Welcome to the Jungle

Skeans1 · November 16, 2018, 08:49:45 PM

Here's the picture of the big old girl, looks like a bad day to me.http://www.madsens1.com/pa_talley.htm
What you're describing sounds like doing spruce where you either spring board up or cut flutes.

quilbilly · November 16, 2018, 09:16:20 PM

I didn't see that. My mom's renter and my brother combined to trash my grandpa's springboard. They had no clue what it was. Where I live is quite a bit drier than SW Washington, the biggest stump locally was a 13 ft WRC. Lurker get those pics up I wanna see em. I'll try to import some of my old scans from FB that were taken of my grandpa's crew. They never took pics, so my aunt from OK actually took them to prove to her friends how big the trees were.

longtime lurker · November 16, 2018, 10:56:06 PM

Some of these are family pics, some ain't, but these are all taken local to me

Yeah, this country will grow a log, given time for them to grow. And its not like theres any shortage of them about here, theres about 2500 square mile of rainforest that got locked up before it ever got logged and another 1000 square mile locked up that hasnt been cut since pre the closure in 1988 and some of that hasnt been cut for 80 years.... theres logs out there alright.

But we run on the regrowth around the edges

Skeans1 · November 16, 2018, 11:03:29 PM

Nothing like seeing the old cheese blocks needed for the big wood. Is it like New Zealand where there's the plantations of pine and fir?

teakwood · November 17, 2018, 08:28:52 AM

Quote from: longtime lurker on November 16, 2018, 07:30:07 AMOthers vines are bigger, like change direction of fall and bind things up or pull tops out of other trees bigger. Fun stuff.

We don't have it so bad as you, just some trees have those big wines like in you pic and i can just imagine how dangerous it is. I know how strong those wines are and they can bring down or hold up entire trees.

we have them more on ground level, where some areas are impossible to cross without machete'ing' them down first. and then after one rainseason the area looks the same again, it's frustrating.

teakwood · November 17, 2018, 08:36:27 AM

Quote from: mike_belben on November 16, 2018, 07:52:57 AMnope. its open forest and covered in ticks 8months a year for this guy

We just have them for 12 month a year

, but at least ours don't have the dangerous virus some of them carry in europe.
but then you can add some scorpions, snakes, spiders and about a thousand more flying and crawling insects more which will get you. and then add 26-33 degrees and 80-100% humidity and it gets really nice! why didn't i stay in Switzerland!?

Come and see Costa Rica! it's very nice for holidays though!!

quilbilly · November 17, 2018, 10:46:29 AM

I love the pic of loading a truck with a dozer, a local fellow had a father who made a living doing that, just going around and buying logs for special orders or a cleanup log that didn't make it on the load. Those are big logs. What led to the closure? We have the wilderness act and spotted owl that locked up most of our federal land on the Pacific slope.

longtime lurker · November 17, 2018, 10:57:52 PM

The closure here was mostly about politics.... the old Queensland Forestry Department was considered to be running the (then) most sustainably sound selective harvest in the world here, so the forest was in extremely good condition. Problem was it was in good condition, and the federales needed an environmental feather in their cap and seeing as we are the ass end of nowhere with not a lot of votes involved but a hell of a lot of green votes to be picked up in the southern states from a nice green outcome.... well the feds declared a world heritage area over the state controlled forests. Unlike a lot of World Heritage declarations where business as usual can continue to some extent or with tighter controls, or there is a phase in period this was an immediate stop forever... Industry was devastated overnight, parts of the region have never economically recovered 30 years later etc etc. This went from a major timber production area producing some of the most sort after cabinet/joinery/veneer species in the world to.... nothing. You'd think that scarcity would lift prices on the supply/demand rule, but scarcity means you cant drive a trend or guarantee volume supply so in fact prices drop, and markets find a replacement. Check out all the "Australian Lacewood" sold in the US.... its mostly a south american wood that looks kinda sorta similar in the way the Q/S Sycamore looks similar. The genuine thing is still here in small quantities but except for the likes of heritage jobs where they need authentic aint no-one comes looking for it.

