Here goes my first post...
I am moving to Hood River Oregon and I am going to try my best to get a job with a logging company. :jawdrop:
Simply put, I have always admired the profession and wanted to become a logger and cut big timber.
I may be putting the cart far ahead of the horse as I don't know how hard it may be to secure a job with a logging company let alone as a cutter....
Okay with that said I want to purchase 1 or 2 saws. The only saw I currently own is a 260pro that I modified the muffler on with help from this web site. After reading many posts I am ready to purchase a 660 1st and then maybe a 460.
I have a bunch of other questions but will start with just this.
If you want to move out here and try your hand at logging I think you should do it. That's the only way you'll ever know for sure if you really want to do it or not. And if you can really handle what logging really is.
It's not like AxeMen...not even a little. Not even close. You
might get a job on the landing bumping knots or you might wind up in the rigging. Either job will probably be with the kind of logger that goes through a lot of hired help and is always on the look-out for fresh meat that doesn't know anything. Those kind of jobs, if you survive them, are good for experience but not much else. Expect busted rigging, rubber checks, and sporadic work.
You'll work steep ground, eat tons of dust, commute maybe a couple of hours each way for no pay, and stay on the hustle all day long.
As far as a falling job goes you can pretty much forget it until you've been around for a couple of years and people know you. Falling, especially out here, is a specialized trade. A good faller can make a bad job easier...a bad faller can drop an outfit from profit to loss in no time at all. Loggers look for the best fallers that will work for the money they're paying and there are always fallers out of work and looking to cut.
The last rookie my BIL and I broke in was five years ago and that was my son. My BIL is more the faller than I am and he's been working with my son all this time and is just now about ready to turn him loose on the easier stuff.
If you showed up around here with your new saws, the wrong kind of clothes, boots as yet unscuffed, your tape bright blue and not scratched up, and not even coming close to speaking enough of our unique language to at least ask the right questions, and asked for a falling job....well, people would just laugh at you. Maybe they'd even let you drop a tree, just for the entertainment value and so they'd have lunch time conversation.
You seem sincere about wanting to log and I hope you get a chance. But look at it for what it is. After people know you you might get a chance but the odds are against it. Most new fallers get in through knowing somebody and somebody already knows them. Play with your firewood a little...sometimes
getting to cut wood is a lot more fun than
having to cut wood.
Jabuol