Welcome to the Jungle

[longtime lurker]

I aint a photographer and truth be told I'm usually in the middle of the interesting stuff or task saturated or just plain don't think to take a picture but here goes...

[longtime lurker]

It a jungle out there. Hot, wet , things growing like mad. And vines everywhere.... up trees, between trees, along the ground

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All of which make for a challenging work environment. You drop a tree here and in addition to the regular list of things is all that vine... as it goes it takes it with it, and maybe that vine runs to the dead branch in the next tree that you cant even see up there in the canopy so.... this is increased risk felling even ina  game where we all get 40 chances to die a day

[teakwood]

And vines everywhere.... up trees, between trees, along the ground

tell me about it! We have smaller ones on ground level, so if you want to cross bushes you get tangled and hung up in them, it's a real PITA 

[mike_belben]

Wow that looks aggravating.  



What kinda iron are we lookin at?  Is that a dozer with winch and grapple?

[longtime lurker]

Some of the vines... well most of it is wait-a-while... thats the stuff hanging all over the dozer and everywhere else. it gets it name because





It'll make you wait. Bites into skin/clothes.... its everywhere, you kinda hack your way through the stuff with a chainsaw to get anywhere the dozer cant lead you which is most everywhere theres a tree worth cutting. We put track and cuts through with the dozer and then fell onto them for extraction, no way could you clear to the base of every tree.

 

 

Others vines are bigger, like change direction of fall and bind things up or pull tops out of other trees bigger. Fun stuff.

There are many types of rainforest okay... temperate, highland, lowland, open...  this type is tropical vine scrub, for the obvious reason. Its where the good things grow, because the soil is rich and wet and its hot and humid.

[longtime lurker]

And vines everywhere.... up trees, between trees, along the ground

tell me about it! We have smaller ones on ground level, so if you want to cross bushes you get tangled and hung up in them, it's a real PITA

Yeah, seen one tropical rain forest you seen them all..... and this stuff will be just like going home for you. Life aint all an open forest where it snows 6 months a year right???

[longtime lurker]

Wow that looks aggravating.  



What kinda iron are we lookin at?  Is that a dozer with winch and grapple?

D6 with winch and grapple. She pushes the tracks in, we fell ideally so the logs angle onto the tracks for ease of extraction or so we can winch them to the track if thats not an option, and also breaks the logs out to where the skidder can handle them from. Also functions as big yellow wedge because sometimes you need one.... lot of felling against the elan in here because of the nature of the work and sometimes as we all know that doesnt quite follow plan A. :D

[Southside]

That timber makes your D6 look small. 

[thecfarm]

What a mess!!
I my little world,I was clearing a small grown up field of aspen. Had grape vines growing up every tree. I had to cut the grape vines so the trees would fall.
Nothing no wheres near as bad as what you are doing.

[mike_belben]

nope.  its open forest and covered in ticks 8months a year for this guy   ;D

[longtime lurker]

We're playing on private land, working pockets and gullys that were not viable to clear for farming back when. There has been no logging of state rainforest here since 1988 when one of the worlds great timber treasure houses was shut down at the stroke of a pen to win votes in the big cities to the south. SO the days of the big old single riders - trucks to the log, not logs to the truck - are gone. You might still get the odd one, but pretty much all of this was logged about 40 to 50 years ago so what we're playing with is the regrowth. But some of them are big enough



 

is on the left in the next pic



 

but you still need 2 or 3 of them to fill a trailer, not like the good old days.



 

And we also have buttress root species, which require different techniques. Anyway - it grows a log every 50 or 60 years 8)

[longtime lurker]

nope.  its open forest and covered in ticks 8months a year for this guy   ;D

yeah well we get ticks too, nice little guy name of Ixodes holocyclus or paralysis tick. It'll make you seriously ill, put you in hospital kinda thing if you dont get them off.
Also leeches - big fat tropical leeches. But its been dry, so they're in short supply right now but soon enough ...
So because its been unseasonably dry we have a lot of scrub itch mites, which are pretty much the same as your chiggers. I roll in a drum of deet type stuff three times a day but .... man I'm a mess of itches at the moment. I'm earning my money Mike I tell ya...

