The "Not So Pro" discussion thread...of course Pros are welcome!

[twochains]

Independent or fully funded, don't matter here. I see hundreds of cord of firewood left to rot by the hack "loggers" here, take the log money and run. When I say firewood, I'm talking hardwood not softwood and hardwood brings $100 a cord in log length here now. Gypo has no meaning here in the northeast, either you do the whole job or you're a.....[/quote

Are you talking about tops being left or scrag wood? We don't ever cut tops...just send in firewood cutters.

 

[Blazin]

Are you talking about tops being left or scrag wood? We don't ever cut tops...just send in firewood cutters.

Tops, some 12" on the cut or bigger. Let's put it this way, some jobs I've seen done you can't hardly walk thru. Whack the limbs and pull the whole tree out, and sell off firewood on the landing.

 

[slowp]

Tops, some 12" on the cut or bigger. Let's put it this way, some jobs I've seen done you can't hardly walk thru. Whack the limbs and pull the whole tree out, and sell off firewood on the landing.

So, what is required in the contract? Was there enough to make a saw log above that 12"? Why mess with tops if you make good money off the logs and aren't required to do anything with the tops? Don't know about where you live, but out here what is in the contract gets done. If it isn't in it, it stays.

It's hard to say whether a "hack" job was done or not if you don't know what was required.

 

[twochains]

If the remainder of the tree is too small for a saw log but fairly straight and not heavy limbed, I leave it on the log and bring it out and sell as scrag...but it has to be 14' and have a full 6" top. As much as I get moved around and pressured for production...firewood tops have to stay. Like I said though, we usually sick some firewood cutters into the area and let them have at it...ifn they are friends of mine, tops can be brought out where the firewood guys can get to them easier.

The only time we "have" to melt the tops down is on FS jobs and if the tops can be seen from 50' off main roads...other than that, they stay in the woods.

 

[floyd]

Hard to catch every load that goes out when you are the boss


I made the mistake of just skidding logs on a job done by a fire boy with my team one time. I was bumping his pig ears when he got after me. Then he told me he "could get a big old skidder there & do the job much faster than I was skidding." That was about the time I loaded the team in the trailer & told him he said the magic word.

For those that care, one generally cuts different for animal powered skidding. For example one would not drop a tree perpendicular right next to a 12' road & expect to swing a 41' log onto the road in 12x12 spacing. It would be cut so it fell 45 degrees to the road so the leave trees don't act as a pivot point.

I expect ANYONE would understand you are not going to swing a 41' log 90 degrees onto the skid trail without leaving a mark.

 

[northmanlogging]

$100 a cord or about what $60 mbf, not worth my time or energy to **** around with tops, you want the firewood go get it, if its in the contract to make slash piles or remove fine, otherwise it stays, diesel ain't cheap and neither is my time.

Around here to sell fire wood it has to be cut and split, you can sell by the log load but that means a day or two per load of limbing and yarding in which I would pocket maybe $400, and thats before figuring in fuel and labor, now in that time wasted I could have gotten 2-3 loads of saw logs out and made around $2000-4000. You do the math

 

[jwilly]

We sell a lot of top wood as firewood, we limb it down to where it is convenient skid maybe leaving a few big prongs. We usually limb as much as we can where it lands, hook the choker so it rolls, bring it up to the main trail and finish limbing. If there are any big prongs that make the hitch to wide for the trail we cut them part way through so they fold up. The fellow I worked with years ago had and old International 1700 dump and every day we would leave the header with 2 cord of "baby wood" that he sold for $100, that same load now is $200 and the older folks love that small wood.

The other reason we bring out most of the top is that the LO likes the clean job and our contract calls for hardwood tops to be on the ground and softwood tops within 24" of the ground. After a year you can walk just about anywhere on the job. There are some sites around here that you would be hard pressed to cross with a skidder without cutting your way through.

No firewood cutters allowed on this job but I have a fellow who comes with his pickup and dump trailer when we have a few cords of baby wood stacked, I load him up, get paid and the mess is gone and the fuel for the skidder and loader is paid for. He is in his early 80's and sells firewood to his friends and also has a rack to sell to campers during the summer. Last time he came he wanted white birch so the wealthy second homeowners could fill their wrought iron racks on the porch and get the fireplaces looking pretty for the holidays.

