Falling pics 11/25/09

[treeslayer2003]

see, white oak is much harder than red here. no hard maple tho I never cut one. tulip poplar is softest thing here then gum and pine. every thing else is pretty hard. this woods was full of beech, the foresters tell us to cut it hard because the older generation didn't cut it at all and it kinda took over otherwise good hardwood ground. I guess they are pretty old....may be why they hard.
oh, to give you a comparison ash just a bit harder than poplar.....beech much harder.

 

[1270d]

I agree that beech saws real nice. Beech bark disease has been moving through for quite a while so most of ours is or has been salvage cut. I've worked a few blocks of it with the harvester , ugh. Real Limby and heavy as lead. Only value is tie logs and pulp around here.

Beech nuts are tasty, but small for the effort.

 

[1270d]

Some decent hemi's on this job. All getting pulped on this site though due to shake.

 

[bitzer]

Eventually I will be sittin in one of those all day. At least that's my long term plan. I still like hand cutting for now. In ten years I may be singin a different tune.

 

[treeslayer2003]

Bob, I don't think they ever made a cutter to handle the biggest ones. I have a bell but use it very little.

 

[bitzer]

The big timber will run out eventually right? My forester seems to keep finding it for me, but it worries me when he says we used to cut jobs like this all the time back in the 70s and 80s. Even the 90s. I always hear of other pieces that will never sell that have huge timber on em. It just seems inevitable though.

 

[treeslayer2003]

not as long as we leave small ones. no tree cut for fire wood will ever get big. I have watched oak trees we left when I started grow till I cut um last few years. there will always be trees bro.

 

[1270d]

there will always be work for a good saw hand, they're pretty scarce around here. theres still plenty of hacks.
our timber tends to run less than 24 inch though. If we get into a stand with a lot of wood bigger than 24, we get a faller in to tip the big ones and limb them. i then process them up on my way through with the harvester. I can buck up to 30 inch with the head shown in the pic. if the timber is REAL nice, i cut it myself with my trusty(and theses days dusty) 385.
I just had my best day ever in the harvester not long ago, 14.7 cords an hour.

 

[1270d]

that hemlock was 22 or 23 inch. something like that

 

[treeslayer2003]

that hemlock was 22 or 23 inch. something like that

you cut mostly pine? there must be some bigger hard wood up there?

 

[1270d]

you cut mostly pine? there must be some bigger hard wood up there?

hardly any pine. we cut probably 90% hardwood. Majority of which is hard and soft maple, with a mix of yellow/white birch, cherrry, ash, oak, beech and aspen. around here, if hardwood gets into the high 20's diameter and larger, odds are its rotten or all heart. if they're over 30 they usually left for wildlife or seed stock. new page pulp must fit through a 24 inch tube, or will be rejected as oversize. verso will take up to 30.

the largest specie we have is white pine, but the market is really soft for WP sawlogs, so most of it gets left standing. One company we cut for takes some out, I cut maybe 80,000 ft last year. Almost all of the good stands were cut out of the UP starting in the late 1800's up till the 1970's.

Red pine is mostly grown in plantations here on fed or state ground. Those sales are usually out of range for the small to medium size companies. You need the big volume bonuses to afford to pay more for stumpage than the mills are offering.

 

[bitzer]

I'm not worried about no trees, just the big timber being gone. Like the last two jobs I just cut. The majority of it was red and white oak 25-36 inches on the stump. I've got a soft maple job coming up with the same size on the stump. Should be fun.

1270- I didn't realize you could buck em that big. I've never seen a processor in action so I really have no clue of what they are capable of. Very interesting. 14+ cords per hour is a **** ton of wood! That's got to be like 40-50 trees per hour?

 

[treeslayer2003]

hardly any pine. we cut probably 90% hardwood. Majority of which is hard and soft maple, with a mix of yellow/white birch, cherrry, ash, oak, beech and aspen. around here, if hardwood gets into the high 20's diameter and larger, odds are its rotten or all heart. if they're over 30 they usually left for wildlife or seed stock. new page pulp must fit through a 24 inch tube, or will be rejected as oversize. verso will take up to 30.

the largest specie we have is white pine, but the market is really soft for WP sawlogs, so most of it gets left standing. One company we cut for takes some out, I cut maybe 80,000 ft last year. Almost all of the good stands were cut out of the UP starting in the late 1800's up till the 1970's.

Red pine is mostly grown in plantations here on fed or state ground. Those sales are usually out of range for the small to medium size companies. You need the big volume bonuses to afford to pay more for stumpage than the mills are offering.

pulping 20" + trees? dang, would not be better as grade logs? now I know why y'all talk in cords instead of feet.
I been cutting that size stuff over a year now Bob, on these jobs any thing under 20" I been leaving. dad did the same thing when he cut it 30 years back.

 

[bitzer]

All those guys up north talk in cords. Up north to me is anything north of Stevens Point (northern half of WI and up). I've tried talkin bf with some and they look at me kinda funny. Yeah my forester leaves some pretty nice timber behind. I suppose if they can gain a 1/4" to 1/2" a year I should be cutting some nice stands in the future.

 

[1270d]

if you laid eyes on the stuff we pulp it would be clear. Junk. if it makes a sawlog, believe me it gets sorted. Our buncher crew works in some heavy duty harwood saw timber though. nice stuff.

bitz if you're ever travelling through, let me know, ill be more than happy to take you for a ride in the harvester.

 

[bitzer]

I can picture the type of wood your cutting. Sounds like what they have in northern- central WI. I appreciate the offer! How much snow you guys have? We've only got about 15-18" in the woods right now. We never really had a big snow down here this year.

 

[1270d]

Measured the snow for fun, 22 inches. Not too bad at all.
Lots of this kind of wood

 

[paccity]

not to be rude but in burv's thread i would rather see hand falling not the bane of the faller.

 

[Gologit]

not to be rude but in burv's thread i would rather see hand falling not the bane of the faller.

Agree. I don't know where Burv is these days but we owe him better than that.
They're fine machines if you want to put a lot of wood on the ground in a hurry but they don't really have much to do with falling.

They're about the only piece of logging machinery I've never run or owned. I don't really want to, either.

 

[1270d]

Ok