drinksloe

Just to say getting out the cab to cut trees is not the norm and i'm sure some bosses would moan at u parking the machie up to use a saw. Just the way he was if holding him upand short of cutters he'd just do it.

1 thing that stuck in my mind an old cutter told me, fairly relevant to the operators/companies i know but may not be the norm elsewhere. If ur SE which is quite normal, if ur on the saws u can choose to have a day off or work elsewhere for a few days within reason (as long as not holding jobs up) but if ur on a machine u may be SE but u can't really take days off or even finish early if u want. The boss has a machine worths loads so it needs to be working 'x' hours a week+ so u don't quite have the same control over ur work. Most of the machine boys i know will be doing 12-15 hr days and live up the woods in a midge infested caravan. I mind my old nieghbour swearing a few years back as he had to work between christmas and new year even thou he had booked it off. Boss needed timber forwarded out Also if machies are wot u want ur cutting tickets will still come in handy, i jnow a few harvester drivers who will knock down trees if needed with a saw, dunno if that is normal or not but they are old skool and cut their teeth doing 1st thinnings on a saw

My advice would probably be to do ur saw tickets 1st up to med and windblow and go get some exp cutting, u would no doubt make a few contacts etc for looking to move onto the machines later on. I've heard a bit of rhoddy bashing working further north and struggling for cutters, be a good way to start and get sme experience before going for ur bigger/more complicated saw tickets. U'll will also need EFAW+F wot ever u plan to do in the woods nowadys, only a 1 day course I'm not a machine operator but have worked with plenty and watching and working woth them i always think the boys with cutting exp tend to make better operators (they also tend to be brilliant for helping u out as a cutter, give u lifts up the hill with all ur gear, while the younger boys staight out of college into the machine can some times be ignorant buggers and never try to help u) I can imagine having cutting exp will also help u in the harvester assesing trees (wieght, lean etc) I know i have learnt a lot from just watching the old timer forwarder drivers, taking smaller loads and keeping ur tracks well hagged, while the young boys are all loaded to the top of greedy pins giving it full revs they wonder why they end up getting stuck Try looking up the barony college i've heard of them doing FT courses to get ur machine tickets, but i do think some that come out don't seem to have much of an idea (more common sense failure than lack of ability)

I would disagree we're buying in the exact same quality as we produce. As i've said not all timber is the same and there colder climate does suit ur better qualilty timber I don't think we're that far apart either, many things/normal practices of big business just does not make any common sense And ur bang on these renewabe neergy schemes are just 1 big con when u look a bit closer at them But it happens with all industries farming (NZ lamb, beef from africa and SAmercia, milk from god knows where) coulds ay the same with steel cheap imports

It may be only wood, but considering some/many don't think soft wood is even fit for firewood!! Most houses still rely on n awful lot of structural timber, kit houses are still the most common type of new builds in my area I'm sure if u spoke to joiners they might disagree with u there. Plenty of sawmills do cutting building grade local timber but the better stuff is imported. Esp nowadays with the demand for chip/pulp i've seen whole clearfells sites felled purely for chipping no matter wot other produce could off been cut. harvester/forwarder boys love it as only cutting 1 size And the climate soil and types of tree were planting (along side any thinning etc) will influence the grade of timber. My part of scotland tends to be fat hairy sitka, not really great quality, u go further north and get nice striaght larchs. scots and lodgepole It might not be that we can't produce that grade of timber here but more we either can't produce enough of it or cheaper to buy in from elsewhere. To be honest i can see the reason for importing something like better quality building timber, but i do struggle to see how its cheaper to import kiln dried firewood

