Brit logging.

[John Shipp]

It's Monday morning and I'm just about to step out into the dark wetness that is the woods this time of year, but I thought I should say something quickly. There are forestry contractors at different "steps" in the UK, and we're on our step which is work and stay as local as possible, don't go bust trying to buy equipment beyond what jobs are available for it. I would say we're held back by the lack of larger contracts locally, and our unwillingness to commute for hours in dense traffic
The next step, there are even in this area (SE England) contractors with one purpose built harvester, one 8x8 forwarder. I don't recall ever seeing one being lowbedded around in this area but occasionally we see or hear of a wood where one has been. Then in the South of England there are companies with more than 1 pair of machines, a pair may cut 20,000 m3 a year? Then up in midlands, north England, wales, Scotland, the people thin out gradually as you go north and there's more room to grow trees; some of these companies have machinery line ups of 100 machines. I guess they will be cutting 500,000m3, they must be. But I read that the competition now to keep these machines in work is driving prices way down. Also, often the drivers live out of a caravan (trailer home?) quite often completely on their own, as the harvester runs ahead of the forwarder often. So, our mob down here, I guess we like chainsaws, and seeing our young families, so we are perhaps held back a bit on how far we can develop the business, but we're not lonely!
Sometimes when we're cutting rubbish for days on end and getting nowhere on tonnage, we're tempted to up sticks and head to where there's more trees to go at. There's a guy nearing retirement working in the SE like us but a couple of hrs north, I hear he's finally bought a new harvester and a new forwarder and he drives them both himself. Apparently he averages 1000t a month doing it this way, driving both. And that's about what a handcutting mob like us can realistically hope to attain, working in the kind of woods we do.
And now, I must go and sharpen my saw, and shiver for a while til we warm up! Cheers all.

 

[Graham1]

Keeping it small and local is a good way to go if you can make a living. Volume can be all ego, making a sustainable living for the long term is what it is about.
I think some people are going down the machine route because they are getting too old to be out with a chainsaw all day (looks way to much like hard work to me!) and more importantly they just can’t find good, reliable guys to employ.
Round by us a father and son have spent months living in an old caravan whilst harvesting from the local estate. Not much of a life and from what I hear you are right about the prices being pushed down by too many people buying high performance machines on big loans which they need to keep up the monthly payments on.
Graham

 

[John Shipp]

Graham, that's exactly it. The points you make sum it up for us; we're getting older, and much as we'd like to carry on as before, the body gets worn same as everything. We're ok for now, but mechanizing further seems to be something we'll have to look at. It's hard for many types of business to find good people that are right for the role, and finding productive chainsaw cutters is not easy, and takes a lot of training so is depressing when they pack it in after starting to get there and go off to a completely different type of work!
Personally I like living on the job as it were, I've maybe 15 years now in a caravan (with log burner, and lately my young family). What I found difficult was the time before this when i was still single, living and working alone for long periods, operating a machine all day alone and then spend the evening talking to myself as well! Funnily enough, that was back when i had machine payments!

 

[John Shipp]

Farmwrench, I recall that salt was an option for the ballast, and calcium chloride too. I guess I was worried about the corrosion, plus the puncture issue. How do you find road travel with the water ballast?
The talks of bans in log burning is a concern, I'm sure it will have some effect on supply and demand. Depends how far they take it. Ultimately it could cause roadside prices to fall, which would probably not help much.

 

[John Shipp]

Been having a look for pictures of the hydraulic splitters we use, i have some saved somewhere.

Could only find these so far. This thing is a Binderberger Gigant 30 , made in Germany I think, or Austria perhaps. Anyway it's got 30tonne ram force, 2 speed action, 1.25m bed length, hydraulic adjustable height knife with different bolt on wings. This is what we use for the bulk of the splitting we do, we crane feed a grabfull of 1.1m logs onto it's side cradle (which can be raised and lowered hydraulically, it's raised right up in pics), have someone on splitter running that, someone off the back stacking the billets into bundler frames, someone chainsawing/helping stack, and someone running grab and doing the strapping of bundles. 4 people make it a smooth job, and in good straight wood it works well. I must have some better pictures of us all at it.

That log sitting on it ready to split is a piece of that same type of poplar. I understand that a lot of the hybrid poplar planted in the 50's, 60's & 70's was a hybrid of Italian black poplar (Lombardy) x British black poplar and called "Robusta". It has fissured bark and grows to large size quickly.

