Soren Eriksson with his 6 point limbing technique

[dancan]

Here's another video , around the 3 minute mark is when the limbing starts using some of the 6 pt technique .

[video=youtube;i10JPKjqZjw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=i10JPKjqZjw[/video]

Kinda looks like some of the forest we have here in Nova Scotia .

 

[imagineero]

I try not to get involved in the sort of one upmanship that goes round sometimes, but you look at those sticks and wonder how they could be bothered harvesting them. Some of them were only 6" diameter. at 1:35 a guy picks the whole tree with one hand and flicks it aside. What are they going to do with them? Pulpwood? Do they skid them out or just put them on their shoulder on their way home?

Had a canadian groundie working for me earlier this year, good guy and really enjoyed shooting the #### with him. Told some good stories and made me want to visit canada, especially the far north part. He told me he'd never seen any big trees in canada though which surprised me a bit. True story or was he just yanking my chain?

Shaun

 

[dancan]

The big tree thing depends where he's from , there's not a lot of trees in the prairies , further up North and even when you look at my province , most of it has been cut over a couple of times with the "Take the best , leave the rest" motto .
3" tops for pulp , 5" tops for stud wood 10" for saw logs etc around here , if you're getting paid by the ton for wood that gets chipped , a ton of 3" wood is worth as much as 5" wood , just more work .
A lot more wood has traditionally been chipped on that side of the pond but we're seeing more of it around here including whole tree harvesting including the stumps (Now that leave a landscape that unites treehuggers and some non treehuggers !).
I suspect they just pile them in clumps , a porter comes by , picks them up and brings them to a landing .

Some "EnergyWood" and pulpwood chipping as a side note .

JENZ HEM 820 DQ | Der Holzhäcksler mit POWER - YouTube
FARMI 380 [Wood chipper] - YouTube
FARMI CH380HFC energy wood chipper - YouTube

 

[VTWoodchuck]

Here's another video , around the 3 minute mark is when the limbing starts using some of the 6 pt technique .

[video=youtube;i10JPKjqZjw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=i10JPKjqZjw[/video]

Kinda looks like some of the forest we have here in Nova Scotia .

Those are small trees. I also wonder what they are doing with them. Dude sure limbs em fast! I'm just joe-schmo firewood cutter(15 or so cord a year) but I wouldn't even bother with trees that size. Seems like a PIA, but maybe thats all there is there. Wish I could just push my trees over! I'm wondering if they are clearing for a road or something? It would take alot of those trees to make a cord!
Are those guys are geared up for 'woods combat" or what?! Quite the utility belts there....
Like how he buried his bar in the ice/mud:msp_unsure:

 

[heimannm]

Thanks Philbert, but now you have confirmed that I am indeed nothing but a miserable firewood hack.

On the other hand, I don't have to be high production and in fact try to drag some jobs out now just to give me some more saw time.

I have for many years though used my hip and thigh to help sling the saw about and used weight the saw to do the work, perhaps not with the skill and efficiency of the professional but it does save the arms and back. I have had a few opportunities to cut with younger, stronger fellows but ones that didn't have some of the trickery of an old saw and I can still be cutting at the end of the day when they surrender with their arms on fire...

Mark

 

[slowp]

Those are small trees. I also wonder what they are doing with them. Dude sure limbs em fast! I'm just joe-schmo firewood cutter(15 or so cord a year) but I wouldn't even bother with trees that size. Seems like a PIA, but maybe thats all there is there. Wish I could just push my trees over! I'm wondering if they are clearing for a road or something? It would take alot of those trees to make a cord!
Are those guys are geared up for 'woods combat" or what?! Quite the utility belts there....
Like how he buried his bar in the ice/mud:msp_unsure:

Small trees are the norm here. The big stuff is gone, or now is off limits. The mills have retooled to handle the second and third growth. The prime size is 16" to 24". Smaller is OK. A log seller will get docked for too big of trees--27" seems to be the maximum. There are very few mills that can take large diameter logs anymore.

My comments were not "one upsmanship" they were simply pointing out that the Soren Method isn't practicle in OUR locale on a commercial logging basis. You guys might be shocked at how deep the slash is in a typical unit. Even in partial cuts AKA selective cuts, the ground is hard to find. Walking on top of the tree is the efficient way to get around.

 

[imagineero]

3" tops for pulp , 5" tops for stud wood 10" for saw logs etc around here , if you're getting paid by the ton for wood that gets chipped , a ton of 3" wood is worth as much as 5" wood , just more work .

A lot more wood has traditionally been chipped on that side of the pond but we're seeing more of it around here including whole tree harvesting including the stumps (Now that leave a landscape that unites treehuggers and some non treehuggers !).
I suspect they just pile them in clumps , a porter comes by , picks them up and brings them to a landing .