 

[slowp]

$100 a cord or about what $60 mbf, not worth my time or energy to **** around with tops, you want the firewood go get it, if its in the contract to make slash piles or remove fine, otherwise it stays, diesel ain't cheap and neither is my time.

Around here to sell fire wood it has to be cut and split, you can sell by the log load but that means a day or two per load of limbing and yarding in which I would pocket maybe $400, and thats before figuring in fuel and labor, now in that time wasted I could have gotten 2-3 loads of saw logs out and made around $2000-4000. You do the math

Oops, when I thought out the math, I had to undo the like. A PNW style log truck kinda hauls close to 10 cords gross or rounding up 5 mbf. So, that would be $200 mbf. Don't make me think in CCF, please....

 

[Gologit]

Independent or fully funded, don't matter here. I see hundreds of cord of firewood left to rot by the hack "loggers" here, take the log money and run. When I say firewood, I'm talking hardwood not softwood and hardwood brings $100 a cord in log length here now. Gypo has no meaning here in the northeast, either you do the whole job or you're a.....

There's a lot of difference in the way things are done between your part of the country and ours. When we're done logging the only thing left on the ground is stuff that we can't make any money on. And money is the key. We're not in it for sport, we're not in it for fun, we're logging to make a living. If there's a nickle's worth of value in something we'll take advantage of it.
If we're running a processor on the landing the tops and junk are usually decked and when we move out a portable chipper comes in. The chips get hauled to co-gen plants. On thinning jobs the same procedure applies.
Occasionally on thinning jobs, or on the smaller low grade saw logs if the chip market is down, we'll make firewood decks and sell the logs to commercial firewood outfits. They have to have their LTO, insurance, and we specify a time limit, cleanup, road use, and payment schedule. We don't do this very often because it's, at best, a break even deal for us when you figure the time we spend screwing around with it.

What we don't do is let individual firewood cutters come in and do any cutting unless they're employees or we know them already. Firewood cutters are a worse PITA than hunters.

 

[slowp]

On OUR public lands, here on the not so burnable rain forest, leaving tops is a good thing. Tops rot pretty quickly and return nutrients to the soil. Firewood cutters might be allowed to get the stuff 100 feet from the road edge, AFTER the unit is accepted. It all depends on what management area the unit is in. I agree that firewood cutters are a PITA, and I are one now. But I cut mostly on a friend's place.

 

[EricNY]

There's a lot of difference in the way things are done between your part of the country and ours. When we're done logging the only thing left on the ground is stuff that we can't make any money on. And money is the key. We're not in it for sport, we're not in it for fun, we're logging to make a living. If there's a nickle's worth of value in something we'll take advantage of it.
If we're running a processor on the landing the tops and junk are usually decked and when we move out a portable chipper comes in. The chips get hauled to co-gen plants. On thinning jobs the same procedure applies.

Not too different then. A lot of outfits that have delimbers on the landing (everyone around here with a feller buncher has a delimber) also have chippers and are hauling chips for biomass. Not all but a lot. Most guys won't mess around with firewood. They're already cutting, skidding, sorting/stacking on the landing. Not cost effective to keep ####ing around with it.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

 

[4x4American]

the guy i worked for wanted all of us (his workers) to bring home a load of firewood per night and sell it so we could make more money. at the end of the day he'd tell us to take the skidder out and bring whatever firewood we wanted to the landing to chop up and take home. he'd even grab a go devil and help us split it sometimes. that guy was good with having us take firewood. after a 9 hour day of falling, staying after cutting firewood was the last thing on our list but we'd do it and get a little money

 

[4x4American]

oh... short bars and bore cutting stink! piss on GOL

 

[Blazin]

So, what is required in the contract? Was there enough to make a saw log above that 12"? Why mess with tops if you make good money off the logs and aren't required to do anything with the tops? Don't know about where you live, but out here what is in the contract gets done. If it isn't in it, it stays.

It's hard to say whether a "hack" job was done or not if you don't know what was required.