Yanno theres no fences along the boundary but you cross from private land to the old state forest and you can tell pretty much straight away.... the log size increase is that obvious. Under the old forestry harvest they took a couple trees to the acre and 9' grbbh (girth around base at breast height)was the lower limit except for logs damaged during felling or to gain access/extraction. Anything that was 35" dbh in 1988 has grown some.... and theres all the trees they didnt take back then as well because they literally only took that couple trees to the acre and it grows thick in there. It's both a cool but frustrating thing to walk through the scrub in there... cool because they're real logs, frustrating because you got to walk back over the invisible line and start hacking the littleuns again.

Anyway it is what it is, and times have moved on. We average around 900 BF mark per stem, expect to see a couple 2000's a day, and 4000Bf is a weekly kinda tree... but the 10k plus ones dont exist anymore, least not where we can cut them.

teakwood · November 18, 2018, 09:51:49 AM

that's really sad to hear lurker! instead of getting a few big trees cut and make something useful out of the wood where lots of people can make a living out of it and have a beautiful sustained, well managed forest they decided to let the big trees die from age, fall over and be a waste for everyone!! such political decisions makes us angry and sad!

longtime lurker · November 19, 2018, 07:50:47 AM

Another day, another dollar. Do me a favour and dont comment on the youtube thing okay... I dont need to be arguing with tree huggers or having weekend warriors telling me what I'm doing wrong, so I put it up there as private... if I could dodge the tube place and post straight here for you guys I would.

Turn up the volume and you can even hear the pop as the hinge lets go as I'm shutting off the saw... right on time, butt on the ground first so she lays out as gentle as a tree that size will lay out.

felling - YouTube

felling.mp4 - Google Drive

Yeah the chap thing... FYI the most common cause of death and/or serious inhury in professional loggers in the northern part of this state is falling object strikes except when they wear chaps when it becomes heat stroke/ dehydration. The most dangerous thing I can do in the morning is pull on a pair of chaps, and because of this we have an exemption from wearing them subject to conditions like not working alone, not climbing, specific level of training that means its not for the weekend warriors yada yada yada.

Ya dont like it or agree with it fine... but I want to make it home alive and OH&S signed off on the exemption. Actually the only time I've ever heard of where real world risk over ruled the paper pushers... but they killed a couple guys through hyperthermia before they told us we could take them back off too.

Dunno it doesnt want to link so copy and paste this I guess. Someone tell me if this works will ya:

youtu.be/vSCWEE2RcZw

teakwood · November 19, 2018, 08:07:25 AM

The video link doesn't work. I can not open it

Have you tried chainsaw pants? I have the pfanner gladiator pants TreeStuff - Product Information , they are almost like wearing a normal jeans, very light and comfortable, the price is pretty steep but IMO worth it.

But i get ya on the heat, we start at 6 and if we make it to 12-1 we call it a day.

longtime lurker · November 19, 2018, 08:24:32 AM

I havent tried that brand but I did try a couple other lightweights. The issue is the outer lining material on the lightweights seems to hang in the thorns on the vines whereas cotton or denim the fabric will tear. Hanging in the vines opens up a whole nother set of risks in terms of not being able to get away from the stump quick enough.

