the all aussie dribble thread!

[Rudolf73]

Very interesting info Al and Neil, what kind of horsepower are the current harvesters running and how well do the harvester head chainsaws hold up?

 

[splitpost]

I have come across many, many bees in old growth logging, my old boss use to say....

Go on be brave, the trick is to take a couple then they will leave you alone. Now get over there and head that log off or the dozer will break the F###ing rope trying to get it out. They won't hurt you, what are you gutless and so on.
Funny how he never went near them if he could avoid it.

I used to reply ,how something so small can make man so frightened. I tried the take a couple option once and it doesn't work. Once we got harvesters to fall timber, bees were no more problem, and i used to cut out a hive and bring it to the dump to rob it later when they died down.

HAhahahah,too familiar story ,i can handle a few but thats just crazy schit

you buggas, at least you have some sweets after being chased around by the native bees, the only bee type critters I ran into cutting cypress was them *********** ********** Baldy hornets, dang did they give you a lift when they caught site of you :mad2: the only thing I ended up with is a chunk of hide missing when they got hold

wish they were native bees ,those little fellas dont sting ,but these big buggers do

I've been told I should really carry an epi-pen or at least fenurgan (sp?) these days as bee stings and I don't seem to get along anymore.

yeah ican sort of sypathise rick ,my wife is allergic to bee stings

 

[AUSSIE1]

Aussie 1,,, thats a unicon head on the timco pic i put up, which are old nowdays that one was only 250hp, the unicon head ran a 36inch bar with 3/4 drive chain. the rossin is a better head and can do more than the unicon. Thats my young bloke and he is 15 now.

Would have been interesting for the young fella. BVL's old 445 Timco ran a Rossin. They mostly run shear heads in the pine. The Tigercat L870C with hot saw was a beast. Cut the tree first, grab the tree second.

Very interesting info Al and Neil, what kind of horsepower are the current harvesters running and how well do the harvester head chainsaws hold up?

200 odd HP to over 300 HP. In clean going in pine you could get almost a week/1500 - 1800 ton out of a 3/4" chain sharpen, but that was rare. In hardwood I might get a day out of a chain before a touch up. A topping saw running 404 would get weeks out of a chain before sharpening.

 

[lumberjackau]

Nice machines guys, makes mine look like a tonka toy, she only weighs in at 9ton and is a narrow bugger just under 8' wide so getting someone to shift it is no hassle. she putters along with 150+hp and is economical to run. For what we do we don't need anything bigger. btw it is the only H-8 in aus and the the two heads are the only ones in aus.
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[Rudolf73]

Would have been interesting for the young fella. BVL's old 445 Timco ran a Rossin. They mostly run shear heads in the pine. The Tigercat L870C with hot saw was a beast. Cut the tree first, grab the tree second.



200 odd HP to over 300 HP. In clean going in pine you could get almost a week/1500 - 1800 ton out of a 3/4" chain sharpen, but that was rare. In hardwood I might get a day out of a chain before a touch up. A topping saw running 404 would get weeks out of a chain before sharpening.

Thats pretty good for a chainsaw I didn't think they would last that long. We use a hot saw on the harvester and its proven to be really tough even with dirt and rocks. My boss reckons he has seen feller bunchers with hot saws in South America where cutters have actually warn away and they are using the cutter bracket to cut trees... the stumps weren't a pretty sight as you could imagine.

 

[ausneil 1]

Thats pretty good for a chainsaw I didn't think they would last that long. We use a hot saw on the harvester and its proven to be really tough even with dirt and rocks. My boss reckons he has seen feller bunchers with hot saws in South America where cutters have actually warn away and they are using the cutter bracket to cut trees... the stumps weren't a pretty sight as you could imagine.

Thats interesting mate, i would of liked to watch them norring away with chains like that.
What i found with timcoes in natural hardwood is, the saw and bar are basicly the same as a chainsaw, being chains need to be sharp and bars need to be dressed just the same. Yes the machines get away with a bit being power fed but 3/4 chain will cut round corners just like a chainsaw if out of wack. I have seen first hand smoky cuts and you get nearly through and then it stoppes so then you try and wriggle and lift or what ever you can to get the bar back so you can slide up and push it over. Then you have the problem is the bar retracted or not, we ran a bar light in the dash to tell if the bar was back and i think the newer ones come standard with bar lights.
I have never cut plantation but would emagine it would be easier to falling big logs. We used to belly and backcut just the same as a log faller and you still had to look up at the head before falling it.

Will,,, the timco's and velmets run from around 28 ton and up and run D7 tracks and base is round the same.
The hyd saw motors were roughly 80hp and run at 5400 rpm but that could be adjusted from the cab, i was always fiddling with settings.
The ones i drove had 250hp case motors but i beleive the velmets are running 350hp cummins nowdays.

