drinksloe

Must admit i've never had any free wood out of them, just helped them out. Well 1 i was on the committee for years and the reserve manager/driving force ehind it would think nothing of tackling decent sized timber wit his bushman. Sometimes he would spend hours or days cutting up fallen timber to get paths open that a chain saw would do easily in 10 or 15mins or even a few hours.

Plenty good advice here already. How wet is the ground? Often see big stands of birch on wetter/peaty ground and if all wind blown possibly a good chance it is a wet site. Usually a lot of blow is a good sign of wet ground or ad drainage. Ur tractor and skidder winch are ur classic tool followed by a tractor and timber trailer. The size would depend on how much the ground can stand and the extraction distance. Depending on the set up do u need to extract it as u go? Or just either get a contractor in to extract in 1 go when everything is already cut and wait till the summer/drier weather conditions. 2-300T a contractor could knock it out in a week possibly less, depending on the site and how well laid out and stacked it is. Hell on decent sized soft woods and a short haul many larger forwarders will knock that out in 1 day, not that u'd do that in birch thou I would be tempted to just get stuck into it cutting extraction tracks ( and also quads tracks to get u and ur gear in/out) and stack ur birch raised off the deck in neat piles along tracks u have cut along the drier areas with nice very low stumps. If u stacked it even uncovered it shouldnae take that much hurt if off the deck, ideally stacked facing the wind if possible. In wetter areas u could use a capstan winch to skid out some timber to drier areas? Or a quad and logging arch With birch ur probably dealing with smaller timber even at 3-4m most will be hand ballable so hand loading it onto a quad trailer could be an option it time is not a factor to extract ( and u can be bothered ) Must admit if its only the 1 job and cutting a few hundred T of firewood isn't going to justify buying much off a machine to do it unless u have other work for it. A quad is a handy tool for all sorts as is a capstan winch and not too much money. I think i would be tempted if doing it to have a right good walk throu the site, find the drier areas that also go near enough most of ur wind blown timber and mark trees where extraction routes will be, then cut ur routes out stacking timber beside them and then work at getting all the timber felled and stacked and get a contractor in in 1 go to lift the lot. Be handier for the timber hauliers too if a big heap of timber at roadside, they don't want to be coming in for a load and only a 1/2 load there. Plus more chance of it being nicked if constantly wee loads sat at roadisde fr months and months

Fc generally don't even allow wind blow to be cut by hand cutters full stop nowadays even on harvesting sites, the rules are completely bonkers. But basically u would need to find a private landowner and ask there permission, but even at that i doubt u'd find 1 as theyre could be laibility and insurance issues if they allow u on as others have said. I help out/volanteer for a couple of local nature reserves and a community wood, but they all insist on my having tickets. And by they're nature folk/public dogs will be wandering about so not really the place for learning either

Just going to add if u have a decent ammount of stumps/root plates it will take a decent sized hole in the ground and u still have the soil u dug out to get rid off. Way things are with price of red all costs money.

There was a time when they were digging stumps out to chip for boimass power stations, and that was going to power the station with NO round wood, but the geniuses soom realised digging stumps off a forestry site, forwarding them to roadside, hauling ( usually small loads due to ackwardness of them) them to a yard where they had to be power washed. Possibly might be viable to chip in ur case as be easy ripped out and even if u don't make much its worth it to u to tidy site, if someone will take them that is. Wot ground prep are u going to do for ur hard woods? Wot machine are going in anyway? Contractors look to have left a tidy site, but how easy will it be to gather the stumps and transport them to where ever u want to bury them? Not often a tractor trailer will travel a forestry site ( esp not without puncture) Never as easy as it looks to transport stuff about a forest site. If ur getting a digger in anyway to ground prep/drain, i'd just make localised piles or rows handy to where the stumps are anyway so no moving them very far involved. Or just leave as they are if not in the way. It might be worth doing some draining work thou as windblow normally a sign of wet/water loged soil, althou possibly not the case this time as storm arwen was exceptional if u caught it bad.

Wots the best day for traffic? Not so much the traffic into/out of the APF but just traffic in general down there and up the M6? Been a few years since i was there, mibbee just last before covid or the 1 before, and not that i travel very far or often 'proper down south' usually if i do i try to drive throu the night if i can to avoid traffic. Last time was great going down but an absolute nightmare coming back up, and i left sort of mid afternoon to miss the show traffic. I think it would of been the thurs to try and avoid fri/wknd traffic Living where i live in scotland fairly lucky we don't get a lot of traffic so it just does my nut in

Aye i've got a load of trees to drag up a steep banking at mine, i'll try a film it see if i can get some 'action footage' with 1 of my trailer winches Going to try a get a snatch block up tree to get them to come up from the distance they are down the banking. Will be a wee bit different to just normmal skidding with a tractor, if i can get hold of a capstan winch by then mibbee try and set it up as a high lead/back haul type system. Again something that should work in my head but never heard of anyone else trying/doing it

