Some sawing, logging and skidding pics and videos ......

[Slamm]

There are only about 25 veneer logs total on the job, as this was a cattled area, which damages the wood. There was about 30,000 board feet of grade lumber logs, there are still a few to come out, but not much of it will make grade. And then not sure how much in Ties and Blocking logs, hundreds and hundreds, overall I think we are in the 500ish range of trees cut, maybe a little more. We only cut 18" DBH and bigger, and I think we did a good job of not hitting any other little white oaks, red oaks or hickory either with the falling trees or with the skidding, so the landowner should have a nice stand of timber in about 15 years to cut again.

We only have one day of cutting and skidding left, but it is wet so we'll just wait until it dries out a little, just have to see how the weather holds up.

Sam

 

[ChainsawmanXX]

There are only about 25 veneer logs total on the job, as this was a cattled area, which damages the wood. There was about 30,000 board feet of grade lumber logs, there are still a few to come out, but not much of it will make grade. And then not sure how much in Ties and Blocking logs, hundreds and hundreds, overall I think we are in the 500ish range of trees cut, maybe a little more. We only cut 18" DBH and bigger, and I think we did a good job of not hitting any other little white oaks, red oaks or hickory either with the falling trees or with the skidding, so the landowner should have a nice stand of timber in about 15 years to cut again.

We only have one day of cutting and skidding left, but it is wet so we'll just wait until it dries out a little, just have to see how the weather holds up.

Sam

Sam, Im going to have to applaud you! Iv seen some of the slash and burn methods used in Wester KY and Southern MO. And every time I see it I get alittle sick inside, I know in that woods that they snatched up anything that would bring a buck and now that woods will never be anything. They left the old knotted up, broken down trees as seed trees. Which is fairly idiotic, in my opinion if you leave bad genes in the woods.. Then Bad genes will reproduce.
Its like if you leave a bunch of retarded birds in one area and they mate.. what will you come up with? More retarded birds LOL.

You do some mighty fine work with that skidder as well. Looking forward to more pictures

 

[Slamm]

Thank you, sir,

Where we are cutting is fairly public and there are lotsa eyes on it. So far nothing but good comments have been recieved for our efforts.

I too have noticed that the remaining forest/woods/timber around Western Kentucky are mostly crappy looking. I talked to one local log buyer and he says its due to the local pulp plant, which means that every stick 5"+ has some worth. But yes, they due tend to slaughter everything in their path around here.

When I started talking about how we would just take 18-20" and bigger, other local logging types or landowners just looked at us kinda weird. One guy stated we should take everything at 12" on the stump and bigger, and then cut it again in 25 years......... ??????

How crappy would a forest look if you cut every 12" stumped tree in it and bigger, it would look like a windblown cornfield with nothing for the animals or anything to have as a home or us to look at, just a wasteland. I'm not against clearcutting if thats what you gotta due, but it sure looks like crap, and does nothing for the future.

The guy we contract for mostly cuts 18-20" and bigger and I have cut timber for the third time for him in his 32 years of business on the same land, and it was good quality, healthy, fun stuff to cut. The worst timber and most dangerous timber I ever cut was some stuff on a college that was never cut in probably 80 years if ever. The trees were huge, hollow, rotten and there were either 50-60" trees or 10"er's...... and few imbetween. The ash bore had killed a lot of the ash and the tops were just plain deadly. We would cut one tree down and 4 tops would come crashing down. I know one day, Bert, cut over 70 trees and we could only pull out about 50 because the other 20 were bad rotten and worthless.

Sam

 

[Slamm]

Well here is the second to last tree of the day and for the whole job. I was skimming the dirt on this side.

Here is the last one of the day and the whole job. We took the time for a little photo opportunity, LOL.
I faced the tree and Menno gutted his side out and then I my side out, then Billy pushed it over with the skidder, to save from a big mess in the pasture.
Menno:

Me:

Billy:

Billy and the 540B with the last log:

We have a lot of log piles laying around. As you can see a bad storm is blowing in just about 1 hour ago. We lack bucking up about 6 logs. The boys are gone until Monday. I'll finish up the sorting and load the trucks and finish cleaning up the jobsite.