 

[MCW]

Interesting stuff on the forestry machinery guys

Yeah i went back yesterday arvo and they were still pretty pissed,might take a look tomorrow

UPDATE,still angry still can't get within 20m of the hive or the fence i am trying to replace

As mentioned the old Mortein Bomb stuffs them big time. They also aren't as active at night although I've been touched up pretty well in my ute's headlights following that theory too. I remember going to a hive on a dairy I used to work on in the split rear tyre of an old collectible tractor. A guy had come to winch this tractor onto a truck the day before and he got that mauled he was airlifted to the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Well over 200 stings apparently. I went there at night under torchlight and placed a can of fly spray in the split. The next day when they were all happy and active I sat back a fair way and shot it with my .222 - bye bye bee hive

Funnily enough though bees can be actually quite hard to kill unless you listen to Apiarists. They'll claim that every single chemical on earth can damage their hives and bee populations.
I used to do beehive inspections on behalf of the almond industry with my previous job. Almonds do not self pollinate so as a rule an orchard has one main cash cow variety such as Non Pareil (50% of the orchard), then they'll they'll run 25% of an earlier flowering variety such as Carmel then the other 25% of another later pollinator such as Price or NePlus. They need bees so that they can set a viable crop of nuts. Basically beehives are "hired" from Apiarists by almond growers and spaced throughout the orchard. They may only remain in an orchard for 6 weeks or so yet the cost is around $60-70 per hive (maybe even more now?). If done properly beekeeping is EXTREMELY lucrative now that almond plantings have reached massive levels. When I say lucrative I mean $100,000+ income within two months for many guys supplying almonds. What cracks me up though is that most scream poor and run around with the arse hanging out of their pants Unfortunately almond honey is crap so only used for processing as a rule.
We use to grade the hives to ensure that the grower was getting maximum value for money. There were a lot of crap beekeepers out there that decided to jump on the almond bandwagon. The better guys were easy to spot. Another good hint is that the darker the bee's colour the angrier it will be - that's not a joke either. I've got some classic bee stories from over the years.

MCW, everything is cut off at ground level and the stump is sprayed as soon as it is cut, there is a set of spray nozzles set up near the shear plate under the head. With the quickness of spraying the stump we don't have any issues with regrowth. The whole spray system is pretty trick and was designed by the bloke who owns the machine, now that we worked all the bugs out of it we are changing the head to a LogMax 4000 head with a chainsaw cutter and it's herbicide application is through the saw bar itself.

Will

Good stuff Will. I thought there would have to be some type of chemical application involved. What type of chemical are you using? Only reason I ask is that I remember someone here said they'd run straight Glyphosate through their chainsaw's oiler without realising it is EXTREMELY corrosive. I'd like more info on how the chemical is applied via the saw bar, that would be interesting. Woody weed killers with actives such as Triclopyr (eg: Dow's Garlon) have a label recommendation that you can mix with diesel to paint on stumps. This would probably work mixed with bar oil. I'm just not sure that enough chemical would be applied in the cut via a chain oiler application method but assume it's been trialled and has worked. I'd be interested to hear if the chemical is applied via the bar oiler or if different type of bar application method is used.

 

[splitpost]

ha went back this morning and bugger me ,someone has cut that log open and taken most of the hive out,now i never heard a chainsaw or anything,all i can say is whoever did it has bigger balls than me

 

[ausneil 1]

ha went back this morning and bugger me ,someone has cut that log open and taken most of the hive out,now i never heard a chainsaw or anything,all i can say is whoever did it has bigger balls than me

hahaha, wasn't me they scare me enough to say lets buy the stuff.

 

[MCW]

all i can say is whoever did it has bigger balls than me

Or a bee suit

 

[Rudolf73]

Or a bee suit

A chemical suit helps ...until they get angry lol

 

[David (saltas)]

Matt

I reckon any of the woody weed herbicides that are mixed with diesel and are suitable for basal bark application would do the job.

I have better results on cut stump with herbicides that are suitable for Basal bark application

Access (Triclopyr and Picloram) is a favourite but this is also acidic 4.4pH

 

[MCW]

A chemical suit helps ...until they get angry lol

Mozzie nets work too until the little bastards find a hole or crawl in underneath, sit there like little ninjas, then release the old attack pheremone in unison. You soon find a mozzie net is even better at holding them against your face than holding them away. Also multiple bee stings around the mouth create the same paralysed face dribble as going to the dentist. Don't ask how I know this...

 

[MCW]

Matt

I reckon any of the woody weed herbicides that are mixed with diesel and are suitable for basal bark application would do the job.