To be fair they would be different products despite both being timber/trees. We have always imported a bit of building grade timber from abroad as it often tends to be better quality while we often export ur chip/pulp grade timber to the same countries we import the building timber from. Can see it making sense for them to export the better quality product for extra £££ rather than converting it to chip/pulp when they can import it cheaper Wether this will slow down with the rise in timber prices in UK for chip/pulp grade wood? Dunno if it is still going on to the same extent now, back 10+ years ago u could hardly give chip/pulp wood awy and would sit at roadside for months, now demand is throu the roof, i'd imafgine they will be buying it from across the baltic states now rather than here. This whole world econmoy thing does tend to be completely bonkers, the fact its cheaper to import firewood from half across europe than in ur local woods just seems crazy to me. Or these many wood chip power stations which then import wood from abroad, meant to be saving emissions but the carbon footprint or emissions to get chip onto the conveyor belt must be horrendous. Better just burning the desiel in the power station. There was a fish plant near me that was actually shipping prawns to thailand to be peeled before flying them back to be processed/cooked at the local plant and meant to be a cost saving measure????

Aye but its no good if the crane either can't lift the chipper or too heavy for the bunk. Detahing it from the road chasis might make it light enough?? Or atleast the chasis wouldn't get damaged by any accidents while working or un/loading Towing behind a custom made LGP trailer is the next best thing (even add a hydralic land drive? but all extra money) its either that or u go to smaller chippers it can handle but lose the grab feeding?

In the bigger clearfell sites they generally forward the brash off as is with a normal forwarder (possibly dug out 1st with a 360 if well mulched into ground) and chipped on the roadside straight into wagons. Think down south they sometimes can bale the brash for chipping elsewhere or at roadside. Mibee look on Jenkinsons website (i imigine it will be a fancy site if anything like there calanders) probably have photos of them chipping into there atrics. They have a big hgv based chipper type thing. Looks a beast of a machinr, certainly wouldn't want to try and keep it going by hand

That dies ook a decent compact bit of kit. Must admit never worked with many road towed chippers mainly all been tracked or PTO mounted I would imagine with that sort of tyle of chipper it would be realatively easy to alter the body to make it detachable from the road chasis. I'd imagine it wouldn't be that expensive/hard to weld up a purely off road chassis to fit it, either twin heavy duty quad wheels or even some sort of basic undriven track system, see plenty of modified peat work trailers with modified track systems covering wheels Couple that with some hydralic jacks/legs u could simply lift its body up itself and wheel the different chasis/forwarder in. But as been said all more money buying then adapting kit depends hw often u'd use it? Whereas if u could somehow devise an off road trailer u could just wheel a hired chipper onto saves u laying a lot of money out on a chipper which are usually easy/cheap to hire

Somone was telling me a while back about an old workshop that had piped a waste oil feed into there log burner and just dripped away throughout the day.

It's higher than i thought so monkey will be right enough about boom's and vicinity zones. Could u make some sort of off road low ground pressure trailer or sledge for the chipper and just hire in a towed 1 as and when u need and mount it on its own trailer/sledge? I'd imagine a trailer would be better as sledges can/do mark the ground if wet/sensitive esp if a bit of wieght on it. Pulled tracked chippers around on sledges before on very wet sites as they would of sank out of site just on there tracks

Mibbe plastic a section and pull hard round its edges 2 or 3 times. But it won't be easy Dunno the laws over ur way but in UK if u have newts it makes everything bloody expensize and complicated as need licences if u have newts, i doubt u'd even be allowed to pull weeds without a licence.

Could u kiln dry those bags and sell them as kindlering?? A couple of my nieghbours save up/collect all sorts of scrap like that as there kindlering.

Another problem u might have is transporting the chipper to site? The way ur set up the now u can fit legally on a trailer but probably don't have masses of wieght to spare, i'm guessing a chipper would put u over? Althou probably not a massive job to fit hydralic legs (already got a hydralic pump on ur chipper) onto ur chipper that could lift itself up and u drive into it either with trailer for transport or forwarder Must admit i don't know anything about power line work, but does monkey business above realise its only a mini forwarder?? Wot is the maximum hieght ur crane can reach I'm not entirely sure ur crane would breech the vincinity zone with its size. But i'm also not sure on the regs for eleccy line work either But untill u get into 12-14+" chippers its hardly worth crane feeding, chipper hopper/throat is so small to aim for (take a load of skill and be very fiddly) plus the size of stick ur dealing with probably won't be long enough for u to feed the chipper without hitting it with ur grab. It might be handy to move piles closer thou but again with only a few m's reach probably not make a massive difference either way. by time chipper has chipped 1 arm full gives u time to drag another over, esp if 2 of u which there likely would be.