Not really ur classic custom built niche machines like avants etc More winches for ideas for forestry, i've adapted a couple with donkey engines and got a wee compact custom built skidder, as a hand cutter i can see a niche for them to make my life easier, more productive or safer 9 ideally all 3) but convincing timber harvesting contractors they're is a job for them takes a bit of doing at times. Esp as most don't really care that much about chainsaw work Sometimes they're stuck in the traditional mindset Plus a lot of sites its all big tackle anyway which is the other end of the scale i'm aiming at. I will keep plugging away thou Althou i have got work for them at my own wee woodland so worth keeping for myself and i could push them a little harder but usually busy enough just on the saw. And stilll dreaming up new ideas too, got a few in pipeline hopefully, when i can fund them. Back to the OP I seen some mentioned post knocker and augers, like everything both great tools if and when u need them, but unless u help out or do much fencing u'd probably never get a hire for them. I occasionally help out with a fencing company that has heaps of equipmet/toys and it is very rare the post knocker on a digger comes out, just a few times a year really, handy when it does. But thats a company running 4 squads doing agri fencing and rarely need to use the chapper on either digger 2.7 or 9T.. I have seen photos from others that use them more often on here, but generally easier ways to knock posts in. It all depends on exactly wot ur likely market for u and the machine are? Wot have ur competitors got? Wot have local hire companies got? Wot are they short off? Will it be farmers, big house owners, builders, arb companies etc? Depending where u think they're is a gap in market will alter wot u would buy, but a selection of buckets, ur V,, tilting ditching ( or tilting quick hitch so all ur buckets tilt and handy for a post knocker if u go down that route) ripper tooth, thumb and possibly a breaker, would cover u for most normal digger jobs.

I'm not as experienced or knowledegable as most on this thread. But 1 thing for the money is a thumb, nowhere near as good as a proper timber grab esp with a rotator, but still a bloody handy piece of equipment for general digging work for not a lot of money. Maks it far easier to move roots, big stones etc with a smaller bucket Do u also do tree work or already sub to a lot of tree/arb companies? Just a lot of the ideas are arb related, not surprising on this site but not sure how much arb digger work they're is where they hire someone in? Will be different for different areas depending wot the local companies already own or hire from a local hire company. Another thing which is just as important as the toys u have on ur digger will be how good u are on it? If ur a good operator a company might just sub u in FT hire with them. I think ur right to try and find ur own niche for ur area in something u enjoy, but these will be very local dependant if someone already has filled that niche. No good competeing with someone esp in quite a specialist field if u can avoid it, means u'll either be undercutting each other for work or not busy enough to justify ur machine. Must admit i've tried a few 'niche' machine buys, not spent a lot of money on them and i'm still convinced they do fill a handy niche but u still have to convince others that they work. Not always easy if ur thinking is a bit outside the box, but got to keep trying

Possibly different in eng. But possibly if the 2 adjoining pieces of land are owned by different land owners and if at some time in the past were owned by the same land owner there may be the possibility both land owners own up to there boundry fence/hedge but the piece of ground in the middle was never sold. So possibly the neighbours don't know who does own it I know my grandfather once got a brucey bonus cheque for some land he never knew he owned. At 1 point must have owned both sides of a wide ditch sold both sides off to different folk but never the ditch decades earlier. A developer built something on it and paid him for this useless bit of ditch. But as others have said even if u find the owner its not so much the taking of any timber which will be a problem but the insurance liability of u using power saws on his ground, if u cut/hurt urself or worse someone on footpath

I have a 3 blade oregon shreding/mulching blade for mine and a great piece of kit. But i find i need to put the support flange on 1st before the blade, seems to be a slight bevel in the blade which makes it tight on the head. Seems to work ok anyway

They weren't Terragators were they? Big yellow things, i think some have either 3 or 5 wheels with a big central steering wheel, 1's i drove had 4 but u could steer both axles and lock it crab like for really soft ground so every tyre on different footprint. Big 1m wide agri bibs, was fun drivin it on narrow country roads. I'm sure i've seen some used as secondry extraction units for timber, from forest roadside to a proper hgv accessable roadside, ( low ground pressure doesnae screw up forest tracks as much) I drove 1 after the fires finished on F&M, they used them to treat and spread 'contaminated' cow slurry after F&M. They have a dispalcement pump same as umbilical systems so u could mix slurry with lime and they guaranteed it was mixed throughout, well that was the theory. Ws the same up my area 1 bloke had it sewn up, to be fair i don't think much competiton for it, was a truelly stinking job. He won the contract for a lot of F&M work, can't mind him going back to the human slurry after that. Dunno if the rules changed about the same time or he made so much money on F&M. No one else started spreading it either thou

I take it there are his trees on his land? Do u need to go onto his land to take photos/inspect trees? But that is ur sun house/shed? Are the trees TPO'd or something It might help wot general geographic area ur in incase laws/rules vary. It does look like it, must admit seems a strange thing to do with trees of that size in a location like that. Once dead will be far more ackward/dangerous to work with esp if they need climbed. I have used eco plugs ( drill holes and hammers a plastic thing of weedkiller into tree/hole) of trees of that size or bigger but only as a last resort where acces was real dodgy and a genuine safety risk to hand fell, for disease control

Not great to tell from photos. No 1 possibly looks more like larch to me, just type of needles and amount althou bark looks too light coloured. Do the needles fall of them in winter? Is that produce left lying at roadside the same as No1 or has that came out the coupe just before it? In my area quite rare to see large commercial plantations of firs at all, some estate woods have occasional firs esp Doug throu them but probably only 10-20% if that No 2 the shape of branches look more like oak to me but again i'm not 100%

Was a wood just up above me they done it with, we called it porticullousing? sp? like the gate thingys on castles as they dug trenches to fill with sewerage.a bit like that. Its just up the side of the M74 i felled a few blocks above it, they were only young then but that was a few years ago now ( infact could be close on 20) drive past it often enough but never thought much about it or looked to see if trees are any better. Must admit the blocks above it were nothing special. I think they are doing something right on the border on the english side but great big deep trenches, deep enough to drive a moxy in without seeing it, The local balif was playing up blaming them for a sever lack of fish in the river since it started, used to be a really good/famous seat trout river