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? 

1 hour ago, Whoppa Choppa said:

 

£110/t delivered ex.

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 

1 hour ago, Whoppa Choppa said:

Roadside roundwood, specifically ash, has hit the dizzy heights. Twice what it was 18 months ago. Will the bubble burst?

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. 

10 hours ago, scbk said:

You'll want a few paths cleared, but gorse can be good for keeping the deer off the new tress. In 10-15yrs time the trees will be smothering out the gorse!

 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. 

1 hour ago, Stubby said:

My advice ( as it always is ) is to buy the best pro saw you can currently afford . Once you get it , a short period of time will pass  and you won't understand how you ever managed with just this one saw . You will then need another , bigger pro saw , and then another etc etc . Then you will need to get them ported coz that's a thing , and then the snow ball keeps on rolling ! 🙂

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. 

46 minutes ago, arboriculturist said:

 

This must be processed firewood in crates outside not stacked roundwood roadside ?

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

2 hours ago, MattyF said:

I’ve already cut any wood that we sell but I started again for our own boiler , stacked ash and beech two year old still reading around 40% just sell it back to them in winter as two year old timber, it soon sucks up moisture in December and your back near the weight you weight of had. 

Forestry commission blue book quote hardwood dries 5% per 20 days April until September and the 1% per 20 days in the other months. That tallies with my experience. And so timber stacked for three months over the summer will loose 20% which is enough to make a difference between a job being viable or not. Timber on the ground may soak up some moisture in the winter but the majority of the stack won't. 

As a forestry contractor I have found it near impossible to shift hardwood promptly, no one wants it unless it's been sat seasoning for a year and then they want to pay tonnage, the wood having lost 30 percent weight. 

 This has actually made it unviable for me so unless someone want to buy some and collect and pay within an allocated time frame I am not cutting any more. I am in West Sussex 

I used to work on a Christmas tree farm many years ago, there is some serious money involved, although not without a share of work. 

 The farm I worked on harvested around 70k trees a year, and they only sold trade. Trade prices ranged from about £15 up to £50 for a regular sized tree. Say an average of £30. That's a fair amount of revenue! 

 But, you need the land, deer fencing, planting, bud rubbing, pruning, herbicide application to prevent them growing too fast, grading and marking, cutting, netting, loading on a trailer behind a tractor, taken back to a yard, unloading and palleting. 

 There is no doubt that the estate owner was a multi millionaire, but the Christmas trees were just one part of the estate, alongside a farm, shoot and woodland operations. 

 Most of the jobs were mundane and extremly repetitive and carried out by Eastern Europeans. 

Hope this gives you a bit of an insight! 

Mine have been going strong for three year of forestry use, including a fair amount of work on very rocky Skyline site. 

 I got them to replace a stihl pair I had that lasted less than two months on the same site before all the stitching came undone! 

On 15/05/2022 at 10:25, openspaceman said:

Apart from lurchers and "fast" dogs which still don't really qualify as they are bred for poaching, which crosses are used as working dogs?

 

The vast majority of dogs are just pets and companions.

 

Our cross was an accident of birth, the two frenchies highly expensive pure bred and I don't approve of the breeding  at all but I am very attached to them all.

Alaskan huskies are crosses and they arguably have the best stamina out of any dog in the world. 

9 minutes ago, 5thelement said:

Whereabouts in Sussex?

Near midhurst. 

Beech cordwood for sale, forest grown firewood in 3m lengths, looking for quick uplift due to small loading bay. £50 a ton at the roadside, access for 8 wheeler only. 

Thanks

1 hour ago, Big Beech said:

Always fancied one of them turbo swing blades. Out put for dimensional timber would be far faster than anything else I’d of thought

I dunno I think this may be a case of the grass is always greener because I always though a bandsaw would be quicker 🤣 I think for the turbosaw the assembly time was a killer, and the one I had had some design flaws, like it was powered by a chainsaw power unit and in my opinion it wasn't very good, it used to snap the bar studs regularly and it was a right pain in the tits trying to keep the band from the power unit to the saw tight enough. 

 It also took two people to lift the carriage on to the rails, at the time I was a one man band so it wasn't ideal. 

That said, if I saw a second hand one now I would definitely consider it just because I know how it works 😝

Hi all. 

I am looking at buying a portable sawmill. I am open to suggestions of new mills, at the moment the two contenders are Norwood and woodland mills. 

I would also be interested to hear of any second hand saws for sale. 

 I previously had a swing blade sawmill made by turbosaw, however I think a bandsaw makes more sense. 

Any input welcome. 

Many thanks, 

John

Yeah maybe the best bet is to advertise on Facebook market place, rustic poles for pergolas etc. And sell them on an individual pole basis. 

Technically you need to be a registered professional operator with the plant health people as well