Later,

Sam

 

[Slamm]

Well after last night's complete downpour, there won't be many trucks to get loaded and out, LOL. I think we got over 1" of rain. Have a neighbor that wants some trees cut away from his barn and fence so might go do that.

Sam

 

[802climber]

Hey Sam,

What do you think of this hickory? I think I cut it similar to some of your techniques.

Doing some timber stand improvement so just been trying some different stuff.

I used an open face notch. It was a heavy head leaner, and I just barely could have side bored it from the tension side with my 24" bar, but I think the tip would have gotten pinched on the compression side.

So instead I used basically a swing cut with a backstrap. Started on the compression side, cut the back about 1/3 of the way through setting the hinge with the tip of my bar. Put a wedge in this cut. Left a backstrap, bored in the back just forward of the backstrap and cut my way toward the hinge. Once the hinge was set, I clipped the backstrap and tapped the wedge a couple times...


Slightly mismatched backcut, but it layed down exactly where I wanted it to. The reason I did not just cut the back is because it was a heavy leaning hickory and would have just exploded.

The hatchet points toward desired lay, saw wrench points toward natural lean. This will be a decent chunk of firewood.

 

[802climber]

More timber stand improvement

These are some of my stumps from a few weeks ago, that I saw on my way back through:
I guess I call them faced spur cuts. Makes for some smooth butts because I can stay in the same cut all the way around, using a couple spurs as triggers, but I still have a little "control/safety" from a shallow face cut, hinge and use a little stump shot so i can just zip off the hinge and its like the tree was spur cut.

These face cuts are just accomplished by cutting off the front spur almost completely vertically, side boring to set and hinge and then gutting out the tree like a spur cut.

I don't think this would work on walnut, but it seems to work well on maple and oak...

They are not the prettiest SOBs but they are cut darn close to the ground.
Some very big and top heavy hard maples.

 

[Slamm]

Yeah, looks and sounds about right.

I'm not sure if Swing cutting is actually a correct term for how that cut is made, but that is what I call it, and I have never seen anyone else do it, except Bert and I, its about the fastest way to cut to a tree down and leave a back strap for control or safety of when the tree goes over, as it allows you to use the bottom of the bar for the majority of the cutting and then if you need to, just use the top to clean up the hinge if it is needed. Otherise you just use the tip when swinging through to make the back of the hinge, also as you did, you can gut the center of the hinge out in one smooth motion, while you are still making the back cut at the same time.

I think it warrants saying that this type of cut should not be used by those that don't know where the tip of the bar is at, in a tree, as failure of that knowledge or experience will make for too big of a hinge or too small or simply cutting the hinge completely through, but just as any method, its easy to point out the errors of it, when it being done by the in-experienced.

Hey, when you spur cut those, why not just cut the spur off the stump with the whole tree and then cut the spurs off when the log is laid down. This keeps you from having to cut down the grain which is the hardest (slowest) cut for a saw to make, if you cut them off afterwards then you are noodle cutting and that is very easy and it makes both the stump and the log look much better, just an idea.

Later,

Sam

 

[homelitejim]

Soon to be firewood.

 

[802climber]

Yeah, that is a good point. There's something about having the butt ready to go before the tree hits the ground when the skidder is sitting there waiting to hook up to it, but yeah those vertical ripping cuts are slow and a pain like you are saying.

So there is no good reason I double cut the spurs on cuts like in the pics. Just a weird habit I guess. In a true spur cut with no face or hinge those vertical cuts are how I get the tree to commit, and then release the tree from the stump, everything but the spurs is gutted out then I work those slow vertical cuts till its released. That's how I was shown to spur cut.

I would be very happy to hear more ideas, better methods, variations, as I am more used to and prefer falling methods involving a notch.

I was adding the face and thin hinge to a spur cut because the trees were so big and nasty and I wanted more control. I rarely will risk this with fancier oak or walnut. Although it makes them much safer to push over and I think having more control over the tree can be a worthwhile compromise because it minimizes hanging the tree up or laying it down wrong and cuts down on breakage. But they are not my trees. If one is that fancy I will climb it, take it down to the log, and drop the log so it is pretty much guaranteed.