Wow...
Some parts of that are kind of good and make you think about being more efficient, but in other ways it makes you think about what a waste of time the whole effort is. 5" tops for stud wood, what do you get one or 2 4x2's out of that? And they must both have the pith in them too... can't hardly classify as dimensionally stable lumbar and would be prone to every defect there is :-(

Sad truth I guess is that most of that stuff ends up as pulp/MDF/ply and probably goes into ikea furniture that will just get thrown out in a couple years anyway. The modern composite beams you can kind of see a point in, but the rest of it is mostly rubbish. Cant be recycled or even burnt when it goes because of all the chemicals and crap it it. What happened to building things that lasted a long time? My bed is made of old growth timber, it's 80 years old. Probably got another 100 years in it at least. If we built stuff that way, we wouldnt have to harvest so much, and we could grow decent trees. Whenever I build anything of timber I always buy recycled. I can get hardwood 4x2's that are 100 years old pulled out of old buildings and have 10 or more growth rings to the inch. They've done all the moving they're going to do. The kicker is you can buy this stuff for less than the cost of new pine :msp_unsure: If I had $$$ I'd be buying up old timber because there aint no more where that came from.

Shaun

 

[imagineero]

My comments were not "one upsmanship" they were simply pointing out that the Soren Method isn't practicle in OUR locale on a commercial logging basis.

Wasn't taking a shot at you there slowp, hadn't intended to slight you in any way. Always hold your comments in high regard.

Made that comment about one upmanship just to try to not look like a smart ass with my own smart ass comments ;-)

Shaun

 

[dancan]

Those are small trees. I also wonder what they are doing with them. Dude sure limbs em fast! I'm just joe-schmo firewood cutter(15 or so cord a year) but I wouldn't even bother with trees that size. Seems like a PIA, but maybe thats all there is there. Wish I could just push my trees over! I'm wondering if they are clearing for a road or something? It would take alot of those trees to make a cord!
Are those guys are geared up for 'woods combat" or what?! Quite the utility belts there....
Like how he buried his bar in the ice/mud:msp_unsure:

Similar to the type of cutting I do when clearing a house lot , I only get 2 to 3 days to to clear an acre +/- so no time to waste , get it on the ground , limb to about 6" , buck and slash the junk at 4' . Large trees do take up a lot of time , if I was cutting for volume I'd be looking for the big stuff but I guess you gotta make lemonaide out of lemons .
I carry most of my felling gear on a harness and army surplus belt pouch but I have no idea what the ice cutting was about .

 

[madhatte]

A log seller will get docked for too big of trees--27" seems to be the maximum. There are very few mills that can take large diameter logs anymore.

Weird. We're selling a lot in the 26"-40" range as well as the 6"-12" range as our third- and fourth-entry thins are a bit short of 18"-22" stems these days. Haven't heard of anybody getting docked. I do know that I'll mark the occasional buggun knowing that the first 8' or so will be left as cull with the intention of accumulating some large CWD.

Walking on top of the tree is the efficient way to get around.

Yep. I've crossed many a blowdown patch 20' off the ground because it's just easier than swimming through the "pick-'em-up-sticks". Calks are a must, especially if it's raining out, if you wanna go that route.

 

[jockeydeuce]

I try not to get involved in the sort of one upmanship that goes round sometimes, but you look at those sticks and wonder how they could be bothered harvesting them. Some of them were only 6" diameter. at 1:35 a guy picks the whole tree with one hand and flicks it aside. What are they going to do with them? Pulpwood? Do they skid them out or just put them on their shoulder on their way home?

Had a canadian groundie working for me earlier this year, good guy and really enjoyed shooting the #### with him. Told some good stories and made me want to visit canada, especially the far north part. He told me he'd never seen any big trees in canada though which surprised me a bit. True story or was he just yanking my chain?

Shaun

I'll try to take some pics at lunch of some loads coming into our local mills........You will wonder why they bother with these puny trees......You might as well say that the chainsaw has been obsolete here for about 15-20 years.....Everything is bunched and processed in the bush and the only reason a logger gets out of a heated cab here is to take a leak.

We have had a mountain pine beetle epidemic for a few years now here, so it's all the dead skinny lodgepole pine coming to town. Everything goes down to a 3" top and one mill even takes a 2" top......There's a bit of nice timber around here too, but most of what is getting harvested would make the log he's limbing in that video look big.

I wish we could get back to some sustainable logging around here......The daily volume of cut here is astronomical!!!.....I doubt it will happen though.

 

[Philbert]

Anybody limb with a pole saw, while the tree is still standing, or just to extend reach?

