ESS

Maple would have been my second guess. Its a decent sized one if it is.

Sure its not Ash ?

Perhaps you were, but it is wrong to suggest it is a necessity to comply, thats just not the case.

Thats only a recommendation ,and the word may is used in the first paragraph. There are no movement or handling restrictions on affected timber., felled timber from commercial sites is being moved around freely , including to export markets.

Where are you getting £25/ ft from? You are the one that quoted that. I never said anything about having logs for sale, nor do i see anything that i have written that suggests that? I was questioning your figures, and you didnt seem to like the fact.

Ha ha, i was buying roundwood for a hardwood mill at 18 years old . The mill i bought for predominantly cut Ash , beech, sycamore,lime, and a small amount of oak, average recovery rate was 47%.based on roundwood measure/ boardfeet sold. through and through, some one square edge. Other hardwood mills would quote similar figures. End cracks would have to be trimmed and would be part of the conversion figure from roundwood to board.

If youlook were to look at the conversion rates on hardwood logs it is around 50% of round yes. On the table there is a visible end crack of at least 12 inches that would have to be trimmed,.probably by around 2 foot to bring it out for board quality.

It is on most i have used too, but there are 6 boards in the tree at 4 inch thick which on the same tape measure is 2 foot,plus a bit of sapwood / wane, not the three foot wide boards that you suggest. The actual amount of recoverable board from those slabs would be around 50%.

So if there was 6 boards at 4inch that makes the log 2 foot wide, but that is a through and through price, which means that you are paying £25 /ft for sAP

If its an offset capstan,.which some of them are , it could make a difference having it on overwrap on retrieve rather than underwrap .

Softwood chip is making more than that in some parts of the country.

Rob Quinton, Felled wood transport would be worth a try.

I am not going to comment on the rights or wrongs of what the op has done, ..however, i do think a lot of people put a lot of false emphasis on tickets. Having a ticket does not guarantee someone will turn out quality work, i have seen plenty that are far more "qualified" than me, but i wouldnt pay them with washers. Tickets may tick the boxes in some respect, but if they are an indicator of quality of work then the system is failing badly somewhere.

Presuming wheeled vehicles are crossing the line i would imagine ,without going into the maths of it, they exert more psi than a tracked excavator.

Not really. In the 80s the saws were just starting to improve on what they were in the 70s, i used them from both decades and some from the 60s also. Stihl started to design more user friendly saws, moving away from the square bodied 051, 075 etc, but this was just the beginning, chain brakes ,AV , higher revving engines etc. The 266 was a reliable saw, and a major step forward from the old 65 , the 61? well. Compare those saws to the power to weight ratio of todays offering , the difference is outstanding. I do not consider todays GOOD saws expensive, nor unreliable. I have worked with a lot of lads down the years , seen and used a lot of saws, and from my own experience it was very rarely the saws at fault.

RAC Forestry

Agreed. Al McIvor,...Almac haulage has low loaders running south regularly and is very helpful. Or Frank at Rowland tractors. They are all over the country daily with low loaders and would probably help you out.

Is this a softwood parcel ?

Not sure I would be replacing motors at this stage, don't these have a reverse on the rollers to clear snags etc? I would imagine there is a relief valve,and some of the flow gets diverted to the other roller should one become snagged, hence the increase in speed.

Forwarding would be in the £5-7 per TONNE range, so you could work it back from there. Cost of cutting is very much dependent on the amount of outside trees that need clicking in, but £18 + per Tonne should cut it and leave the cutters a decent return, providing they don't have to stack everything,..perhaps just flick the tips back over alongside. Your figures suggest you would be working on around £30/tonne.

Its a competitive rate, although I would be looking at a little more for longer extraction. If brash is to stack for recovery it would need to be higher rate. The key to these jobs is having efficient cutters that are able to produce reasonable outputs, assuming they are on day rate. The conversion rate of hourly cost per cu/m varies a lot between cutters. The fairest way is piece for cutters , providing you have a squad that can gel together.

Certainly in the case of Walnut I suspect a lot of trial planting would have to be carried out , with a cost attached that I doubt few would want to be burdened with. From my own experiences down the years there is a high percentage of rot in mature trees, as the butt end is where the value is this renders the tree worthless. Trees that had a possibility of being sound were grubbed if possible, the figure that is in high demand for gun stocks etc. is in the bottom end of the butt running down into the root. There seems to be a high percentage of sapwood in certain trees, perhaps this is a strain thing? I have no idea. As far as planking, who buys solid wood furniture these days?, it would be a very limited market,i suspect the limited availability has contributed to the value of Walnut, not taking anything away from the character of the wood. Veneer logs need to be blemish free , and would need to be shipped. Timber in general is a cash crop, past generations grew it for the next generation. The changes in planting through to milling over the past 30-40 years is such that stands of timber are now coming to market as clearfell within 40- 50 years, with very little management after establishment.

David Norman, Longtown . He runs over your way.

Yes, theres a lot been shipped in the last 4 or 5 years,

It did have the most tree cover in the country pre 87 blow. Kemsley papermill at Sittingbourne used to process in excess of 100k tonnes Roundwood per year, all hand cut,a large percentage of which came from within 100 mile radius of the mill, this was mainly from coppice . There was also an overlap for demand with St Regis further to the west, the supply chain was there , and still will be. I seem to remember Sandwich were looking for a minimum of 170k tonnes per annum. I started in the industry in 1975 , imports then were 82%,. How much we import has never just been governed by what we can produce, the biggest factor is exchange rate. It also has to be considerd that we also export substantial amounts of timber, both as Roundwood and chip.