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That wouldn't work in practice since all logs are different sizes, if that was the case I would be going out to buy an 8 way splitter. Cubic meters is the closest to fair you can get in my opinion. We did once have a customer complain that they had 476 logs when last time they had 497 a few years ago though which we couldn't quite believe. Should have offered them a bag of kindling to make up the difference...

Not sure on the legalities of insurance but it's best to be covered in case you knock someone's shed down or hit something when tipping. No it hasn't happened to us. If you're selling to people who receive the RHI grant you need to be on the Biomass Suppliers List (BSL) which basically means proving all your timber is sustainable with a felling licence as minimum for each lot. Check the total weight of your delivery vehicle and load and make sure it's not over 3.5 tons, that can cause problems. There's recently been news of trading standards looking at load sizes but that's not an issue yet for most people. Personally I would always sell per cubic meter. If you're feeling ambitious VAT has to be charged after £75,000 turnover. If you're selling to the end user charge 5% and if it will be sold on charge 20%. Business rates... https://www.gov.uk/introduction-to-business-rates/overview Not my area of expertise, there's plenty of exemptions so just ask around. Hope that helps. Edit: VAT is worth looking at regardless of turnover as you can claim back the difference.

From what I've seen a '1 ton' standard bag is about .7 cube when properly filled. We do a few sizes of load, all tipped loose, from a pickup or trailer or some combination depending what the customer wants. Currently we charge £110 for 1.8 cube or £140 for 2.4. Everything we sell is kiln dried hardwood. We're in mid Wales, most of the prices people charge depend on area and completion.

Tempting, unfortunately there's costs to pay even then. I was just giving an idea of costs involved, we get on ok,everyone would like to be paid more but putting the prices up would lose too many customers. I expect there's quite a few businesses where the owners don't get paid.

£60 a cube delivered and tipped is break even (as part of a £110 1.8 cube load). Around here in Wales at least. Edit: That doesn't fully cover labour thinking about it but there's a lot of other suppliers around.

It's exactly the same on our machine, 2 years old/1200 tons of hardwood. I thought we were using a lot of oil. We've just started our third drive belt and third chain tensioners as well but other than that it's pretty good. Only thing I'm worried about is the main chainsaw guard which has taken a few whacks and is getting harder to straighten.

With our processors (Tajfun 400 and hakki pilke 1X37 before that) I like to change chain about every 12 tons but a brand new chain can go up to 20 tons in hardwood. We did have to to semi chisel chains for a bit though because we had a load of muddy wood in and we were only getting 2 tons to a chain with the full chisel chains. Also chain use will depend on the length of wood you cut, obviously cutting 18 inch instead of 9 will last twice as long. We did notice that when you switch from a machine that uses hydraulic oil to one that uses chain oil you use a lot less oil. We have about 10 chains in use at a time. I used to sharpen them in a vice but I've found it's quicker to screw an old guide bar to the side of the work bench (on an upright bit of wood) and loop the chain round that so that you don't have to keep undoing the vice to swap the chain around.

My opinion and accurate as far as I know. Whatever you do, make sure that woodchip is dry. Fresh chip from hedges etc won't work (that's usually way over the 20-25% recommended range). Soft wood will dry faster than hardwood. Also most boilers have a maximum chip diameter like 50x50mm so you need to get the right sort of chipper. For example a heizohack that has a built in 'sieve' to stop the big chip going through or if you don't mind the work you can get an old grain grader or similar to sort it after. For 80 tons a year it's probably best to hire someone in with a big chipper (although you should make sure that the timber is stacked ready for them so you get value for money). I personally would sell the bigger timber and just put bent and small stuff through a chipper then buy in cheap softwood to make up the difference. If you're looking at buying I think a 12 inch chipper will cost around £25,000 new depending on brand and need 100hp+ to power it. Unless you're chipping in small amounts I would also suggest a skidsteer/loader or a log trailer and crane for shifting timber to save your back on the big stuff. Hope some of that is vaguely useful. Edit: If you haven't already looked at RHI (renewable heat incentive), it might be a good way to earn some money back. Evoworld boilers might be worth a look to.

Thanks for the replies, we've just started to sell woodchip for biomass boilers so we have dry chip. We have a boiler which we're tempted to get our hot water from but it's quite far from the house and that boiler doesn't constantly run so we were looking at a the woodchip equivalent of our oil fuelled Rayburn. If it exists which seems unlikely.

