Woodsman1967

I've split hundreds of tonnes of rings with one of these splitters , slightly older model but basically the same . For the awkward,slanty, knotty bits I just have a short length of knotted bungee tied to the left handle . I use that to pull the handle down whilst holding the log . Sounds fiddly but in practice works fine and requires no ,modifications to the machine . Generally though I use it 2 handed as I quite like my hands and fingers attached to my body.

I've had an AMR road tow 12 petrol splitter for about 5 years now , split 200-300 cube a year through it, I've had no problems with it . I've been splitting metre long billets from 60cm diameter Ash trunks this year. Great bit of kit

£125 for a cube of 2 year old air dried mainly Ash . Pretty much sold out already (around 300 cube) and now turning people away . I put it up £25 from last year and haven't lost a single customer . Others around me (East Anglia) are now at £140-£170 per cube . Demand has been crazy , just wish I had more . I'll be putting it up similary again next year if the current economic climate stays the same .

Same , cutting lots of ash does this . Haven't noticed any problems from it though . I do clean it off the bar regularly

I do a lot of ringing up medium/large trunks , have always used Stihl and recently tried Husqvarna bio oil (don't like the idea of getting covered in and breathing in mineral chain oil all day ) and have never had any unusual bar/chain wear problems

3 hectares in a winter , sounds like you've been keeping busy ! Those big ash do take a while to tidy up . Do you have much dieback there ? We've been felling some 80-90ft ash this winter thats suffering some dieback and the crowns shatter when they hit the floor

Agreed . The more you look into it the more the whole scheme seems unworkable . The chances of being pulled over on the road and checked are minimal anyway . Most of my customers who can only store 1 metre at a time are happy enough to pay for 2 at a time and have them delivered seperately , the rest would just pay cash . I'm probably at an advantage as I live in a drier part of the UK , sell mainly ash and season for 2 years so may well be able to meet the 20% moisture content anyway but with the added confusion of wet/dry basis moisture readings thrown in its just so confusing .

I've never been busier , phones been constant . My regular customers have used around 50% more than normal this winter and its not been particularly cold here ( East Anglia ) . Stopped taking new customers before Xmas . Sold around 350 cube so far , got about 50 left .

Thats great thanks

Thanks . Wasn't planning on doing a lot of road towing to be fair , just a bit locally . Seems strange that they would make it over the allowed weight ? . I'll have a good look for any bent bits .

Hi . Going to look at a secondhand wp36 in the next couple of days , looks fairly tidy from the pics , anything in particular I should be looking out out for , Common faults etc ? Thanks

There's just 2 of us and sometimes just me . It's a labour of love , as is the whole job in truth . Definately not in it for the money .

Great post ! It's an ongoing battle of wits to keep the deer under control , I've tried most ways over the years . Brash piling didn't work particularly well , brash spreading turned out to be a real pain if your not using machines , ended up knee deep in brash trying to fell and drag wood to piles (never again !) . Plastic fencing was very quickly chewed through by rabbit and badger and electric solar powered fence was not much good and was then stolen within a few months . We dead hedge our plots , its time consuming and hard graft but leaves the ground free of trip hazards and also allows you to survey the plot the following year for any unusual wild flower etc that may appear before the brambles and nettles take over . Also dead hedges create great habitat and look good to ! If a bit of care is taken to get the bottom of the hedge tightly packed its a pretty effective barrier and will generally keep out Fallow for a couple of years before it starts to collapse . The sneaky Muntjac are more problematic but aside from a bit of browsing this summer we have mostly kept them out . Back in the day the Wildlife Trust would surround our dead hedge with 6ft chestnut fence ( which also supported that industry in Kent/Sussex) and then more recently with Heras fencing . This combined fence meant nothing got through and there was zero browsing . One thing to note is that a lot of new Heras fence has bigger gaps in the wire which proves useless to keep Muntjac out as I have witnessed first hand , worth noting if your buying hundreds of metres of it as the Wildlife trust did without checking !?. Culling is pretty essential to keep numbers down and as you say also provides great quality free range healthy meat . I'm vegetarian and not a supporter of shooting animals for sport but accept and understand that wild animal numbers do ,in many cases , need to be controlled . I wish more animal rights supporting Vege/vegans could work this out . Walt Disney has much to answer for !