No there literally just digging a bucket sized hole, no concrete or owt. I don't think they've lined the base with stone, i'll mibee have a nosewhen out with dogs the morro but pretty sure just a big hole I'm guessing they will just drive a digger round every few years to empty?? Or more likely knowing the FC forget about them till theres a major problem again. To be fair the costs of doing it properly like in ur photo would be absolutley massive in my area. I've got 20-30 mile loop of FC track just behind my house + all the many dead end tracks of them. And in this part of scotland plenty of wee burns crossing it too

I take it u couldn't empty the bags into a sort of trommel type thing? Where they would spin round a small stuff fall throu, means re handling it again thou. Unless u could figure something out to bodge onto the logger in the field (a long chute+ big fan so lighter stuff gets blown out but heavier stuff would drop into bags (off top of my head and never really seen a branch logger work so may not be vaibleor even a completely stupid idea)) I could see it being very time consuming snedding the branches/tree tops out tidy enough for ur logger Could u not just sell the chip? I know a local arb conractor is selling his chip to local power station, think getting £25ish a T, and from wot i can gather that is 'as is' with leaf's and every thing

I know the local FC have changed things sligtly with there 'cundies' recently, over the past few years tend to dig a big hole in front of the pipe and another biggerhole at the outflow, Think idea being for outflow to sit full of water which will dampen the errosive force as well as acting as silt traps on both sides.

Bit late to the party. And dunno if it would work in ur case, but i used to be involved with a fishing club and the ponds had a serious candaian pondweed problem made worse by us in the early days try to cut and dredge it out of the pond. Putting a black plastic sheet over the pond (or atleast part of the pond) it should stop daylight getting to th plant and kill it out. Dunno if it would regrow after being killed out thou with the root structure. It definately works for most pond pests, might depend wether u can do 1/2 ur pond at a time and then move i the following year or wether the lillies would spread out. Be too late for this year but prob worth having a trail go next year easy enough to do and no chenmicals involved. Ps 1 thing to watch if spraying/killing the plants off not so much any chemical but the rotten vegetation can take all oxygen out of the water, we killed a load of our fish 1 year sprayed too big an area and th erotten vege suffocated the fish but that pond was low in oxygen anyway as not much inflow to it

Mibee different soils etc down ur way, but generally in my area soils tend to be acidic so no bad thing spreading ash. Infact spreading lime is back in fashion again too, all the old timers done it in past but seemed to go out of fashion (or too expensive?) lot of pot ash from local burning pants being sspread on fields now (althou i can imgine burning plastice etc would not prodce good ash)

Planted quite a bit of willow round me mibee 10+?ish years ago, only 2 fields left now in the whole area. All ripped up and reploughed, it actually ploughs out better than i thought it would, thought u'd get far more regen coming back Money just not in it. For years there was a field right next to the boimass power station so close the harvester could of fired the end riggs strainght into the station grounds from its spout, but all that chip was taken 70 miles away to be stored for a year before being hualed back. Just bonkers. When that plant was built was meant to be powered entirely by locally grown willow and waste wood of harvesting sites, no willow left locally and soon realised brash and stumps are just a waste of time in SW scotland the costs of extrcating/hualing them plus washing before chipping was massive. The carbon/desiel footprint would be massive The whole boimass industry (like most other green energies) is a sham and a complete white elephant. Subsidies are keeping it going and generally governments/civil servants make a complete arse of them. With the commercial RHI tarriffs u have folk buring every scrap of wood to heat empty sheds so using up all these trees that have been lying for years, Is there not a big boimass plant down south that imports al its chip from canada/usa? Coupled with all this imported fiirewood, from an sustainable environmental perspective its just crazy really

