gdh
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Everything posted by gdh
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Your pretty close with animal feed, it's waste chocolate for that. The owner mixes it in. It doesn't look as appetising as you would think though...
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No it's a wood chipper. I'm interested who can guess what we were chipping. :-)
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Ran out of wood to chip ;-)
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1 for me. 5 and 6 seem too generic. 3 and 7 are OK but not very memorable and the last 2 I don't like.
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The tajfun one is in this video at 2:40. I can't see it will be as good as a rotary one and they're designed for the tajfun but they were only about £300. Also I just learned tajfun is pronounced typhoon not tadge fun after 5 years of using them.
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We don't bother screening more than the processor does, although we don't cut small wood, we just found people complained about lack of kindling but if you do want to sort it you can put another screen on the end of the conveyor. Tajfun do one (I've got one and never put it on). They have slots like at the base sloping off the conveyor with a solid sheet at the opposite angle underneath to take the kindling away from the pile.
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We were paying £300 a day for a mobile sawmill, that was on a lorry with a crane though.
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Using personal truck for work...What's a fair price?
gdh replied to MW Tree Services's topic in General chat
Ignoring other factors like if you have the job because you have a vehicle available I think 45p is reasonable. I was doing costings for our Isuzu delivering firewood and if you assume 25mpg diesel costs 18p a mile with no vat. Depreciation is around 15p a mile - no vat, no major repairs because it's under warranty until 100,000 miles when we'll sell, insurance is 3p a mile and 3p a mile for minor repairs. That makes 39p a mile before labour. Obviously vat adds a lot and it's going to vary massively but it's a reasonable guide. -
Agreed. Obviously the tajfuns are much faster overall but manual controls are faster on small stuff. With our old hakki pilke you could slam the chainsaw down to the log and just slow down for the actual cut. We tried cutting multiple logs with the tajfun 480 which is really fast when it works with dead straight timber but isn't really practical as you get them spin round the bar or the conveyor just moves the bottom ones as soon as you have a slight kink in any of them. For the sake of efficiency the first thing we did when we switched to joystick controls was stop cutting most stuff under 6 inch.
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Using personal truck for work...What's a fair price?
gdh replied to MW Tree Services's topic in General chat
45 a mile (each way importantly) sounds ok to me if labours on top. Just do a rough sum of fuel + depreciation + repairs + insurance. -
We've managed to get a few special orders so we cut it into 18inch or 3ft lengths for them to use in biomass boilers. Also chip a lot of it. I think the biggest set up cost most people don't take into account is buying the wood and having it stacked for a year. I know the 1200 ton here is making our overdraft look bad. ;-) Other than that I reckon you could start up with a new top of the range processor but with used machinery for about 40k. All new with a timber trailer etc and you could easily hit 200k though just depends how big you want to go and how many years you want to go before you pay it all off.
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Interesting point about larger logs v quality. I actually prefer the logs you get from a 12 way as they're more uniform but we don't use the 12 way much because if you put medium logs through it you get a lot of kindling. Most the time we just re split with the 8 way.
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Haha, yeah I'm normally alright with stakes but there was no break doing slithers so I was stiff the next day..I might put it on a stand but then I would need to add a table after it to save lifting logs back on. We were using fairly big oak. Another job for the list this summer...
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That's what I call luxury!
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Thanks it was a one off for a friend but we're quite pleased with it. We've got an old posche splitter we use for fencing stakes, it does 7ft lengths by having 2 rams to double its length. There's a video here,apologies it's on Facebook. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=339701389765935&id=260687344334007 In regards to using 200hp tractors it's surprising how little fuel they use, we occasionally use ours for contacting and they'll run the processor just above idle with 1000/1000economic pto. I haven't measured it running on ours but it idles at 0.7 gallons an hour so it's hardly any more than our 50 year old massey. Obviously the depreciation of £12 an hour is the reason it only gets used when needed. :
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Out of curiosity, how much will the major lift? Will it move the machine? We use an old massey 35x on ours but it only drags it around on concrete. We've been pretty slow on the wood recently although we did split some oak to make a garden fence and I've been busy stocking up and chipping softwood.
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It's a not a 480 and I don't think it's a tajfun, older binderburger maybe? They should make us all guess Interesting conveyor arrangement but a shame it doesn't look like it works at that angle.
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Could try here Products Archive | Bag Supplies I can only see the ones with flaps in smaller sizes though.
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I thought breathers had vents in them to only allow movement in but maybe there's different types. The only time I've had a perished pipe was on a new saw that has sat empty in the shop for a while so I lean towards leaving saws full but to be honest I just leave them where I finished. What's the best price on aspen? It seems very overpriced for every day use. A quick look says £18 for 5L as opposed to about £6 for mixing my own. Even if anyone did have issues you could buy a lot of saw parts with that £12 change each time. :-)
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I meant while stored, I don't think breathers are constantly open?
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Never had a problem personally and I use strimmers after the winter with no issues, same with the odd saw I pick up after a couple of months. Only time I've ever been hesitant is when a neighbour gave us some 10 year old leaded petrol but that went through the quad no problem. Perhaps it's to do with how airtight the tanks are but I'd never heard anyone with any problems before I read about it on threads here.
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That's pretty much my argument, although kiln-dried does have its benefits. There's, thankfully, no official definition of either and for personal use I work off; under 30 burnable, under 25 good, under 20 perfect rather than how it's produced. The only reason kiln-dried is so popular is because it gives a degree of guarantee. Seasoned can be anything so people buy wet wood and assume that's how it all is whereas kiln-dried is nearly always good because it tends to be sold by larger suppliers and people complain when it's not bone dry. Also in some places people can't air dry to less than 20% so kiln-dried has an advantage there for more sensitive fires. We kiln dry but only because we sell so much now it's easier to cut and dry through the winter than do it all in the summer and need vast amounts of storage. We don't mention it much in advertising, just that we sell dry wood all year round.
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I don't think there is a definitive answer but in the winter if we dry wood to below 10% and put it in a dry shed for a month it goes back up to 16. It doesn't go much above that after though and that's ideal for burning anyway. As long as the garage hasn't got water in it or blowing in I can't see it getting damp to the point where it becomes an issue, arguably after a few years wood gets really dry and light instead. Out of a few hundred customers it's only the ones who have outside stores who have any problems in my experience.
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I tried to sell bulk loads last year but only managed 2. The problem is finding someone close enough to take it but far enough away to not take your customers. We can do unseasoned for £62 a cube plus vat from the yard but it was delivery that wiped out the profit selling it on for most people (they charged 85).
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Good firewood, we've sold hundreds of tons with no complaints. Helps that it looks and burns like Ash. ;-)
