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

Are u still aloud to do that down south? Pretty sure it was banned up in scotland around foot & mouth time, never seen it for years now. Was nver that popular althou the same few farmers always took it.#It would probably be were a lot of the technology for umbilical systems came from which are now almost the norm up here and were very rare back then.

Must admit i wouldnae worry the difference will be tiny anyway 100ml either way over 5 L wont make much difference. Will depend how accurae u measure ur 100ml of 2 stroke, and extra/or less 10ml would make more difference, thats similar to 500ml of petrol. Must admit i always put 2 stroke in jerry cans and combi cans 1st, 1 as i think it will mix better with the feul going in on top, but i still shake the jerry can before pouring into a combi to male sure no settlement. I tend to work with 1 of those measuring 1l bottles and fill that from a gallon can of 2 stroke and carry that in the tub beside my combi cans so always have a litre of 2 stroke with me. Usually mix 25-35 litres at a time depending how many combis are empty Those bottles are easy to work with ur head torch and no messing with lose measuring things But the main reason i put 2 stroke in 1st is to make sure i never have pure petrol in either my combi or jerry can, just a recipe for disaster. Only takes 1 blether at garage or running late at wood some morning and u forget to add 2 stroke and u have a disaster on the cards. Happened to a mate 1 day i was with him owner came out as he was filling cans and completely forgot to add the 2 stroke, just caught him at a bad time, nipped saw. I know i pick up anything for 2 stroke it has 2 stroke mixed correctly

If ur meaning or un a planting gang do u not need a gang master or slave trader ticket or something like that? I though t it was brought in to stop folk running big gangs of illegals . To be fair i think it was after the cockle pickers at morecombe bay to try and keep track of gaffers and there gangs, nowadays with needing +F i doubt just as many illegals at it. I dooubt they're will be much any loler unless there meaning to climb trees, most of the gangs i know of doing work like that tend to be more scrub bashing. U'd be as well speaking to a gaffer in 1 of the forestry companies u want to tender for, some of the bigger ask u quite a lot of questions and have heard of it costing thousands to get on there tender lists ( and thats not even the FC) Are FC not all 5 year tenders for planting/beating up etc? Mibbee different in different districts but locally usually a 5 year tender and u then have all the work for the 5 years

I was in a very similar set up to u a few years back the collectning pipes silted up so supply went dry plus a leak and the usual lack of care when a few houses ( 8 on our system) U sort of forget and take it for granted, i was just new at the time. I'm sure at the time we just googfed it and a few options came up, we were looking for now holding tanks thou, ended up just getting new lids for them and a few other things. The neighbours wanted a company in which was fine, althou they have bolted all the lids down so a real pain to open and see wots going on inside. Even if they were hinged and shut securely Personally i think i would of made them easier to open, not even as if all the same fittings some bolted, some tech screwed Is ur tanks/pipes still on FC ground? That might be ur biggest baw ache dealing with them esp if u need diggers/machinery involved, best avoidnig if u can or gets complicated. To be honest u could really use almost any plastic or fibre glass ( potable water safe) container and just bore a tank conector to it. Tomorrows job is doing something similar, putting some new sediment catches in wot i call my 'hilly billy supply' just a ipe that runs of a small ditch/burn that fills some IBCs up the hill above me and i use it for 'outside' water, mainly dog kennels pressure washing etc. Then i don't need to worry about using the communal system, been busy pressure washing the past 2 days and don't ned to worry wot the neighbours think. Not sure yet if going to use paving slabs or concrete as the base and some bricks as sub dividers so should be easy to shovel up the silt. it then flows n to a mineral lick tub with a tank connector

I wouldnae worry too much about the stump police, not like ur doing it to every tree. And the time it saves instead of roping/winching u can just knock the stump down. I often use it on big hairy leaning outsiders so ur stump is never that low by the time u have took the toes of and possibly jacking it anyway Must admit i tend to make it up as i go along so every tree might get a slightly different version/method, but i have bored the front diagional from the front before just nipping away at it until u meet the vertical bore. I think if a few of my failures it has been with the diagonal following the gub line, and when ur doing the back cut like spruce pirate says ur wanting to leave a lot more on the inside but under estimate it because u are going off where the original hinge should be, but u have now undermined it by an 1 or 2". School boy error really but it happens now and again if ur using them enough, and they are usually fairly ugly trees Is there not a felling cut where u quite literally take a box out of the front instead of a triangle gub?

Nice 1👍 His advice about scoring or marking where the back cut should be is good as it does get a bit confusing at times at that far side.esp when u 1st start doing them. Takes a bit of getting ur eye in/head round at 1st The golden rule is well worth remembering too, its all great swinging a tree over a house for a u tube clip when it works but a bloody disaster if it doesn't and sometimes they dont work even when the cuts are spot on. I have to admit i think been doing them wrong, sometimes instead of boring vertically down i follow the line of the gub down, usually to save a bit of time trying to do that cu in a 1er with the gub But its probably the wrong way to do it. As u then have to watch how far u bring ur back cut through as ur hinge is further back on that side. I have had them break of on me but that is operator error or possibly tree just too heavy. Mainly because i mis calculated the hinge width with me coming diagionally down instead of vertically straight down. U also don't want ur back cut to high either. But it does work very well normally After watching ur vid going to always do them straight down in future it does look to work better. Cheers

Now if the OP does cut the tree down is there then a chance of it causing heave? (Apologies if i've got it wrong wrong, susbsidence and heave is not something we tend to get in my neck of the woods, so all new to me)

I was thinking i would have to tie/tape the handle on, aye that should work and definately a bit safer. Been thinking about it and had visons of a slow motion slide down the banking towards the spinning lawnmower blades, Like a really crap james bond baddies tac😃tic

Aye u'd think there would be an easier way, think it will be a suck it and see job. Can just imganie the nightmare of going slightly over the edge, just an extra foot , slipping and knowing ur sliding towards a potentially still spinning lawnmower. There is a wee dwarf wall at bottom so wouldn't fall anywhere just the change of getting something caught up in the flymo has me winching. By rights u should be rigging some sort of dead man cord like on jetskis so if u come off it stops, which would work if u lost the rope, not so much if u slipped towards the lawnmower. Mibbe the post/anchor thing is a god safety feature if u slipped it would/should swing to the side and u should slide straight down. Chers open 👍 Amazing how well made some of those old engines are

Just had a google on line. Would it pull strainer steeples out if driven right into the hilt if u were stripping of a strainer post? The grips look quite pointy but still look like a well driven in steeple miht be hard to grip