Think we used to call that a high lead system, where u use 1 drum as a back hual for ur main line. I imagine u could weld up a trailer like a drilling rigg that flips up to give u ur tower/hieght that u towed between jobs rather than completely customising ur tractor and mibee making it less useful for other jobs. Must admit always thought it was a clever way of working, often relativley simple to set up and a lot easier than carrying a heavy steel cable up and down steep bankings every load. Am i right in saying on older winches either twin or triple drums where quiter common (or possibly just the few i worked with/seen years ago were) nowadays u hardly seee a triple drum and no new 1's And even most of the doulbe drum's rend to be cable of the same size as main line, the old ones

That was exactly my thoughts, esp with the more budget brands. But even the top end ur lucky to get much more than that geninely waterproof. Being out on a shoot in real stinking weather u can always compare notes/wet patches at lunch time to see wot is the best/driest. But i've really yet to see a brand that has 100% waterproof and satisfaction amongst owners. Know some keepers with some parmo stuff, but more just like a rain jacket and seen them just as wet as the rest of us too (althou mibee using it wrong as still shirted up below so might be sweat??)

Another problem u have is some of the really decent top end makers from the past now get everything made elsewhere (asia) so some of the modern stuff is nowhere near as good as the old stuff was. I've got a proper old 'Swanny' which is a brilliant jacket but warm but the new stuff is rubbish. Ps Swanny's are not good for skiing/boarding the only time i've been skiing bright orange set of fisherans bib and brace anf my swanny which being wool all the snow stuck to it, looked like the abodomable snowman by the time i got to the bottom ? Seems to be new brands arriving all the time (esp from either scandi or NZ) with some quite decent reputations althou with a price tag to match Must admit i've got some ridgeline stuff and really like it, my stuff is actually water proof! Aalthou don't like smocks in general as u always get too warm in them

This is 1 of those topics that even thou it shoudn't (its either waterproof or its not) seems to be personal preference. Depending if they had a good 1 (not a fri avo version) and how they use it (ie standing about/walkig slowly or being quite active and sweating) Throu the winter i spend quite a bit of time working dogs on shoots, so have seen plenty of eye wateringly expensive jackets (£4-500+) and the 1 thing i'd say is they almost all leak. Lot of folk wearing Rab now in past all Berghaus and Mountain Eqiup I'm similar to u and prefer layers, I quite like cheaper berghaus goretext from the local factory shop Not going to say 100% waterproof but to be fair for the money pretty good. I'm too tight and prefer to spend less and have slightly lower expectations as seen the really dear 1's leak anyway Usually start of with the newest 1 and if really bad weather it might be wet by lunch so put the next 1 on when back at my pick up. If u have decent layers on (ie proper base and fleece) even if ur jacket is damp u don't get cold like u would wearing a rugby top/jeans. Got a few Deerhunter items to and usually pretty good. There is a compabny called Sportsman Gun centre (basicly a shooting wharehouse) it has some very good deals on often 80% for discontinued lines. Just got a long trench coat jacket for walking dogs in extreme weather and so long comes right down to welly level so no wet legs, only £26 (far heavier duty than i expected) and got a few of those orange jackets again about 30 quid and 80% off again good for dogs in the winter, not 100% waterproof but has to be bloody wet afore they get damp

Dunno if this is still going on? To be honest i'd probably make an excuse i'm too busy and leave it, sounds like it could be a right baw ache. Also if ur tracking tons of timber 200m away, is it across a proper lawn? Or just rough ground. I'd also be cautious incase u can be held laible for any damage caused while transporting the timber and if u are laible to reinstate any damage. Might not be an issue if not a lot of timber or really dry ground/rough grass but the way this has went on it would not surprise me if u get blamed for something (if the nieghbours still blames the council for work they done 18yrs ago)