I'll try them: I'm as aware of the risks of leg injury as the next man, and the only thing I can say is yanno.... I am always very conscious of where my saw is in relation to being beside it not behind it in case of kickback etc, and I breathe a sigh of relief when we get to winter where I can wear the things.

teakwood · November 19, 2018, 08:40:23 AM

Give them a try, i did put a link in my post so you know which one they are. Although they are light they have a very robust outerlayer in front, back is stretchy for comfort. My old pair i use them for 5 years now with probably 1.5month of use a year and they are still holding up great.

i feel ya on the thorns, we have them too. But i get to the conclusion, if the thorns are the aggressive ones every pants will hung up. we have thorns with different shapes, we have one they called "pico de lora", that means parrots jaws and they have hooked thorns, 180degrees rolled in points, real nasty stuff. if you see a area of them you have to surround them, they will eat you up if you try to cross.

moodnacreek · November 21, 2018, 07:28:10 PM

Geez L.L. I cut a buttonball : 40" x 9' log in half with a chainsaw this morning and thought I was pretty tough for my age and now I have to read all this!

longtime lurker · November 29, 2019, 03:03:39 PM

Been a year since I posted to this. busy busy, and no time.

Anyway I've been mostly just buying logs in off a couple loggers but needed a real one for a job so the old guy says to me I better come do it.... he's not 18 anymore and would prefer not to be swinging the big saws anymore. So I grabbed a couple of pics as we went but usual story... before and after... in the middle I was task saturated

The old guy cutting some steps into the buttress roots for me to get up high enough. The days of springboards are gone.... but you still want to be taking these off high enough that you clear all the low wood that would mean about a hundred gallons of gas.... plenty of wood there but not much log.

Stump after... you can see the steps on the one side... we had steps on both sides to cover him with a 36" bar. Give them a good front, then clip the side buttresses.... then come from the back and chase him to the ground.... aint no banging wedges into them at this size.

longtime lurker · November 29, 2019, 03:14:34 PM

Log on the ground, about 2 tanks of gas later * big grin* The main barrell of him starts just above there... I was probably about 5' above ground height where I took gim off and you can see it starting to clear the buttress flair and go round just above ther

Looking down him from the butt. Straight run through to the first branch, then a headlog, bend another headlog at the top.

From the head. The first short billet is out at this point.... it was about 15' long. That next billet through to the first branch is 23' feet x 34" and I'm sawing it today. The bottom will be 2 billets... maybe 2 and a short logs.... wont measure him until its on the landing but I'm a good volume guesser and I'm saying about 7000 BF.

5 tanks of gas, 4 hours, and a D7 class dozer to shift it.... easy peasy. We had to get this little guy out the way to make room for his granddad to come down.... Now that one is a big log. ;D

nativewolf · November 29, 2019, 05:30:30 PM

@longtime lurker I was wondering why you were cutting pulp but sometimes you have to cut the little ones to get to the big ones :D.

Looking forward to see that one too. How does the lumber saw? What do you use to load those logs?

longtime lurker · December 01, 2019, 09:46:35 PM

Yeah, she hard and full of silica, tungsten carbide circles get a howl up... 'nuff said.

Nice timber though... Exceptional durability, mostly use it for heavy structural like bridge timbers... Chasing a trailer floor today. Makes a pretty floor too, if you can keep knife steel up to it.

You can tell it's hard when you get that polished look straight off the saw. ;D

longtime lurker · December 01, 2019, 09:57:07 PM

Old mate the contractor and his offsider dragged the business end of junior here onto the landing yesterday.

nativewolf · December 01, 2019, 10:38:54 PM

So it damages the cleats on the dozer tracks huh, that's aussie hard!

Nice stick there !

longtime lurker · December 01, 2019, 11:59:19 PM

Yeah, you can make money out of logs like that. PITA to handle them, big gear required and they break things if you aren't careful... but they put tons on a landing, and lumber in a mill.

nativewolf · December 02, 2019, 07:08:15 AM

Good luck with the big brother.

thecfarm · December 03, 2019, 08:23:48 PM

That is a bigum!!!

longtime lurker · December 23, 2019, 08:56:18 AM

Red Mahogany (Eucalyptus pellita) logs on the landing. Nice enough logs, mostly around 24" diameter at midpoint and they're cutting ok. It grows on the harder ridges in the rainforest. Pretty versatile hardwood timber - I run a mill on it for months at a time.