Plantation harvest advise

[grassfed]

A friend of mine has a job harvesting all of the red and white pine out of a 250 acre pine plantation. He started cutting last year and was going to cut some wood there every winter over the next four years. The owners decided that they wanted him to finish the whole job this winter. There is about 1.2 million board feet of red and white pine that will have to come out this winter.  He was working with a 440a JD and one man with a chain saw. This winter he is bringing in a tracked excavator/feller buncher, a loader slasher, and me with my 440b jd. The white pines are big averaging about 500 board feet and 80 ft long. The landing is in the middle of the plantation and the skid trails are good.

I am looking for some ideas on how to best use these two small cable skidders to move and limb these trees from the bunches to the landing.  Should we work as a team limbing each others hitches  or should we work in two different areas and try to stay out of each others way? 

Any tricks or advise for pulling the trees out of the bunch piles? We are figuring pulling 3 big white pines per hitch or about 1500bf. Most of the skids will be down a not too steep hill and should be on snow.  We hope to bring in about 15,000bf per day does this sound realistic?

[mad murdock]

Sounds like a fun job!!  If you have a feller buncher, and with all of the used Iron out there: would it pencil out for you guys to lease a grapple skidder for the duration of the job?  A grapple skidder will speed  up production immensly!!!

[snowstorm]

go buy a grapple skidder and a delimber........ yrs ago i had a tracked buncher skidded with a 440 fir wasnt to in the winter back em thu the brush trees something to get most of the limbs off. pulling unlimbed wood.......you wont like it

[Gary_C]

That sounds like a mighty big job without some additional help. By my rough estimate there could be over 5000 cords in that stand and if the trees are that big, it could be more than that. What are the diameters of those 80 foot trees?

What are you doing with the slash and tops? That and the trimmings will pile up in a hurry. Better have a method of dealing with the residue.

Do you have markets for that much white pine? What log lengths are you going to cut?

If there is 1.2 mbf, there must be over 2500 cords of pulp wood. Are you prepared to move that pulp wood?

You will probably have to move about two semi loads of wood per day. One load of pulp and one load of logs per day.

I've got lots of questions, but it sounds like a good winter job. Even with a cut to length processor it would be a big job.

[grassfed]

The Forester working the job says that we can't go bigger than a 540 skidder. The grapple on that size class doesn't  handle the really big butts (up to 4") on some of those pines very well and my friend says that you can pull more per hitch with a cable.
I am just getting a flat rate for limbing and skidding so a bigger skidder would rule me out.

I went out to see the job on October 4 after my friend had been telling me about it since last year. I was skeptical about what I was hearing but when I saw it I realized that it was everything that he said it was.

Our plan for the slash and tops is to have one skidder pull to the trail and have the second skidder run over the tops to limb. Then while the first skidder goes to the landing the second skidder will pull trees to the trail and so on.We will separate the pulp and log piles at the landing with the slasher. We talked about making a chipper pile but we would need a lot bigger landing.

For markets there is a pine mill just down the road and we are talking to Canadian buyers as well. The price is not that great but I guess that the land owners are scared about the economy getting worse. Much of the red pine is going to Mass for utility poles. A forester from that company came out the the site last year and marked several hundred trees with numbers to tell us what length to buck them.

I figure the average diameter on the white pines is about 20-22" the forester who is pretty young estimated at least 1 million bf but the feller buncher operator who very experienced figures it will be closer to 1.2 million bf. 

 

[northwoods1]

I've cut a lot of situations that sound just about exactly like what you are describing. With a couple small cable skidders and a buncher you can get good production. Lots of times I would do jobs like this by myself running buncher and then skidding/bucking. One thing I can tell you is if you can work with the buncher operator closely you can make the job go a lot easier. What I would regularly do when making a 1st pass cutting with the buncher I would open up the trails all the way to the back laying wood down on the trails or any usable openings only taking a partial cut. Lay out the trees and cut only as many as you can without brushing things up to bad. Then skid all of that up now you have open trails and room to lay more wood down right where you had already been running and limbing. Cut from the back out to the landing pretty much. Leave cut by hand trees till very last. I don't know what kind of sorts your making, but another thing is if you can work closely with the buncher operator use the buncher to do a lot of the sorting in the woods so your not having to make multiple stops out at the landing. I'd have each skidder pulling all the way in no unhook in he woods.