Yes of course it's vital to try and keep any resistant ash and there will be some . Maybe I'm a bit jaded from 20 years of being a contractor in SSSI woods and having to listen to well read and well meaning , usually lovely people turning up on site with totally impratical ideas of how I should do my 'job' only to find that a year or 2 later they have moved on to pastures new and been replaced by someone else with totally different ideas ! And yes , deer management should be right at the top of the agenda . It's a huge issue

All sounds like a bit of a nightmare to me . It may look viable on paper, but in a wood similar to the one I'm currently working in ( full of large overstood ash stools and huge ash standards ) it wouldn't be economically worth doing . It's hard enough to scrape a living from working in the woods now without being left with only some 'thinnings' to survive on ! Coppicing only the understory and smaller stools would leave far to much canopy and shade for any regrowth to thrive , and potentially (probably ) leave a wood full of dangerous dead ash trees in the very near future . I'm already leaving any decent size tree that's not ash so as there will be something left in a few years , how can I also leave all the big ash as well ? From what I've seen of woods in East Anglia there is no chance of a 40% survival rate , maybe 10-20% at best and probably less than that . Surely it would be better to do a visual survey of the plot in late summer , select the best trees that are as yet uninfected and fell/coppice the rest ? So much of our beautiful ancient woodland is already virtually derelict and desperately in need of working and bringing back into cycle that standing back and watching all the ash die and collapse onto the understory is not a very good strategy

Looks like a cupboard spider , a type of false widow . Usually found in houses , sheds and (not suprisingly) cupboards ! They can bite though not usually aggressive and bite is not particularly painful unless your unlucky enough to have an allergic reaction . Never seen one in the woods before though .

Very impressive stuff . Ive been doing logs for many years and am not as organised as you . Never considered using a small excavator with grab as a mechanized saw horse . Having a wood with a prelaid network of concrete tracks and hardstands is a massive bonus ( I've just got in from a morning of paddling about in a muddy wood yard )

Wow that's a pretty serious bit of kit , those rides should look fantastic ☺️. I'm guessing there wasn't much in the way of wildflower on the old ride edges ? How long ago was this done ?

The AMR splitter has an IVA and towable up to 60mph. I looked at various other splitters and found a lot of them haven't which makes the "road towable " bit of them irrelevant . One maker I spoke to (unfortunately can't remember which one ) said something along the lines of " most people don;t worry about the IVA , you'll be fine as long as you don't have an accident whilst towing it " ! Needless to say I crossed that one off the list !

This is a really interesting read , there's a area of the wood I'm working in that I believe was once mainly elm (all long since gone ) which has now been taken over by mostly sycamore which is slowly spreading into more of the wood . Given that most of the wood is predominantly ash , which is now about to suffer a similar fate to the elm , I'm happy to let it spread further and hopefully increase the biodiversity in the wood .

That's very generous of you , I may well take you up on your offer sometime ☺️

That's a sturdy looking piece of kit , been thinking about getting one for a while now , can the winch be used to drag a stem into reach of the log arch or is it only for lifting ?

Yes its got a 9hp honda engine

I've had an AMR 12 ton towable petrol splitter for about 6 months now and can't fault it . Costs considerably more than the ones your looking at but is fast , fuel efficient , tows lovely and even though only rated at 12 ton splits most things ?

That certainly is some serious wide ridening you've been doing there , should create some wonderful micro climates and habitats . ☺️ Not sure how I feel about large scale out of season (summer) felling though , what about nesting birds ?