land clearing with husqvarna 365sp & 440xtorq

[wyk]

Well, Mate! Good to see you're back at 'er.

We're alright over here in Waterford. Fortunately for the tourists, the weather was great for us this summer. Very little rain. But that will make it difficult for our cattle

Ireland doesn't have the huge forests the US has(and, frankly, no has those sort of forests short of maybe brasil). But we do have a good amount of wood here. Much of our forests were used and abused by our, uh, previous management... I am on the side of the Comeragh mountains, so plenty of forests here. I usually put my updates on my forestry thread as it is half forestry, half land stewardship:

http://www.arboristsite.com/community/threads/wheres-wyk-been-and-what-trouble-is-he-making.181658/

Also been busy preparing for winter. I've been very strategic with my firewood - oak, ash, beech, birch mainly. I also have some legacy wood that has been sitting about as well. SO plenty of pitch pine, and various other softwoods in the big stack on the bottom.

 

[wyk]

I love those Defenders. Wish I had me one. But we get on alright with our set up. Sort of cheating, really. We use a Case:

Thanks for the comments and kind words,i would have updated more but i had a laptop crash one time and i had lots and lots of pics lost on my pc,that really upset me at the time and i lost intrest,but i now have a new laptop so it should be easier...

This Nissan has some amount of work done,it's a great vehicle to stay going,never gives any trouble and now i have recently got a larger trailer too.
A tipper,so now i take out larger loads of wood too.

@ NC cutter,i have a medium size blacksmith stove,the door of it is around 2ft wide so it's large enough to take a good sized log.
You need it here the bitter winters we get.

Here is the trailer i recently got,i had to do some work on it such as get motor rebuilt,and new tyres and one set of wheel bearings,but it is working great now,it is a good few years old but the chassis is all treated when it was built first day so it can't rust,the body is alloy with drop sides,& i think the chassis it's alloy dipped or something like that..

Some times my brother gives me a hand too with his modified landrover defender,that is some animal offroad!

 

[logger 12345]

Nice stock pile reindeer,looks like waterford must have been the lucky county here so this summer cause everywhere else was a washout lol...

Yeah there was a few nice weeks this summer but nothing to write home about.

We are currently rebuilding an old Fordson dexta tractor belong to my grandfather,hopefully it will be up and running soon to bring out some wood out of awkward places.

 

[logger 12345]

Reindeer,

That is a fine looking tractor,not too many places that can't travel to.... how do you find the beech wood? one of the best if you ask me!!

 

[wyk]

Reindeer,

That is a fine looking tractor,not too many places that can't travel to.... how do you find the beech wood? one of the best if you ask me!!

 

[logger 12345]

Haha Nice.......

 

[Gkiesel]

good to see you back Logger. I see you upgraded your attire as well. No more sweat pants and respirator. Looking good.

 

[bryanr2]

Thanks for the comments and kind words,i would have updated more but i had a laptop crash one time and i had lots and lots of pics lost on my pc,that really upset me at the time and i lost intrest,but i now have a new laptop so it should be easier...

This Nissan has some amount of work done,it's a great vehicle to stay going,never gives any trouble and now i have recently got a larger trailer too.
A tipper,so now i take out larger loads of wood too.

@ NC cutter,i have a medium size blacksmith stove,the door of it is around 2ft wide so it's large enough to take a good sized log.
You need it here the bitter winters we get.

Here is the trailer i recently got,i had to do some work on it such as get motor rebuilt,and new tyres and one set of wheel bearings,but it is working great now,it is a good few years old but the chassis is all treated when it was built first day so it can't rust,the body is alloy with drop sides,& i think the chassis it's alloy dipped or something like that..

Some times my brother gives me a hand too with his modified landrover defender,that is some animal offroad!

Holy smokes that Land Rover is awesome.... year and mods?

 

[wyk]

Haha Nice.......

That beech was sort of poached. Coillte land butts up against ours(the estate donated a thousand acres or so of the mountain side to Coillte in the 70's). One of the storms from last winter had a large beech split in two. Most of it landed in one of our fields. So I went to work quickly when I noticed it. No matter, really, as we know the local http://www.coillte.ie/Coillte forester rather well. At one point, one of the the roads that cuts across our estate separates Coillte from us.

 

[logger 12345]

This year with us we have been very busy with hardwood sales,and the funny part was we were even more busier around summer time, i reckon the clever people were getting it in early....

If i had a quite summer i would have had a massive stockpile,maybe 20 times what reindeer has there and i'm honestly not been smart at all.... (cause in fairness that's a nice stock pile there) only the thing is as fast as we were stocking it,the whole lot was sold....
I personally find if you have time to be stock piling you are not selling......

When sales are up,what you cut is been sold, when sales are down you get plenty time to stock pile....

Just how it has been for us....
Saying all that,if things are quite,that's the time to stock pile...

