Cutting Timber, Safety Rules

[superfire]

meez thought

first use your ppe
second prepare all necessary equipment
third check over area for hazards and escape routes
four check the current weather and prepare for the unexpected
when cutting take your time and make sure the area is clear of by standers pets or equipment or buildings. then prep the area around the tree. check for hazard in the tree log then proceed with the job.
sory meez is a little drunk tonitee

 

[RandyMac]

You-all are funny, thanks needed some funny stuff.

RandyMac

 

[ropensaddle]

What are you talking about? The only good tree is a log!

Uhhhhhh so move to the desert if ya don't like trees:monkey:

 

[Ivan H.]

1) whenever it is 100* plus, you've been cutting to keep the skidder running for the last 8-10 hours and you begin to loose focus, or your getting tired and notice yourself stumbling, it is time to take a break..find a shady spot or pack it in for the day.

-i had to do this a few times last summer, one of the crews that i was contract cutter for worked 5x10's and a half day an saturday, (1 yardman, 1 skidderman, and i did all the cutting) the skidder ran for 9.5 hours (half hour lunch) and there were some days when the heat index was around 108-110. come back from lunch and cut like mad for a couple hours and get yourself ahead of the skidder, come about 2 o'clock i was pretty well beat, hopefully by that point there was enough timber on the ground that u didn't have to bust your balls for the rest of the day. --I guess this is a long winded way of saying if your getting tired and loosing focus it is time for a break or time to go home.

2) no tree is worth getting killed over

If the outfit is going to be cheap and only have one faller,then it's the duty of the skidder operator to know where the faller is at at all times ,and make slow turns

 

[Ivan H.]

Nah, they like playing tricks on me. I brought up some cookies to pay off a bet, and the hooktender took the sack, wrote to ------ love ----- about the chaser, who apparently at age 53 has decided he needs a woman. Ever since then, well, it's been awkward but amusing for the other guys.
I did not fall for the check the fluid under the yarder and smell your finger trick. The hooktender was running the yarder and has a small bladder.

I was up marking corridors for downhill yarding today. Very steep, and thought up a new rule.

The road builders should always leave some kind of vegetation to hang over the pumice cutbank so others don't have to do the pummy flounder to get up said cutbank. Vegetation belays are a good thing. It is hard to look graceful when trying to climb a not quite vertical pumice cutbank.

They didn't leave a nice pile of slash to climb through?:greenchainsaw:

 

[slowp]

Nope, the slash is pushed over on the downhill side. Makes it more fun to go over the hill and adds adventure. Rootwads, cull logs, slash, used toilet paper, beer cans, hydraulic oil buckets, etc. We know how to have fun in the woods. :greenchainsaw:

 

[056kid]

Hydraulic oil and thhere buckets account for half of the bad stuff on earth!!!

Just kidding but seriously, i have seen hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of gallons oooooze there way to the water table. Kinda makes me sad.

 

[slowp]

The buckets are empty, and I will toss them back up on the road and chew out He Who Needs To Be Chewed Out, and then they disappear. But they always seem to reappear. So, deja vous all over again...

 

[Ivan H.]

Nope, the slash is pushed over on the downhill side. Makes it more fun to go over the hill and adds adventure. Rootwads, cull logs, slash, used toilet paper, beer cans, hydraulic oil buckets, etc. We know how to have fun in the woods. :greenchainsaw:

Yeah that sounds like alot a fun.

 

[Gologit]

The buckets are empty, and I will toss them back up on the road and chew out He Who Needs To Be Chewed Out, and then they disappear. But they always seem to reappear. So, deja vous all over again...

You have tree marking paint, right? After you throw the buckets back up on the road mark them. Maybe a different color for each outfit. Let the side-rod for each outfit know...all his trash is color coded and traceable. They'll either dispose of them properly or hide them so darn good you'll never find them.

 

[slowp]

They disappear for good at the end of the sale. Most of the guys will pick up,
after I nag them enough, and give bad marks on the report.
I hate garbage!!! I hate the trashing of the woods that goes on around here.

 

[Gologit]

They disappear for good at the end of the sale. Most of the guys will pick up,
after I nag them enough, and give bad marks on the report.
I hate garbage!!! I hate the trashing of the woods that goes on around here.

It happens here, too. The loggers are, for the most part, pretty good about keeping the trash contained and hauled away.

What we have the most trouble with are homeoweners dumping furniture and appliances. Every once in a while we catch one. It's fun to watch them load a washer or dryer or sofa back in their pickup.Refrigerators are especially challenging when the dumper is all by himself. Or herself...that happens, too. Sometimes while they're struggling to reload, and their attention is diverted by well meaning but contradictory advice from the loggers, two or three of their tires will go flat. If it's at night maybe their tailights and one headlight will disintegrate. Funny how things like that happen.

If they get upset we're always more than glad to get the local deputy up there to talk to them. We have carte blanche to sign a complaint for trespassing. It's only a misdemeanor but it sure discourages people from coming back.

LOL...They probably go over to Federal ground to dump from then on. Sorry about that but you guys have a bigger budget and more people than we do. And more time, too.

 

[Humptulips]

I don't see that much houshold trash and appliances dumped around here, The worst offenders are the brush pickers from what I see.

Loggers are no angels either. Through my years as a hooker it was a constant battle to keep the crew from trashing the woods. My efforts didn't win me any friends either. Some people think they have a right to toss it. I been called some kind of enviromentalist a few times. I just hate seeing garbage in the woods.

 

[Gologit]

I don't see that much houshold trash and appliances dumped around here, The worst offenders are the brush pickers from what I see.

Loggers are no angels either. Through my years as a hooker it was a constant battle to keep the crew from trashing the woods. My efforts didn't win me any friends either. Some people think they have a right to toss it. I been called some kind of enviromentalist a few times. I just hate seeing garbage in the woods.

What's a brush picker?

 

[Humptulips]

Almost exclusively illegal mexicans. They pick mostly salal but also ferns, evergreen hucleberry, cedar and white fir boughs, oregon grape and a few others for the floral greens trade.

 

[slowp]

Brush pickers are people, usually from south of our country, Guatamala seems to be the country sending most of them our way, who pick salal and beargrass which are used by the floral industry. They have to buy a permit to pick on federal land, of course, and sometimes the fake id is pretty entertaining. When there were picker deaths from van wrecks on our highway here, they were written up in a newspaper near to you...Sacremento Bee, who talkied about the oppressed forest workers, and the Forest Service was contributing to their oppression. I'm not sure how, but the newspaper figured it out.

We are currently innundated with mushroom pickers. Our forest cops wrote a ticket for $175 to some of them for trashing their campsite. Word got around within a day, and I drove through a camp, looking for a suitable log truck turnaround, and people started running around picking up all the little bits of trash. Pretty good results for the cost of a ticket. But our "downtown" area looks very trashy around the mushroom buyer tents. I feel like going down there and yelling...

 

[Humptulips]

Not many brush pickers on federal land here. Most is on private land. a contractor will buy up the rights on large tracts of timber company land. The contractor brings in the illegals and they pick off the contractors permit.

 

[Gologit]

Thanks for the explanation. Down here most of the big pot growing operations are staffed by illegals and they're getting heavily into the meth and heroin trade as well...I'll trade you.