[isawlogs]

 Breaking the limbs off with the skidder will be quick , but also will damage some saw logs , as the limbs break and tear out part of the log.  That is a big job for a small skidder , she gonna be workin, hard.

[northwoods1]

Another thing is if the wood is tall without heavy limbs  & your working in the cold the branches will most likely be coming right off as soon as you give them a pull, in that case it is OK to pile the wood up with the buncher, but if the limbs are heavy spread the wood out so you can buck most of it off before heading to the landing. If the limbs are mostly coming off have a designated limbing place somewhere on the trail heading in to the landing where you can keep running the limbs over and once in a while pushing them off the trail/clearing you have. I don't know maybe you buck the logs in the woods but it pays to keep the wood together as long as your skidder can pull it.

[240b]

So they'll let a cutter on the job and limit the size of the skidder? that sounds silly.  If you hire the cutter they are going to lay all the wood down at once.  So now you have 1.2 bf on the ground.. If it snows all that wood will be buried and that the next week it warms up to say 40 dgrees and rains for a day, the following day the temps are back down in the low teens now you have all that wood frozen to the ground.  I've had it where a 525 is having a hard time breaking bundles free from the ground.  Not to mention that trying to pull machine cut wood with a cable skidder really stinks (ever try choking it it? never pulls good and forget about trying to pull bundles apart. I would talk to the owner get them to realize bigger equipment is more realistic if they need it done this winter and get a straight though price for the logs and pulp from the mill and find a good mechinized out fit to do the work. With that volume it should not be had to find a big operater and get a good price for them to put the wood on the landing.  take whats left after stumpage, trucking, cut/skid cost. You could even work another job and check on this one once a day.   you have to own all the equipment to do a job with time constrants. it will prove to be a huge head ache in the end otherwise.  Hire it out and everyone will be happier in the end.   

[northwoods1]

A feller buncher can do less damage than a hand cutter and also help limit damage done by skidding. That sounds like a nice job 1.2 mbf would be about a good winters work. If you need more help just hire another skidder why try to pass on a good job like that??? I love cutting good sized red & white pine. Easy cutting/limbing and skids easy. And you can run a smaller saw I found. Any feller buncher operator worth of pinch of &*%# can lay up wood for a cable skidder to pull, all butts nice up off ground easy to hook. I used to even run the last choker long to run around mulitple small pieces to speed things up. A mechanized cutter can speed things up tremendously just have the buncher work closely with the skidders and obviously not lay down all the wood at once. You can't do that in the winter in any kind of operation the only way around that I know of is to keep the wood skidded up.

[grassfed]

Good comments they have got me thinking. I don't have much say on this job but I will print out the comments and show them to my friend ( I will call him the Boss from now on).

The Boss said that the feller buncher is only going to work a little bit ahead of us and he lives near by so he will be somewhat flexible.

The trees grew close and must have been thinned at some point most of the limbs are on the pulp-stick at the top so damage from the skidder should not degrade the saw logs too bad.

I am sure that I don't know the whole story on the selling side of the job but the Boss drove a log truck for years around here and he is good at finding buyers.

The cold weather is supposed to make the limbs snap of easily.

The Boss was doing five loads a week last year with just one sawer and him running the skidder and no loader slasher. He said that his best truckload only had 7 trees.

[snowstorm]

biuld brush rakes and put them on bolth skidders.....they say it works if with just two skidders your gona cut 250ac in 4 months ? hope the lights work

[Meadows Miller]

Gday

If its only the last log length that has live limbs on it and you are only planing to do a turn every 45 min with an average of 3  logs you could just motor manual limb it (and any big ones that wont break of due to normal handling and loading) just as quick and head them off to the min dia if the head has not snapped of already  ;) and not knock your skidders around as much all it would take is for you to stake a tire and your out of action for the day  Mate  ;)

Regards Chris