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Yeah, I think we're in very similar situations. We've only been doing our own woodland until the last couple of months so it's interesting now to say the least.

Haha, I made the mistake of tidying up after a chainsaw course once, it's really annoying pulling out short lengths, much easier to winch then cut on the track. I suppose all you can do is work out a day rate and divide by the tons you expect to do which won't be many by the time you've untangled their mess...

Sorry, I should be clear I'm including felling in those costs, not sure if that's what you meant.

I haven't got much experience with softwood to be honest, did our first bit the other week. It was only about 50 tons on nice ground but it worked out about £20 a ton so I can't see it paying on our small scale (tree shear/excavator, forwarding trailer and winch when needed). One way to get a rough extraction cost is just take off transport and standing cost from the final price. Eg oak is about £60 a ton delivered in, minus £10 transport, minus £15 for standing timber makes £35 about right. Edit: The problem with softwood costs is your competing with harvesters that will do 100ton an hour so even if you find a small site with cheap wood it's difficult to justify it.

We were paying £32 a ton to have oak winched and stacked a couple of hundred meters away. That's on steep banks. We're just starting to do a bit ourselves and it's looking around £35. Most people where we are are similar. That's thinning not clearfell and plus vat.

Personally I'd buy locally, most the big online companies are very expensive. Kiln dried is more energy efficient and will save on chimney sweeping but anything under 25% will burn fine, it's just a matter of finding a reliable supplier. Ash and oak are nice to burn but nearly all hardwoods are similar as long as they're properly dried so they're not a necessity.

Worth mentioning that 12 ways are only any good with really big wood, any smaller bits produce a lot of rubbish because of the ring so we only use ours after sorting the timber first. Ours does split oak but that's 25ton force so not really comparable. They usually state they're designed to be used on softwood.

It's a bit messy and takes 2 machines but here's ours (we only do it for a couple of customers). https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=393217847747622&id=260687344334007 Edit:sorry I've forgotten how to get videos to show

I've had no problems with husqvarna or oregon but have switched to rotatech since their similar performance but much cheaper. Fastest chains I've used are stihl but they're very expensive and just as likely to hit a stone and blunt so I don't use them often. As a side note the Rev boost on newer husqvarna saws like the 560 is great when doing lots of cuts.

Cheers. Do you make enough profit with those prices? Seems extremely cheap. Yeah, margins are very tight but we're happy with what we make and we sell a lot. I think here is the only place I've ever been called cheap though, plenty of people round here charge less but as said there can be some variation in load size and quality so I think we're still the best value.

We're in mid Wales and the equivalent of £70 a cube. That's 1.8 cube tipped load delivered within 20 miles, larger loads are slightly cheaper.

We work off 1.8 cube per ton hardwood (it will vary slightly by species). We don't sell it by the bag but we fill for someone else and 1.8 cube fills two 90x90x90 bags. It depends on the size of the lorry but I think our last few loads were around 25ton so 50 bags roughly.

Yes, it's annoying but as said the standard stihl files are 5.2mm although just to confuse it more they do use other sizes. I used the 5.2 ones.

I think (could be wrong) efco and oleo Mac are the same saw. Not sure if they've changed recently but the 962 was a great saw for occasional use when we ran them 5-10 years ago. They're not as nice to use as a husqvarna of course but we never had any issues.

Managed to snap a boom last month, first time I've ever seen it happen and I somehow managed to break it so it points up.

Yeah, heated cabs and touchscreens are great but you've got to appreciate the simplicity of older tractors. Our 35 just crossed 10,000 hours and has never had any major issues.

Brilliant seeing the range of sizes and equipment here. Our two tractors for firewood. Bit of a difference over 50 years;

Does it need to be a tractor or would an old telehandler do? They'll be more maneuverable. If you're going for a rotator you'll want something fairly big as they put the load further forward and can be unstable if you're tipping at height. Our kramer lifts 2 tons and that's about right (although ours is a very heavy rotator with 1.8cube boxes). Our small loader which will lift 1200kg will use a rotator but it's interesting to say the least.

We started in local magazines then word of mouth took over. We get a few customers through our website and alot of people use it to check sizes and prices but that costs a bit to run. The last year I've been doing a Facebook page and that gets a suprising amount of messages although it's taken time to build up and it's quite a bit of work to find interesting stuff to post. Signwritting the pickup also gets us a few calls.

We do but we've got limited storage space and we sold way more than we expected so the backup stack went to.

I mean blasting a massive amount of hot air through it so it dries in a couple of days instead of weeks. It's less efficient but as you say, sometimes it's better to take a small loss to keep customers happy long term. We use our woodchip drying trailer to do it.

I think you might be missing a few points, modern fires and accreditation schemes are requiring dryer logs and in most areas you can't get it that dry without a kiln of some sort, definitely not in the winter. We dry so it's all below 17%, I don't see the point of going dryer as that's what it rises back up to when stored so I'm with you there. From a business point of view we make no money from the subsidies, it costs just over what we claim in RHI to dry wood. For us we wanted to sell more wood a few years ago and instead of building masses of storage to cut in the summer it made more sense to build one drying shed and be able to cut all year and react to orders. We could put up the prices in mid winter when people who air dry start to run out but I prefer to be fair to customers as the drying is close to being free anyway. In terms of wasting wood it takes 150 tons of softwood to dry 1000 of hardwood firewood. That 150tons extra makes the logs about 10% dryer than air dried so they produce more heat (they don't have to burn their own moisture), are lighter and need the chimney swept a lot less often. It also means we can compete with imported kiln-dried firewood. I've nothing against air dried wood by the way, most of the time it burns just as well and with a lot of suppliers it's a cheaper option but for our business we couldn't get it dry enough and our customers, especially the ones with boilers for their homes need a very dry efficient log. Edit: apologies for the length, I was trying to answer the question not bore you

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I've actually just been working that out because we go over the rhi limit. Assuming you put it in from a covered stack and it's not soaking it takes £3-4 a cube of chip (chipping ourselves) and another £3 of electric. The bigger cost is the shed, boiler, boxes and fans. Even on a twenty year pay off you're looking at another £2.50 a cube without interest on loans and that's doing 2000cube a year and assuming nothing breaks. It's taken us a lot of time to get our system efficient and it will be different for everyone but I would say £10-15 a cube if we started again from scratch.

Are they the ones you were giving out with bars at the apf? I keep meaning to find out what they were, they lasted ages and were nice to use.