Random Ramblings, Cutting Logs

[Burvol]

I wanted to just re-hash some of the topics we have discussed in production falling, and what my partner (he's on a buncher) and I were discussing last week.

1. Stay safe and productive. If your dead or mangled, your no good to your outfit. Work hard. Guys that barley get by, get just that.

2. Not all trees are the same. Some need a little more tweeking on the stump or whatever to lay out right. If your stump looks a little goofy cause of something you did to swing a tree or roll it off, don't worry. You can't sell the stumps, but pretty stumps do show competency.

3. I don't give a #### how much wood you put on the ground if it's broke. Can't sell chunks, lol.

4. Like number 3, the name of the game is selling the wood, not just dropping it. Make it pretty, ( ie, correct trim, flush & square, good knots flushed) and make it so the loggers can get it out.

5. Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. Everyone has an opinion of cutting timber. We all know what the bottom line is. Good logs sell at the market just like cattle or hogs. Add volume to that, and your making a little money. Guys that talk a mean game, wear a saw patch to the grocery store, tell war stories at the bar and just slash and dash are pathetic.

 

[slowp]

And don't carry a pink wedge when wearing orange chaps, an orange hardhat and packing an orange saw. Unless, you are carrying it to increase awareness of breast cancer. Which was the reason given when I pointed out this faux pas to a faller.

 

[hammerlogging]

 

[John Ellison]

Right on Burvol, I never claimed to be the fastest busheler, but always made the best logs I could.
Have heard it said more than once that the best bushelers are just an inch away from getting fired. (Some people actually believed this) Meaing that they are taking too many shortcuts to up production.
There are shortcuts and then there are shortcuts.
If the rigging crew, skidder op. or? are continually cussing it does not matter how much you can produce in a day, it is still bad.
I worked at a camp where the top scale was always turned in by the same guy. And he always made sure everyone knew it.
When he quit I finished up his strip. Two cut up but still standing dead snags. Nothing but Russian couplings in most all of the windfall. I dont know how he was allowed to work there as long as he did. Niether here nor there but AFAIK he is still in prison for murder.
Your right, the stumps usually tell the tale. But you have to see them in general. Sometimes you just have to do what you gotta do to get it on the ground and the stump isnt going to look just right. The overall end results are what counts.

 

[John Ellison]

And don't carry a pink wedge when wearing orange chaps, an orange hardhat and packing an orange saw. Unless, you are carrying it to increase awareness of breast cancer. Which was the reason given when I pointed out this faux pas to a faller.

HaHa, some people just dont"get it".

 

[captainsteep]

my words said perfect

once had a cutter that way,show up cut and leave,not even think on how the hell am i going to get that mess picked up,then ##### because its taking to long to get it out.So i told him get down there and hook it up,Well i think he learned something, Bet he cuts different today dam good cutter still,wish i still had him.

 

[bullbuck]

well said burvol,a faller that takes pride in his work and also consideration for the method used to remove the wood is rare in these parts,at the company i used to work for there were 5 cutters but only one faller,skidding his strip was the only breath of fresh air on that job,the rest of the stuff was all sidehill hack and run jazz,just plain hard on everyone not to mention the woods,but when some guys learn a certain way,they will never change.logging is hard but the way some guys do it makes it even harder,for no reason,probably the reason i no longer work there

 

[redprospector]

One thing I know for sure is that running a small skidder made a lot better faller out of me.

Andy

 

[GASoline71]

Never fill the saw boss' lunchbox with bar oil...

...don't ask me why...

Gary

 

[bullbuck]

One thing I know for sure is that running a small skidder made a lot better faller out of me.

Andy

it has a way of doing that,i bet your production went up too

 

[056kid]

being able to get the timber out is half the fun!

Every time my boss hired some new help to try, I would have to deal with the that problem, guys are so gung ho to put the timber on the ground they forget what the bigger picture is then you have 5 tree lengths of lapped up butts, trees get jackstrawed, trees get left, ground becomes un traverseable via skidder. And the next thing you know, the forester is telling you to go back over there and do that, them come over here and get this.

What a pita!!

My bosses brother has been cutting all his life, taught me to walk the whole sale to get a good idea on how things need to be done.

I would often contradict my boss on where to start & where the first road needed to be, but he would end up agreeing once his older brother piped in. he is always trying to cut corners....

 

[Gologit]

5. Guys that talk a mean game, wear a saw patch to the grocery store, tell war stories at the bar and just slash and dash are pathetic.

Yup. But there's sure a lot of them out there. The only good thing to come out of the current slow down is that, usually, only the best fallers can find steady work. I wish we could have the kind of falling, save out, and production all the time that we're seeing right now.

And Red's right about running a skidder making you a better faller. If some of the slash-and-dashers had to try to untangle some of their own messes they just might get a clue. Any fool can put wood on the ground but when the skidding crew volunteers to work your strip first, you know you've laid 'em out right.

 

[redprospector]

it has a way of doing that,i bet your production went up too

Bottom line production went up, but I don't put as many on the ground in a day's time. It takes a little more time to put them where they need to go.

When I first started falling for the mill one of the bosses said I was his best directional faller...........Then he added; Whatever direction it's leaning, is the direction it's fallin'.

The guy's that have worked for me say that I'm anal about putting trees where they need to go, but I don't like building fence if I don't have to, and the bottom line is what counts anyway.

