter. Ash with dieback will always be lighter as well.

Not the best photos but theres 8 ton of fresh cut in the first one and 14.6 of dry 2 year old in the second. You would expect the weights to be the other way round.(obviously the second photo is an extreme example because it's oversized).

Average hardwood thinning (decent sized trees, bit of winching, few hundred meters haulage) I would say £30-35 a ton. Felled, snedded and stacked at roadside.

I've had some good cutters asking me for work for between £120 and £200 a day recently if that's any help. That's all their fuel and no climbing.

There is a degree of trust (and arguments over stack sizes usually lead to only weighs being used) but in general it's separate people doing the felling, haulage and purchase plus usually an agent or overall manager checking things so any discrepancies would get picked up on.

Not to say it doesn't happen but a bad reputation gets around fast when it's a relatively small industry.

1 hour ago, Richard Dear said:

Looking to sale roadside stacked processor grade ash just outside Bristol in m³ as I have no way of weighing the timber. The buyer would also be hauling the wood to their yard with a 12 mile round trip at around £55 a m³ I'll update if the price is accepted.

£55 haulage seems extremely high assuming you mean by the lorry load. I would have guessed £10-15 unless I'm missing something.

Processor grade I would offer £65-75 per ton in Mid Wales.

Apart from the belts I wouldn't worry about spilt oil. Every machine is going to have a burst pipe at some point and it won't do any harm.

The dealer/manufacturer should get it repaired but the first thing I would do is open it up and check if it's just a loose pipe. It would have to be a major failure that is likely to repeat to get a replacement machine I think.

13 minutes ago, GarethM said:

A battery saw with a pocket for those burning hand warmer things 🙂.

 

In reality, how hot do heated handles get, guessing quite for it to be felt through a saw glove ?.

They get too hot to touch without gloves on with the 550 I tried.

It's nice to see them adding more features to the electric saws, I think I saw a clutch recently, and I like my little Milwaukee for keeping in the cab but we really need a 50cc equivalent as a minimum.

Electric motors are always better and I can't wait for the end of pull cords but I think we need another leap in battery technology to save weight before there's any serious development for heavy users.

Edit: I just read through the specs and it looks like it's not as far off petrol saws as I expected.