gdh
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Everything posted by gdh
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Personally I wouldn't hire a chipper out unless I was using it. Too many people think a couple of nails won't be an issue but I expect you've thought it through so my only worry would be liability for accidents. Your best bet might be to hire out a man and chipper instead. Find someone who wants a bit of cash and can use the chipper. The chipper course is fairly quick and simple.
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I tried drying some but gave up, cutting diagonally did help a bit but I couldn't stop the splitting.
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It's all guesswork until you've done a year to be honest. I would guess at 5-10 tons a week, up to 15 if it's freezing. If they're not planning on drying the chip the logs will need to be really dry. Less than 15% ideally. 25% is the maximum on the inside of a freshly split log if you want the chip to burn.
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Where abouts are you based? Someone here might live near you.
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1 ton makes 3 to 4 cube of chip. We heat our drying shed with chip so it doesn't really compare to anything else but it's a 199kw boiler and uses 2 cube a day depending how much we're drying. A 100kw boiler for 2 houses I would hazard a guess at 10 cube a week. The biggest issue with chip is drying it.
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I had a similar problem on mine that was caused by a perished fuel pipe.
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We used silage sheeting over the top and about 2ft down the sides. It helped a lot and is relatively cheap but you'll be lucky to use it more than twice before it's wrecked.
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Should point out that the saws get used every day but not heavily by any means. Could be because it's nearly always on dry, seasoned wood, I rarely do felling. Our husqvarna 357xp is about 10 years old I think and on the odd occasion I do take it apart there's not even enough dust to be worth doing anything.
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Cutting oak today, big stuff through the proceesor, small stuff with the chainsaw. Glad we were inside, there was a little bit of hail.
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Never changed a fuel filter, except when I ran over my saw and that was the least of my problems. Also never cleaned the air filter and I only change sprockets when they're heavily worn. No problems so far.
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Just use a normal chain, unless I'm missing something it shouldn't need sharpening more than once. Just watch out for nails, everyone hammers them into stuff around the garden.
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It would be interesting to know if the 40hp requirement takes into account the lower pto speed. Unfortunately we use the tractor to drag it around. Something to look into if we ever go bigger though.
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Yeah thanks everyone, it's fine how it is and the tractor's not working too hard so best leave it be. It's only ever been a problem cutting 18inch diameter oak and even then it's just a matter of not cutting and splitting at once
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I know that, my logic was that it would be like putting it in a lower gear. Appreciate all the advice but it looks like a no go.
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It runs the machine at 420-30 at rest, that's about 2 thirds revs on the tractor. The machine is rated to be used between 400 and 430rpm, any more could overheat the hydraulic motors (and presumably run the chainsaw much too fast). I'm wondering if gearing it down 80% so I can run the tractor on higher revs would increase the power going through the pto from 40 to 48hp or if it would make no difference between the torque would be the same.
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The above posts are why I like arbtalk, it's nice seeing the different ends of the spectrum. Sales are good for us, just struggling to keep up with the cutting. We did about 120 tons in February which is the best yet. It's a nice combination of cold,dry weather.
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I know what you mean, it's nice to hear the revs drop to tell the strain on the machine. I'm not planning to do anything, the 35 has done 50 years here so it deserves to take it easy. I was just wondering if my theory was right. Interesting that you say about your tractor, I've been meaning to run our deutz 180 on 1000 economy and see how much fuel it uses compared to the massey.
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Oops I put the cogs the wrong way around in my original post, I should have said small to big so I run the tractor at higher revs and the machine at the same speed as now.
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Hydraulic guillotine style firewood processors
gdh replied to tcfengineering's topic in Firewood forum
It's clever but I would stick to a traditional processor myself. If you're wondering how long the edge would last going through the grains it might be worth researching the hydraulic tree shears you can get for 360s. Edit: Just saw Tom Ds post and I've changed my mind, that might be on softwood but it looks really impressive. -
A bit of background first. We've got a new firewood processor that requires 40hp and we run it off our old Massey 35x. That tractor is 40hp on the PTO shaft but as they say on top gear 'I think a couple of horses have escaped over the years'. It runs it fine but you can hear it struggling when you split a big log 12 ways and use the chainsaw simultaneously. The tractor only runs the machine at 420-430rpm so I wondered if I put a cog on the tractor PTO and an 80% smaller (ish) cog on the processor and ran a chain round them then ran the tractor at 540 (ish) would that give me more power? Or am I missing something really stupid? To be honest I don't need to do this now I'm used to the machine but I'm curious if it would work.
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Worth my time to extract alder
gdh replied to Marsh Monkey's topic in Forestry and Woodland management
It's not my favourite wood but it burns well enough, only issue I can see is size - there's not many people who want it that big. Might be worth finding a buyer first in case you can't shift it straight away. -
This is what I was thinking of when I said dry alder. It's by some oak for comparison. I'm not saying the original picture isn't alder, I'll leave that to people more qualified than me. I was just delivering some earlier so took a picture.
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Yes, they're good tractors. We converted from masseys when pallisers, the dealer did because we wanted to stick with a dealer we knew was good.
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It's possible that somethings come loose inside. Have you tried sticking it straight up and shaking it gently to get it down. Just please don't flip the trailer.
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I'm not sure now, we dried alder and it came out really bright but as you say ours was summer felled and I have seen some go lighter thinking about it. Presumably the orange is the sap coming to the surface so it depends how much is in it.