[longtime lurker]

That timber makes your D6 look small.  

meh, comparitively speaking they're only babies to what this country can grow. I'll post some pics of the good old days in here at some point - kinda stuff that makes those west coast boys with their Doug Fir and redwoods go a little quiet. Sometimes it's hard to get scale on the big ones, but I got some old black and whites of dads and grandads I can scan.

[longtime lurker]

What a mess!!
I my little world,I was clearing a small grown up field of aspen. Had grape vines growing up every tree. I had to cut the grape vines so the trees would fall.
Nothing no wheres near as bad as what you are doing.

The thing here is that its mostly about size.... those vines wont often hold up trees that big though it can happen. But they can change the direction of fall enough to create an issue, or pull dead wood out of other trees etc. And the ground vines tend to pose an escape route problem.... you cut them off as best you can but every so often you'll miss one and they can pull your feet out from under you right quick. So first order of business is always to cut away any big stuff thats going to be in the way, and pick your escape route if ones available and cut all the vine down it too. You can burn half a tank of fuel here before you put the saw into the wood.
The real danger is the stuff being pulled out of other trees - you can rarely see up in there to know whats connected to what. I've had a dead head come down on me once years ago, took off down my escape route but I was actually heading into danger not away from it, wound up on my hands and knees in the fork of two branches that would have busted me up pretty bad if it had of been a foot either way. 

[mike_belben]

I'm earning my money Mike I tell ya...

I see that!  The only way i seem to do outrageously difficult jobs is for free or at my expense so aussie logging contractor probably a losing battle for this guy.  

I like how you need a 7ft bar to fell a 17" outside bark buttlog!  Thats not frusterating on doyle scale at all im sure. 

[longtime lurker]

I'm earning my money Mike I tell ya...

I see that!  The only way i seem to do outrageously difficult jobs is for free or at my expense so aussie logging contractor probably a losing battle for this guy.  

I like how you need a 7ft bar to fell a 17" outside bark buttlog!  Thats not frusterating on doyle scale at all im sure.

I'm not the logging contractor on this job - just the idiot swinging the chainsaw. I'm paid as a contractor on production though, and I'm treated as an experienced professional feller and they dont step on my toes. Long story.... but my largest sawmill customer went bankrupt at the start of the year and near took me with him so I came out of semi retirement as a feller (ie I was only cutting for my own mill and only when I couldnt buy enough logs to feed it) and went back to logging.
I run two 395's for scrub work. Main saw has a 36" on it, the smaller one pictured has a 28".  Both full wraps and 404 semi chisel. That extra 8" makes all the difference in terms of covering logs easy without having to shift your feet too much, but its a major PITA when you're scrabbling your way up or down some gully with one hand required for grabbing at roots, trees and vines though.  20 years ago I vaguely remember tossing an 090 with a 48" around like it was a toy.... must be getting older, or smarter, or sumthin' :D

[mike_belben]

Youre more man than i sir.  Every joint i own aches after an hour of 395ing it. Yours too id bet. 

[longtime lurker]

Oh yeahhhhhhhh... its taken me a while to get some job fit happening for sure.

The open forest country stuff I do i work off a quad, or when cutting for myself I'm working off skidder or dozer so Im not carrying the things much. This is obviously man hump saw and fuel and wedge and axe country so I've been feeling it.

The boss here operates the dozer plus fells as well if he gets ahead of me too much. He's running a 660 with the ES light bar.... between that bar and the 3/8 theres a fairly noticeable weight difference compared to the huski/oregon or tsumura/404 combo. But I find the huski to be a smoother saw to cut with and I got some carpal tunnel/tennis elbow going on from the good old days of 076's and 090's... and the huski torque curve carries the 404 a lot better when shes swinging on the dogs buried in wood. .404 is still a winner for me.... bigger kerf lets the bar run cooler, it holds an edge better by a long way, and I can sorta see the teeth to sharpen them. Thats been a new issue for me the last few years - gotta hump my seeing goggles too so I can see the teeth to file them :D

[quilbilly]

That timber makes your D6 look small. 

meh, comparitively speaking they're only babies to what this country can grow. I'll post some pics of the good old days in here at some point - kinda stuff that makes those west coast boys with their Doug Fir and redwoods go a little quiet. Sometimes it's hard to get scale on the big ones, but I got some old black and whites of dads and grandads I can scan.

