Johnpl315

Have you got any photos of said trees? I would suggest it might be more cost effective to winch the trees up on to the island assuming there's space to do so. What kind of diameter are the trees? I may be able to help, pm me if you want. Thanks, John

Usual story 🤣 On the firewood pile then haha Thanks for the reply!

Any demand for box wood timber?

Holy moly! I have always had a hard time shifting beech firewood, prime quality plantation grown beech sits in the loading bay for months getting lighter and lighter as nobody wants to collect it

Really? What kind of money are we talking?

Depends on your forwarding setup and on your customers requirements? I normally cut three meters as I can only fit one bay, if you can fit two bays of 2.5 then cut that! If you can fit two bays of 3m even better! If you are thinning and hand cutting it can be useful to cut shorter lengths so you can cut up a hung up tree without holding the saw up to high.

I second this, gorse can be a good nursery crop for young trees. I would clear the immediate are around the trees but leave the rest, unless you have a tractor or skid with a mulcher.

When I was in Norway it seemed the Norwegians bought their cabins in kits from Eastern Europe, Latvia and Lithuania. I don't know of any specific companies though I am afraid.

I think unless you know them well having volunteers on site just makes the job harder and more dangerous. Why not do any cutting when there are no volunteers on site and then they can go in once you have finished and clear up and then they won't be required to be covered by your insurance anyway?

Dead oak stumps can be worth a lot of money if you put a glass table top on top of them!

Doesn't surprise me at all and I don't think there's necessarily anything fishy going on, just large firms lots of staff, particularly if they have a human resource department, will of applied strait away where as small hard working folk are all busy out in the woods and don't think of apply until it's too late. They should of done it so each company gets training for one employee and then the money could be shared around a bit fairer

Standing timber can fetch decent money and that site looks nice and level. The price per meter or per ton that toy will get depends on many factors including total volume, site access, is there a decent loading area with access for artics? Is the site all nice a level like the photo or are there steep banks and bogs? Is the spacing adequate for a harvester and forwarder combo or will a smaller scale approach be required? You will need to ensure that a felling license is in place and be prepared for lots of muddy ruts and brash everywhere.

My experience is a little different. For sure it's useful to have a spare saw but I have kept saws thinking I will use them as spares, they sit in the container for years and then when you take them out they don't run right anyway... I also tend to use the smallest saw that's efficient for the cutting I am doing. My go to saw for my line of work (coppicing chestnut) is the husky 550. I tried using a larger saw (stihl 400) which is way more powerful but it didn't increase productivity over a day and I used 5.5l of fuel instead of 3.5l With regard to husky 545 and 555, I used to have a 545, it was a fantastic saw, I cut thousands of tons of timber with it and it never missed a beat, unlike my 550 which suffered a broken crankshaft and my 560 which sized. Personally I think the xp saws rev a little higher which actually renders the more prone to breakage.

I have an alpine tractor and 3 ton trailer. It depends on your target market but you can't really compete with larger machines. Lots of people are drawn to the low impact but expect you to pay the same rates as a regular harvester/forwarder combo. Here are some points that may help you decide its viability. Do you know the price of standing timber you could purchase? Do you know the roadside price of said timber? Do you know how many tons per day you can cut? I can extract anything from about ten tons a day up to 20 tons plus on a good site. But I hear of contractors extracting for £10 a ton so I couldn't really compete with that. It's also quite fragile so timber presentation has to be good otherwise you will break something. It is kind of working for me at the moment but I spend most of the time cutting. I wouldnt think it viable to just do extracting on other people's jobs. In hindsight I can't help wondering if I would of been better going for a 70hp alpine and 5ton trailer or a vimek forwarder or similarl.

This is cordwood at the roadside. The firewood I did this year, cut 305m2 in May, buyer just finished collecting now on tonnage came to less the 200 ton and that's top quality beech firewood. Some would of gone for sawlogs if anyone had wanted and sawlogs. Won't be doing that again as I would of made more money stacking shelves in tesco