 

[John Shipp]

And the we use this upright, or vertical, style of splitter to take care of the difficult to split stuff, or the various rings (short sections cut out when producing the 1.1m lengths) and knuckles, that have to be dealt with at some time. It's a Posch 20 splitmaster, 20 tonne 2 speed made in Austria.
These pictures, 2 of us are scraping up the bottom of an old pile of oak, basically trying to find straight 1.1m pieces in some bent stuff we've been avoiding for about 5 years...
This splitter lets you see where the knife is starting, which is a help in knotty old logs.

 

[John Shipp]

OIH, about putting felling heads on excavator, yes it's a concern that it might not hold up too well. I've heard that bushes and pins suffer, slew motor, cracks at base of boom. Even if used "gently", at some point it'll be pushed to it's limit, happens already with the grab on it. It's held up well on the grab so far, but after a long day of work you can feel the looseness starting in it's joints. This Case is not very strong in it's slew motor, which would be frustrating if trying to fell or process a tree using side pull, but may help the booms longevity perhaps? Also, oil flow is a limiting factor. Probably restricting us to a shear head or a stroke head.

Went to the APF forestry show here in 2016 with the intent to find some kind of head that would suit us.
Pic 1 was nice little hot saw, pic 2 might be the Tigercut Graham was referring to, pic 3 a Bracke C16.C which look good but need high oil flow. None of these delimb. Pic4 the very popular track-feed Keto 150, would suit us well actually but again, not enough oil flow.

 

[John Shipp]

There was a baffling choice available.
There were many more, but the one that really interested me was the Picture 1, a westtech tree shear with rotator and accumulator arms. I had a good talk to the demonstrator, he showed me how it could sort and load, but both of us were not content with the speed of its rotator. It was like the hr hand on a clock. They'd not got to the bottom of why it was so slow on a new Hitachi, and were talking about spending more on a different pump section, so I started to have doubts. The price tag was something like £20,000 plus all the extra tax, transport, fitting etc, so not a insignificant amount.
So I bought a new box rotator and a load of new log boxes instead. (far too sensible).

 

[John Shipp]

None of these heads would help on this kind of job.
Cutting strips through hardwoods, some snarly oaks. My friend and colleague Guy Jones loading and unloading his trailer using a Merlo P34-7 loader.

 

[John Shipp]

Pretty rough trees, but oak is always in demand.

 

[John Shipp]

A very small dry sort!

 

[Hank R]

Thanks for all the information with the pictures very interesting Thanks again.

 

[hvy 1ton]

Does anyone over there make a bell style felling head? One of those sized for a 75 would do thinning up to around 16" no problem, bigger if you do multiple cuts.

 

[Bumpsteer]

John, the more you post the more interesting it gets......

Thanks.

Ed

 

[Graham1]

Good pictures. what other people do in a totally different field is always interesting.

pic 2 might be the Tigercut Graham was referring to,

That looks the sort of thing they had for hire.

 

[John Shipp]

Does anyone over there make a bell style felling head? One of those sized for a 75 would do thinning up to around 16" no problem, bigger if you do multiple cuts.

I had a look for Bell felling heads, but could only come up with Waratah heads fitted onto Bell excavators (which looked like re-badged Leihberr).
Do you have more info on the head style you mention? Stroke head or rollers?

 

[John Shipp]

Glad they're interesting ( the pics) I will have a look for some more good ones later. Just taken my 5year old daughter swimming lesson right in the middle of fixing a saw, so now need to go finish up!

 

[hvy 1ton]

It's only a felling head, so no processing to speak of. Ryan's doesn't have anything on their website atm as i think they are almost done updating their felling heads. If i remember correctly they recommend the DS20 for 15,000 pound and up excavators. This style of head works great in log length hardwood. Excavator fells, tops and bunches logs and a skidder drags the logs out to be merchandised. Depending on how accurate you need to be, cutting to length in woods might require somebody going around with a tape and marking paint. Here is a video of a DS20 on a bobcat in what looks to be pine plantation.

 

[John Shipp]

Yes, I think we need to get something like that. Seeing that thing working in the video, my shoulders started to relax and I began to smile.

I don't know why we don't bunch trees and skid out. Perhaps fear of damaging the precious ground flora. Skidding would likely help the natural regeneration. I know it does get sickly muddy sometime early in our winter felling season and stays that way until spring.

How do you cope with sticky mud elsewhere when skidding? We often cut the limbs off at stump and arrange this brash as a mat along the route we're extracting down so we can drive the forwarder on it. I've got photos on computer, I will hunt them down.

 

[John Shipp]

I've just remembered that Westtech here make something similar to that DS20, and that a biomass/chipping company local to me bought one but they were having difficulties with it when I last spoke, the bar was jamming half way through the cut for some reason. I think they were using it to dismantle trees in sections, so it was quite tricky when it jammed to do a lot about it. I shall call them up and find out what happened in the end.