I don't know if we would go quiet, at least according to science where the biggest are , sequioa, tallest redwood, but I would love to see some. One day I hope to see some of the tall trees in Tasmania. If you post a pic please post size as well. BTW Doug fir are not our biggest species. One however was the tallest at one point, 394 feet tall if I remember near Mt Rainier. Have fun down in that humidity.

[longtime lurker]

Oh you're right. I've seen General Sherman, and that kinda tree is... well it's just mindboggling in its own way. Makes you wonder just what it looked like 200 years ago when the forest had plenty of them huh?

I havent seen the ash forests of Tasmania, though I've seen similar hardwood stands on the mainland and am currently working one myself. They too are magnificent but not in the same class.... the eucalypt forests might grow tall but they dont girth out to that extent although some of them are monsters too particularly when you throw the weight/density into the mix

This rainforest stuff - well the giant kauris got some size on them in terms of girth and height, though how much I think we'll never know because the best kauri country went under the axe without too much stopping to measure it. And there was (and still is) plenty of big girthy logs here in the rainforest hardwoods, though they tend to not be so tall as any of the angiosperms. And them buttress logs can get a whole lot of size at the butt at full growth though mostly in that case they cut them off well away from ground to get away from that.

I think big logs are big logs no matter where in the world you go.... there, here, the Amazon or Congo or south east asia. And in an industry where most of us run on the second/third/fourth/fifth/fiftieth cut away from virgin forest it's always a stop and pause thing when you see one no matter where in the word its come from. I didn't mean any offence by what i said, merely that yeah... in our modern industry outside the third world any big old forest giant is thing to make you stop and think. I'm kinda glad that most of the ones left - there and here - are protected. And I wonder at the space that will be left when they eventually die of whatever natural cause because its unlikely that they'll be replaced by anything so big because of the effect man has had on the forest.

But I tell ya.... theres that little voice that says as a logger just once.... just once.... I'd like to be there to see a really big one fall, and feel the thud of it through my boots, and probably wipe a few tears away as well.

[longtime lurker]

 

 

 

this is a section of Kauri that is on static display up the road a ways. Talking to old guys he wasnt particularly big - just the biggest of what was left anywhere accessible enough for people to see easily. Certainly I've seen pictures of plenty similar sized ones or better, and talked with a guy who told me once where there is a true giant on the side of a mountain if you want to hike two days in to go see. One day I will, because that kind of thing interests me.

[quilbilly]

No offense taken, I've read about some trees down there, mountain Ash maybe?, That people believe we're over 400ft tall which would be the tallest in the world today. You're right big trees are big trees, I would love to see a large hardwood, my grandpa and father got to large some of the last big old growth out here and ran into some monsters. They were all softwood though, WRC and DF, I think the biggest my grandpa cut was 18 ft diameter and the biggest they logged was 21, this is at the butt which was swelled out. They used low boys to haul em out. I'm sure those hardwoods are even heavier and big ones are very hard to move.

[quilbilly]

Can't spell, log not large** maybe that's why I dropped out of college.

[Skeans1]

That timber makes your D6 look small.  

meh, comparitively speaking they're only babies to what this country can grow. I'll post some pics of the good old days in here at some point - kinda stuff that makes those west coast boys with their Doug Fir and redwoods go a little quiet. Sometimes it's hard to get scale on the big ones, but I got some old black and whites of dads and grandads I can scan.

I don't know if we would go quiet, at least according to science where the biggest are , sequioa, tallest redwood, but I would love to see some. One day I hope to see some of the tall trees in Tasmania. If you post a pic please post size as well. BTW Doug fir are not our biggest species. One however was the tallest at one point, 394 feet tall if I remember near Mt Rainier. Have fun down in that humidity.

You see the picture from Grey's River of the cedar over 30' at the stump?

[longtime lurker]

Dont know that one, if you got it post it because I like looking at the big guys as much as anyone.

Buttress rooted trees can be misleading because they can have a huge footprint at ground level to carry not a whole lot (relatively) of wood upstairs. Way cool to look at though, and interesting felling because they aren't quite as straightforward as they first look.