Private owned land, anywhere between 20 to 500 acres. I do KNOW what was required on the half dozen or so of the latest ones I've seen butchered, 50/50 split on the log scale and tops pulled out for $25 a cord if the logger takes them... in the "contract". The 3 dozen hangers left, on the 100 acre piece musta been in the contract, and a few 6 or 8 thousand feet of that would sell for pallet logs. Carry on............

 

[4x4American]

Here in the Atlantic Northeast (ANE) there's a big push for GOL stuff, sending loggers to school to get certified, this and that. There trying to teach things like: it's not the size that matters it's what ya do with it, open face notches should be used in every cut, bore everything too, do a dance around the tree, they also advise to run safety chain. What's with the government trying to protect us from ourselves? Awhile back I think it was Patty who posted some B.C. safety stuff, it wasn't nothing like safety stuff here in the ANE. At least in the B.C. one they said that doing a humboldt notch is the better way, no bore cutting bs, and they weren't pushing the tiny bar either. There was also something about a written track record that follows the faller throughout their career. The employers can write on it and read it. That way during job switches the potential employer can check out the fallers background. Much like your permanent record from school.

 

[Blazin]

Here in the Atlantic Northeast (ANE) there's a big push for GOL stuff, sending loggers to school to get certified, this and that. There trying to teach things like: it's not the size that matters it's what ya do with it, open face notches should be used in every cut, bore everything too, do a dance around the tree, they also advise to run safety chain. What's with the government trying to protect us from ourselves? Awhile back I think it was Patty who posted some B.C. safety stuff, it wasn't nothing like safety stuff here in the ANE. At least in the B.C. one they said that doing a humboldt notch is the better way, no bore cutting bs, and they weren't pushing the tiny bar either. There was also something about a written track record that follows the faller throughout their career. The employers can write on it and read it. That way during job switches the potential employer can check out the fallers background. Much like your permanent record from school.

I'm not a fan of GOL at all, bore cutting a hard leaner is one thing, not every damn tree, Hardwoods here in the Northeast that are over 30" dbh are **** when it comes to grade for the most part.. I'm done getting in the east vs west discussions, different style over there. High stumps are not seen here, no yarders, it's a totally different situation on both accounts. We cut em ground level without a huge bar

 

[northmanlogging]

I believe I've mentioned this before, Humboldt stumps by necessity are a little bit higher say 12" at the most.

However what most people see when they view a PNW logging unit, is the bottom side of the stump, which can be much higher, or the side view also appearing to be much higher.


Why the majority of the east coast sticks with short bars is a mystery to me, other than maybe weight or just plain ole tradition, I can't think of any logical reason to use a short bar for falling.

As far as east vs west, yeah its a dead horse, both sides can learn from the other... or not.

 

[slowp]

It's definitely November here in the PNW. They aren't flooding, but the creeks and rivers are running high today. Some are even muddy--must be logging up there!

 

[Keen]

After talking about load rejection I thought some of you would find this grading sheet interesting. This is from a job that im currently on producing mill bought timber. We are paid by the mbf. Logs have to be almost perfect or you get docked.
I have not been required to goto any GOL classes or any other safety classes for that matter......thankfully. I got some letters from the mill calling for a loggers meeting but never went. I would much rather be putting wood on the ground and making money.

 

[bitzer]

Pulp/firewood is part of most contracts around here. Anything that is 8' and straight enough, but too small to make a log is firewood/pulp. Hardwood of course. Usually $100/cord delivered. I cut a lot of MFL properties and there is a certain standard that has to be followed as far as utilization and what the woods looks like after the fact. 4" max on ruts and so on. Of course there are always exceptions and loopholes. When things become unprofitable I draw the line. The pulp mills around here require us to be SFI certified, but no one requires chainsaw certs that I know of. I've never taken any classes. My forester thought I should take some classes when I first got started production logging. Here I am jacking trees and using dutchmans and so on and he wanted me to take some GOL type class for like $75. Yeah ok.

And long bars will put a lot more timber on the ground than short bars! A lot easier too. That's ok that most eastern guys still run the short bars. More wood for me to cut.