 

[Slamm]

That spur cutting like you are doing it, is how we would cut high dollar walnuts in Iowa, Northern Missouri, Northern Illinois and Eastern Nebraska. Melvin cut every single walnut like that, I spurr cut a lot of the bigger or higher dollar ones that way, but then sometimes I would just face them, gut the center of the hinge while I'm boring it out or as I'm heading across the back of the hinge area, then bore cut out the back and then bring the bar back and zip most of the hinge or all of it, as it was going over.

For high dollar wood, spurr cutting is safest for the wood or log, but there are several times when you spurr cut that you are wondering where the heck is it going to go. As with all things there are trade offs and I'd say that spurr cutting is about the slowest way to cut a tree down but those few extra minutes are sure worth it knowing there is basically no way the butt is going to split up or get damaged. When cable skidding, I always liked when the butts were held up by the spurrs, that was a nice little bonus, especially in snow.

Gotta go,

Sam

 

[802climber]

rained out...

Very well put.

 

[ShaneLogs]

We have to keep this thread going! This is probably one of the best threads on AS!

 

[Slamm]

Here are a couple from today:

We are hand cutting for a guy that has a bell saw but doesn't want it cutting the larger trees These are his machines.

His machines:

Sam

 

[Metals406]

That hardwood there sure does have some purdy grain!

 

[ShaneLogs]

Here are a couple from today:

We are hand cutting for a guy that has a bell saw but doesn't want it cutting the larger trees These are his machines.

His machines:

Sam

I like that loader and skidder he has, How has the weather been there ?


Keep up the good work,


Shane

 

[056kid]

Hey Sam,

What do you think of this hickory? I think I cut it similar to some of your techniques.

Doing some timber stand improvement so just been trying some different stuff.

I used an open face notch. It was a heavy head leaner, and I just barely could have side bored it from the tension side with my 24" bar, but I think the tip would have gotten pinched on the compression side.

So instead I used basically a swing cut with a backstrap. Started on the compression side, cut the back about 1/3 of the way through setting the hinge with the tip of my bar. Put a wedge in this cut. Left a backstrap, bored in the back just forward of the backstrap and cut my way toward the hinge. Once the hinge was set, I clipped the backstrap and tapped the wedge a couple times...


Slightly mismatched backcut, but it layed down exactly where I wanted it to. The reason I did not just cut the back is because it was a heavy leaning hickory and would have just exploded.

The hatchet points toward desired lay, saw wrench points toward natural lean. This will be a decent chunk of firewood.

So how in any was is that a swing cut? you had wood on both sides of the stump. . .
And you said you had to tap a wedge a few times for the tree to commit, but then you say you did not saw the back normally because of the lean and that the tree would have exploded. That is a total contradiction. If you had the tree sawed up and had to use a wedge, your standard back cut would have acted in the same way. Not trying to be a #### or anything, but there are better ways to skin a cat. .

 

[Slamm]

Well after over a year, I finally got a chance to cut that swing boom off of the Franklin 170 skidder rearend. It was a pain in the butt as they had two ribs that were hidden under the boom tower so, I had to cut a window into the rear panel and then stick my arm in there with the plasma cutter and cut those ribs, it was hot, smokey and there were many burns, LOL.

Its finally off. My dad is inspecting the work, LOL.

Gotta be the oddest load I have ever hauled.

 

[Slamm]

This road is going to get a bunch of trees dropped onto it.

Here is a video of Menno (18 yr.s old) cutting a good tree.


Menno and that tree.

Here is one of mine.

Here is a little one, LOL.

 

[Slamm]

Here is another photo of that little one. The saw is a 441 CM with a 28" Lite ES bar. I'm 27 feet away from that saw in this photo.

Here is a big white oak that I cut.

The high stump is to get over the wire that I saw in the side, but the wire was shallow, as it didn't turn the wood blue.

Here is a big worthless red oak that went over.

Thats it for today.

Sam