Andy

 

[redprospector]

Yup. But there's sure a lot of them out there. The only good thing to come out of the current slow down is that, usually, only the best fallers can find steady work. I wish we could have the kind of falling, save out, and production all the time that we're seeing right now.

And Red's right about running a skidder making you a better faller. If some of the slash-and-dashers had to try to untangle some of their own messes they just might get a clue. Any fool can put wood on the ground but when the skidding crew volunteers to work your strip first, you know you've laid 'em out right.

The sad part is that I recognise that I was a "slash-and-dasher" when I first started out. Some old timers taught me a lot of things, but I just never gave a rat's :censored: about laying them out right if it cost me in tree count, untill my second day on a skidder.
I'm a firm believer that a 7" grinder will make a better welder out of a man, and a skidder will make a better faller out of a man.

Andy

 

[Jacob J.]

J- That's about the best post on log cutting on this site ever. If I were running a crew of log cutters, I'd much rather have a guy who was a bit slower but took great pride in leaving clean strips. I wasn't ever the fastest, and I had no ambitions to be the fastest. It was enough for me to get a saw and a set of jacks out on the unit and actually get wood on the ground. There was always going to be someone faster, more aggressive, or more thick-headed working the next strip over.

One of the 'fastest' guys I ever worked with ended up losing an eye because he was falling three in a set together and didn't fully assess the situation. The top broke out of one and blew some limbs back when it landed and a broken piece of limb took his eye out. He's still cutting now and is a lot more careful.

 

[Jacob J.]

Yup. But there's sure a lot of them out there. The only good thing to come out of the current slow down is that, usually, only the best fallers can find steady work. I wish we could have the kind of falling, save out, and production all the time that we're seeing right now.

And Red's right about running a skidder making you a better faller. If some of the slash-and-dashers had to try to untangle some of their own messes they just might get a clue. Any fool can put wood on the ground but when the skidding crew volunteers to work your strip first, you know you've laid 'em out right.

I don't know about the economic downturn filtering out good cutters here. I see some guys I know that are real meatheads (crackheads in some cases) still working and some other guys I know that are old timers and among the best of the best are struggling to get work. It seems in my area, the depressed economy is favoring slash-and-dash type cutters who are cheaper.

 

[Gologit]

I don't know about the economic downturn filtering out good cutters here. I see some guys I know that are real meatheads (crackheads in some cases) still working and some other guys I know that are old timers and among the best of the best are struggling to get work. It seems in my area, the depressed economy is favoring slash-and-dash type cutters who are cheaper.

We get the cheapo thing here too, sometimes. But it's usually the marginal operators that nobody in their right mind would work for anyway...rubber checks, windy promises, sometimes no pay at all. I've seen day wages that might make a guy think he'd be better off working at Burger King. One outfit brought down three sets of fallers from Washington (nobody around here would work for him) and when they got all the way down here he reneged on the travel money and dropped the day wage by fifty dollars. They went home without adding anything to his dental record. I don't know why not. He wound up having to hire some exchange students from south of the border. They screwed up the lengths so bad that the mills dropped the price and basically ran the guy out of the country. No big loss.

There are good guys out of work around here, too, and that's not likely to change anytime soon. But when there's work for a good faller the outfits know that they're there. I just wish there was more work.

 

[Humptulips]

You know I mostly worked from the yarding end and I saw some pretty messed up cutting jobs in my time. For the most part I think it was related to money. Big company squeezes the contractor and he squeezes the cutting contractor. Result is you either get a contractor that hires people that don't know what they're doing because he can't pay a decent wage or he puts the pressure on to get the maximum timber on the ground no matter what it looks like.And I don't think this saves money in the long run but some people only understand ledger books.

The outfits I worked for that had good cutters and did good jobs payed good wages. They expected a good job and were willing to pay for it but I've seen that change when the screws were put to them financially.

 

[Gologit]

You know I mostly worked from the yarding end and I saw some pretty messed up cutting jobs in my time. For the most part I think it was related to money. Big company squeezes the contractor and he squeezes the cutting contractor. Result is you either get a contractor that hires people that don't know what they're doing because he can't pay a decent wage or he puts the pressure on to get the maximum timber on the ground no matter what it looks like.And I don't think this saves money in the long run but some people only understand ledger books.

The outfits I worked for that had good cutters and did good jobs payed good wages. They expected a good job and were willing to pay for it but I've seen that change when the screws were put to them financially.

Well said.

 

[Greystoke]

I wanted to just re-hash some of the topics we have discussed in production falling, and what my partner (he's on a buncher) and I were discussing last week.

1. Stay safe and productive. If your dead or mangled, your no good to your outfit. Work hard. Guys that barley get by, get just that.

2. Not all trees are the same. Some need a little more tweeking on the stump or whatever to lay out right. If your stump looks a little goofy cause of something you did to swing a tree or roll it off, don't worry. You can't sell the stumps, but pretty stumps do show competency.

3. I don't give a #### how much wood you put on the ground if it's broke. Can't sell chunks, lol.

4. Like number 3, the name of the game is selling the wood, not just dropping it. Make it pretty, ( ie, correct trim, flush & square, good knots flushed) and make it so the loggers can get it out.

5. Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. Everyone has an opinion of cutting timber. We all know what the bottom line is. Good logs sell at the market just like cattle or hogs. Add volume to that, and your making a little money. Guys that talk a mean game, wear a saw patch to the grocery store, tell war stories at the bar and just slash and dash are pathetic.

Well stated.