Philbert

 

[wyk]

Many of the mills local to me where I was in Oregon wold not take trees over 32". They were tooled up for 12-32" or so. Starfire south of Eugene supposedly can take larger wood. I am sure there's plenty of mills out there that can. But you just don't see so much big stuff off of 'farms'. One of the areas logged near the ranch in oregon I was at had dozens of 30-45" stumps, though. That was ~2 years ago. That was an adjacent ranchers property. I cut many of the trees myself on another bid he had.

You see a lot of small trees taken in Europe that are softwoods because they are culls. They take them out to let the hardwoods grow, or they take certain hardwoods out to let the Oak or beech grow. They then use the wood for firewood, pulp, laminates, small furnishings, handles, wooden utensils, etc. The main client we had for our larger Beech was Ikea, or a supplier for Ikea. I personally have probably cut a couple hundred cords or more for Ikea myself.

In the PNW we are seeing some beetle and rot the last couple years. They are clearing huge stands of trees of all sizes, many of which are small.

Here's a pic of the typical truck I saw in NW Oregon

 

[dancan]

Anybody limb with a pole saw, while the tree is still standing, or just to extend reach?

Philbert

Sure looks handy .

[video=youtube;97o1jyuU74I]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=97o1jyuU74I[/video]

Weird but handy .

 

[jockeydeuce]

This truck just pulled into the shop across the street from mine......I'm not exaggerating when I say these sticks are a bit bigger than most coming to town right now.

We're getting a bit off topic from the origins of this thread, but it's interesting to see what is considered merchantable timber as times change.

 

[slowp]

Weird. We're selling a lot in the 26"-40" range as well as the 6"-12" range as our third- and fourth-entry thins are a bit short of 18"-22" stems these days. Haven't heard of anybody getting docked. I do know that I'll mark the occasional buggun knowing that the first 8' or so will be left as cull with the intention of accumulating some large CWD.

There is a mill in Washougal that will take up to 48 inches.

The getting docked for big trees was discussed at a forestry thing I went to this year.

 

[Philbert]

Sure looks handy .Weird but handy .

Shaft drive!!! Not exactly sure what they guy in the video was doing - looked like he was making a mess, or just playing with the saw, or piling up a bunch of dead limbs to let the next forest fire really take off? I wonder how often that suspension rig gets hung up in stuff?

But it does show how the extended reach could be an asset in some limbing tasks. Maybe not for some of the production stuff other posters have described, but for some smaller scale stuff, selective harvesting, storm cleanup, etc.

Philbert

 

[dancan]

Silviculture . Silviculture - RitchieWiki
The cut stuff will rot and be fertilizer .

 

[imagineero]

Not really sure what he was doing there either. Looked a bit pointless. Had a job for a while in new zealand doing furniture grade pine pruning, worst paid job I ever did. Paid $1-$1.30 per tree depending on conditions of the plantation. At first prune you had to take off every branch from ground-2m, second prune was on a short forestry ladder 2-4m and third prune a longer forestry ladder 4-6m. They do a prune about every 7 years and you get logs at around 30. At each prune you're removing about 2/3 of the branches which causes the tree to grow tall faster.

Here's a good pruner doing second lift

[video=youtube;weNwrPy5CRY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weNwrPy5CRY[/video]

The ladders dont have feet, they just have a hook. They usually freehang off the tree and skid out often. The gig is - Run to the tree, throw the ladder on and run up the ladder. Whip your loppers out and get busy. You cant damage the collar or leave a stub bigger than 1/8". A forester does random inspections and they dock your pay if you do messy work. Up a few more stairs, throw your leg round the tree for balance so you can use both hands. lop lop lop. Try not to fall out of the tree. The tops are very flexy. Come down a few stairs, sign the tree and add one to your clicker. You're paid on an honour basis. It's fair game to double click if the tree was a monster. Little jump, kick your boots instep out to the outside rails of the ladder and fireman slide to the ground. Try not to sprain your ankle. That there is 85c or if you're lucky $1.

A lot of the plantations are on farmers property, so they plant them in the least useful land - mountains and gullys. They also sometimes have gorse up to your head which rips you to shreds. Scotish miners planted in in the dirt piles next to their hand dug mines to stabilise the soil and stop it coming back down the hole when it rains. Now nobody can get rid of it no matter how much they poison and burn. You might get $1.20 in a bad lot like that. Branches can be up to 3" if they leave it too late to prune which they often do. We used 200t's sometimes if the branches are all big. Some guys wear arm chaps running them because you slip often on the ladders, 20-30 branches per tree, some guys do 200+ trees a day is 5,000~6,000 cuts each day.

Usually one guy on a 6 or 7 man crew will thin out with a saw while the others prune, runs behind the crew. The crew don't prune splits, or bent/leaning trees. Thinning pays a little more than pruning.

Shaun

 

[Philbert]

That looks like a nasty, abusive job.

Philbert