Does anyone know of any Rayburn/Aga style cookers that can be fuelled by woodchip (from a store, preferably not every couple of hours)? I've seen a few that use pellets but nothing with chip which we have a supply of already. Any advice is welcome, we are looking for one that will heat water and cook like a traditional Rayburn.

I've had a 962 for a few years, it's a good all round saw and the build quality is pretty good. It works best when very sharp as it doesn't seem to have the torque/chain speed to keep going when the chain starts to go. I'd still go for a Husqvarna but they make good back up saws.

Those types of cameras are good, it might be worth putting up an old big one as well that people see (doesn't have to work) and then one of those small ones that people don't see. There was an article in the farmers weekly a couple of weeks ago about the legal side of things if you know someone with a copy and want to know about that sort of thing.

We've got the Tajfun400 joy and the bar (pro lite) seems to wear fast on that, unfortunately the joystick moves the bar at a set speed so we can't do much about the pressure. We thought that the auto off on the chain would make the bars last longer but it doesn't seem to help. Chains last about 20 tons when new then 10 tons after each sharpening and I would say the bar last 80-100 tons. The biggest problem is when the splitter pushes a bit of wood up and under all the guards which I can see as causing major damage one day. I've already had to chainsaw logs out a few times. It's still one of the best processors but it does have it's problems. Edit: We use proper chainsaw oil already but different brands of bars might be worth a look.

Husqvarna (and some Oleo macs), nearly all hard wood in Mid Wales.

My Yamaha grizzly 550 does about 13mpg but that's mostly checking or moving sheep so it's constantly accelerating and at high speeds. I could save a lot of fuel money with a diesel bike but wouldn't want to give up the speed and handling.

I think loader are the way to go if you have enough work for one. Our small Kramer is good for most things (except side slopes). They have pretty much any attachment you want and if they don't its easy enough to change the brackets and couplings on something. 4 wheel steer is a wonderful thing aswell. Bobcats are also worth a look as they come with some good forestry attachments and you should be able to get an older one quite cheap now but we had problems with the bearings going on our old one as it was tracked.

We used to put almost anything through a processor (a good one should take most stuff) but now we leave the smaller or bent stuff to chip (we're lucky to have a hardwood contract though ). Our wood looks similar to the picture that woodworks posted. I normally find that diameter is more important than how straight wood is, if there's a load of 2/4 inch stuff it takes ages to put through a processor (especially if you have joystick controls which are a set speed). I would say that it's about 3 times as fast to put 12 inch straight logs through a processor compared to small, bent stuff which is why they demonstrate with big stuff, and usually softwood.

It's the percentage of people who voted for that option I think. I'm suprised so many people use free hand, I often get the wrong angle with the guide on.

Thanks, nice to know there someone around to correct my mistakes.

I use a vice and file guide because most of my chainsaw work is around the yard. For sharpening a few chains at once for a firewood processor I use a bench grinder but its very easy to wreck the edge of the tooth with them so I usually stick to doing it by hand. It's typical the one thing I forget to put in the poll is the obvious one that everyone uses.

I knew there would be something obvious. Could an admin please edit the poll, I don't think I can.

I haven't seen anything similar so I thought I would do this out of interest. You can vote for as many as you use out of the following; 1. File guide- standard round file in a guide 2. Roller guide - Round file in a roller guide 3. Electric sharpener - Any handheld electric sharpener 4. Bench grinder - Bench mounted disc grinder 5. Powersharp - the oregon 'auto-sharpen' chain or anything similar. 6. 2 in 1 sharpener - Does the depth guages at the same time 7. Clamp on bar guide - like this 8. Other - Angle grinder, electric drill etc. 9. Freehand Let me know if I've missed anything, it should be interesting to see the results... Edit: I missed out freehand in the poll because I was too busy thinking of all the file guides. It might be added later if not just post.

If you want to tip them you ideally need a box rotator on a front end loader but they are quite expensive. Also if you want more storage area than an IPC it's worth looking at potato boxes.

Thanks for all the help everyone. I'll probably go for the 372 XP or maybe the 576 xp autotune if the vibrations on the 372 are too bad.

We can't get an Artic in so we get 6 wheelers in. A drag is a trailer and you can get them to more difficult places than an artic because it follows the lorry better (and you can take it off if you have a tractor to turn it round seperately). Edit: Nice to see 3 of us post at once