I have better results on cut stump with herbicides that are suitable for Basal bark application

Access (Triclopyr and Picloram) is a favourite but this is also acidic 4.4pH

I agree David but it's the application rate that's the issue. I mean I can't remember the last time in dry wood that I saw any bar oil left in the actual cut. Even straight glyphosate painted on a fresh cut will have the desired effect as a rule and it's cheap. If it is being applied via the standard chain oiler I'd suspect you would get misses. Metsulfuron Methyl also does an awesome job but can have root uptake so you have to be careful with surrounding trees, especially eucalypts. Being a Sulphonated Urea eucs suck it in big time.
Picloram is an excellent product but I haven't heard of Access before - sounds gutsy I gather when you are talking pH you mean straight out the drum?
If mixed with bar oil or diesel I'm prety sure some of a chemical's corrosive effects would be overcome. Maybe. I am curious though as to what bar application is being used. Not through doubt but curiosity.

 

[deye223]

can any one id this tree thanks

 

[lumberjackau]

MCW, the bar application is throught the guts of the bar, it is hollow with a few holes in the side of the bar, oiler is oiling the bar and chain, so there is two seperate pumps, one for the herb and the other for the bar oil.

we normally use products like Garlon, Grass-up or Fightback with which all have Triclopyr, no problems with it and does a bloody good job for what we use it for, just mix it with water and dye(so we can see the spray on the stump from the cab) No issues with corrosion on the head

THEN THERE IS Glyphosate Good ol Roundup

They can stick that #### up their ------------

The Teak job we did we used roundup for stump application, basically it destroyed the whole bottom section of the head, any grease in the sprays path was washed away, you couldn't keep grease up to it, and of course it just cleaned all the paint away and it looked like it was beadblasted. One portion of the herb line along the crane is stainless steel, it even ate a few holes in it! I do believe we are not going to use the stuff on any future jobs :msp_biggrin:

 

[AUSSIE1]

Nice machines guys, makes mine look like a tonka toy, she only weighs in at 9ton and is a narrow bugger just under 8' wide so getting someone to shift it is no hassle. she putters along with 150+hp and is economical to run. For what we do we don't need anything bigger. btw it is the only H-8 in aus and the the two heads are the only ones in aus.
View attachment 215180
View attachment 215181

Trick little machine. Is it used for thinning?

Thats pretty good for a chainsaw I didn't think they would last that long. We use a hot saw on the harvester and its proven to be really tough even with dirt and rocks. My boss reckons he has seen feller bunchers with hot saws in South America where cutters have actually warn away and they are using the cutter bracket to cut trees... the stumps weren't a pretty sight as you could imagine.

Lol, not surprised to here the lack of maintenance runs through the US also. I've left plenty of companies for that very reason. The last fella i worked for I did 12 - 14 hr days and he couldn't fix the seat gas strut (Timco harvester). I had a 4" piece of bluegum under the seat. I had to tip 20 -30 litres of hydraulic oil in it every morning. What made it worse was the lift pump wasn't working (he wouldn't fix it) so I had to climb on top of the machine in the dark over a slippery oil filmed machine and remove the filter housing to top it up. We produced that much wood due to our hours sitting in the machines, instead of repairing our machines, he bought more to start up another crew. Didn't take long to make a decision.

I miss the machines but not the politics. I'd love to do a couple of days a week back in a machine as long as it was local and no crap.

 

[Rudolf73]

Thats a serious looking machine Al, I'm just imagining all the firewood I could carry haha.

But one day I'd like to get into forestry a bit more. I'm slowly working my way towards it.

 

[ausneil 1]

Trick little machine. Is it used for thinning?



Lol, not surprised to here the lack of maintenance runs through the US also. I've left plenty of companies for that very reason. The last fella i worked for I did 12 - 14 hr days and he couldn't fix the seat gas strut (Timco harvester). I had a 4" piece of bluegum under the seat. I had to tip 20 -30 litres of hydraulic oil in it every morning. What made it worse was the lift pump wasn't working (he wouldn't fix it) so I had to climb on top of the machine in the dark over a slippery oil filmed machine and remove the filter housing to top it up. We produced that much wood due to our hours sitting in the machines, instead of repairing our machines, he bought more to start up another crew. Didn't take long to make a decision.

I miss the machines but not the politics. I'd love to do a couple of days a week back in a machine as long as it was local and no crap.

AUSSIE 1,,, i hear you on the maintance or lack of, its funny how contractors spend 1 million plus on these toys but grizzle at a carton of greese or a 44 of oil not to mention diesel.
My boss was hard as well and demanded results but, he never grizzled if the machines needed work, he was quick to jump on operator breakages but normal maintance requireing what ever was no problem.
I was on contract and hand fell the ones i couldn't get to.
I also would go back to it but i have been self employed 7 years now and never looked back.

 

[AUSSIE1]

can any one id this tree thanks

Bluegum Daz

Thats a serious looking machine Al, I'm just imagining all the firewood I could carry haha.

But one day I'd like to get into forestry a bit more. I'm slowly working my way towards it.

You'll love it Rudy, if you can score a good crowd.