 

[wyk]

Folks are more eager to buy at better prices(for us) this year since we didn't have a winter storm flooding the market with downed trees last year. With our stash, we supply four houses on the estate(two of which are rentals), one with a large boiler, the other with a large flu-less fireplace from the 1800's - both very hungry for wood. The owners lodge house further down the estate I keep a separate pile for. I'll get a pic for you later on. I have a nice oak rick or two sitting next to it. We have two rentals in the local village, as well. So four rentals that are customers(we usually do 80 Euro a 4X6 for them). Since we have our own fires, we also like to be at least 2 years ahead on the firewood there, so always have a large stock pile. We will sell off more than usual this winter, though, because I have to use a different area to season the wood since the dairy where the wood is will be used again next spring for some new calves coming in. I'll be spending much of the week to come splitting the seasoned wood we have with the hydraulic splitter. It will be much easier to move when split, anyways.

 

[logger 12345]

Yeah,and to be honest like you reindeer there i would have rathered to have had time to stockpile.... right now i am all out of hardwood and i am trying to stock pile it,but i doubt i'll be able...

Suppose i can't complain that it's selling.
That's great news Reindeer,i suppose like us so,you could be selling a lot of it as it's cut and not stockpiling the whole time....

As for the seasoning,when we can stock pile hardwood we like to give it a minimum three months,some people that buy hardwood from me like to season it further for up to two years....

i personally wouldn't have that time to season wood for this long,i tell all my customers to buy wood from me in advance and stock pile it themselves,this seems to be the norm thing now with my customers.

 

[logger 12345]

Holy smokes that Land Rover is awesome.... year and mods?

I think it's 1979 but chassis fully rebuild from the ground up and treated,full 3.o turbo twin cam engine conversion,(from 20o4 range rover) full BFG mud terrains all round,polly bushed allround, full lift kit with Rancho® shocks all round, warren winch kit,cold air flow snorkel kit, full respray recently in that colour (not sure what colour) as this is the brothers machine i'm not fully sure of the full spec but the list goes way on....

He has a lot spent on that and believe me it goes anywhere! he has got me out of trouble a lot of times with it!
I'm sure the nissan would be equally as aggresive offroad if i had the same lift kit and tyres.... but i like my onroad comfort too much so all i have on my Nissan is A/T tyres allround,so onroad comfort is not effected so much, it is excellent too offroad but deffo right now in this standard state can't go anywhere near where the landrover can go.

 

[wyk]

Yeah,and to be honest like you reindeer there i would have rathered to have had time to stockpile.... right now i am all out of hardwood and i am trying to stock pile it,but i doubt i'll be able...

Suppose i can't complain that it's selling.
That's great news Reindeer,i suppose like us so,you could be selling a lot of it as it's cut and not stockpiling the whole time....

As for the seasoning,when we can stock pile hardwood we like to give it a minimum three months,some people that buy hardwood from me like to season it further for up to two years....

i personally wouldn't have that time to season wood for this long,i tell all my customers to buy wood from me in advance and stock pile it themselves,this seems to be the norm thing now with my customers.

I've sold a few truckloads of unseasoned wood. There's always unseasoned wood about the place that needs tidying up. Just finished splitting this sweet chestnut. Smells great, and burns surprisingly well once seasoned. That's my 281XP sitting on top of it there.

We didn't bother splitting this oak - I simply cut it into rounds and sold it off unseasoned:

The PTO 30 tonne splitter:

I usually split wood with the hydraulic PTO splitter unless it's something like small pieces of ash where it's faster with an axe(which I was doing a bit of yesterday). It's easy to set up the splitter near where you're gonna stack it and simply chuck the wood into piles. No time at all. The more neatly stacked piles are done with volunteer labour, usually from the ones that volunteer on the organic farm side of things. I can grab a couple of them on occasion for various tasks.

 

[logger 12345]

Great pics Reindeer,looks like you have been very busy,and great looking timber there....

I have tried many ways to split wood and i have two splitters (one on a tractor something like you there) and an electric one...
but it always comes back to me that the fastest way is someone constantly feeding the saw and just noodle them.....
Is that what you call it when you just cut the rings against the grain and just don't split anything?
This has been working out the fastest way for me recently,splitting is time consuming and some wood is extremly knotted...especially the spruce.

Yeah you burn more fuel/chain oil etc but it saves any splitting.

The slowest is the elec splitter,mainly due to the setting up for each ring to accomodate the differnt sizes,the axe is faster than that.

Allthough to be fair that log splitter you got there looks like a right good one,better looking than the one i have,i must take a few pics.

 

[logger 12345]

good to see you back Logger. I see you upgraded your attire as well. No more sweat pants and respirator. Looking good.

Thanks!

Yeah i don't use the mask much,but i do sometimes depending on where i'm cutting.

 

[logger 12345]

Reindeer,

How's things been going for you, i am currently looking for hardwood to buy, are you busy selling or how it things going?
Let me know if you are selling any.

At the moment i need to stock up,where i'm cutting the land is too wet and we can't move in there....

 

[rburg]

Glad to see you back posting. I enjoy the pictures of the countryside that you work in.

 

[wyk]

Reindeer,

How's things been going for you, i am currently looking for hardwood to buy, are you busy selling or how it things going?
Let me know if you are selling any.

At the moment i need to stock up,where i'm cutting the land is too wet and we can't move in there....

I'm full bore bringing on hardwoods at the moment. We have six fires on the estate I need to feed. So I won't know for a bit whether I've any to spare until we've completely filled or reserve area and I have fully surveyed the storm damage.

 

[BroncoRN]

Hey Logger! I followed this thread a few years ago. Unbelieveable, you are still at it and going strong!