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.

[Skeans1]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Others 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]

nope.  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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

 

 

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]

@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]

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]

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

 

[nativewolf]

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

Nice stick there !

[longtime lurker]

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]

Good luck with the big brother.

[thecfarm]

That is a bigum!!!

[longtime lurker]

 

 

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.




 

And another headache coming home :D

[Corley5]

What's growing in the field?

[longtime lurker]

What's growing in the field?

Sugar cane.

[moodnacreek]

Ok L.L. you got me again.  Right now we have no snow, deer season is over and a little frost in the ground. So I'm thinking about putten the brush hog on my 40 hp. 4x4 and going into a cedar lot to mow the barberry around 12" dbh 35' tall cedars. That way I won't get no prickers through my double knee carharts when I come back with the 024!  Kinda like working on a golf course compared to your country.

[moodnacreek]

And your gonna need double drive to saw that walnut with the button ball bark.

[longtime lurker]

And your gonna need double drive to saw that walnut with the button ball bark.

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhh, that problem is going to rare its ugly head again. I'm not really set up to handle the bigguns ... and it starts with not enough loader in the log yard because mine has SWL 9000 lb and can handle about 15000 with care.... and that is a 22000 lb lump of wood ( I went over the weighbridge coming home) and it's comparatively not that big, and its only a third of the log.

And then I'm going to need to rethink my entire sawline. I'm currently handling them by flitching down to a manageable size with the Lucas Mill but that gets old fast. Fine when it's one log here and there but really I'm not set up to handle anything over 26" with the main sawline.  Plenty of big circle headsaws that'll handle a 5 or 6 footer floating around the Australian market anyway, but I'm not yet sure of the depth of the resource to know if I want to go there... or maybe upgrade the Lucas to a Turbosaw or Peterson... or build a big vertical chain slabber... or that sash for you to come drive when its snowing and you want to see the sun. :D

Got that kinda walnutty look about it though, but  seriously hard and full of silica. Make a real nice wide plank floor huh? Picture is part of the head of this same log going back up to the landowner as a bribe thank you on my regular deliver into Cairns then up for a backload run. Just cut back to the last flitch and get 1 slab per log. Same log in those short 8 x 2's on top.... balance of load is the Red Mahogany. Small load - short week and its Christmas. Green framing with hardwood is SOP here.... otherwise you have to predrill every nail hole. Works for us sawmillers anyway: it's leaving the mill before the leaves have turned brown.





 

As I like to tell my few visitors - any time you visit a sawmill with a clean yard you know they aren't real busy. This place looks like a junkyard  ;D

[Andries]

Your jungle produces some incredible wood, wow, that's a beautiful trailer load!
Merry Christmas down under.😎👍

[longtime lurker]

Your jungle produces some incredible wood, wow, that's a beautiful trailer load!
Merry Christmas down under.😎👍

This was one of the worlds great timber treasure houses before they locked it all away with World Heritage Listings. Now we struggle with intermittent supply and not enough volume to drive a trend.
What I need is a marketing guy who understands that niche means niche... not how many containers can you do a month but supply one floor into anywhere in the world for someone who wants what nobody else has and can afford to pay for it. Meanwhile I'll send her for trailer decking to keep a roof over my head.

I hope you have a fabulous Christmas

[moodnacreek]

L.L, I wondered what you used to saw lumber. Man you are not afraid of work. That doing it with toys will catch up with you like it did me. If you don't get bigger machine you will probably quit. But of course you could also put your self out of business by getting in too deep. I wish I had bought an automatic mill and bigger log turner when I was younger. And when I think of the bull and combo edgers I never bid on it kills me now. Oh well we all have to be different thank God.    Merry Christmas from N.Y. U.S.A.

[longtime lurker]

L.L, I wondered what you used to saw lumber. Man you are not afraid of work. That doing it with toys will catch up with you like it did me. If you don't get bigger machine you will probably quit. But of course you could also put your self out of business by getting in too deep. I wish I had bought an automatic mill and bigger log turner when I was younger. And when I think of the bull and combo edgers I never bid on it kills me now. Oh well we all have to be different thank God.    Merry Christmas from N.Y. U.S.A.

Ahhhhhhhh its a long story, but I had a background in production mills, got out of the industry, was at a loose end a decade ago and bought a Lucas Mill to deal with some byproducts of a bulldozer business I had and fell back in love with wood so started to build it from the ground up with sweat instead of capital.

I've got a lot of antique junk that cuts a good board with much effort, and when I say antique some of its as old as my (now dead) grandad. All circular gear... the Lucas for oversize stuff, and my resaw benches can handle logs to 24" pretty well apart from the need for sweat and skilled operators not dumb labour.
I am an extremely capable sawyer, and a good sawmill manager and as we all know thats not that common a combination.
I have a strong back, although its not as strong as it was 20 years ago.
And I have a plan. I've deliberately delayed upgrading the front of the mill but have worked on the back end.... a lot of small operators never win because they cant deal with product as fast as they can saw it... all I need is new saws and we're good, and the setup has been designed with upgrades in mind.
I've got a good reputation within the industry and have more work from repeat customers than I can possibly handle with my existing equipment... not a lot of days under 12 hours long here anymore, and I pretty much work all of them (days)
And I've got a mortgage that would choke a horse on 20 acres of industrial land with serious sawmill power right there and 20000 square foot of warehousing and a couple acres of all weather hardstand.
All I need now is faster saws, basicly.

I'm kinda at a crossroads in terms of log supply - my crown (state) sale ends mid 2020 and I can either re-up there and develop that side of it which will be basicly upgrades to handle more 18 - 24"  logs.... or go with logging contractors and swing back into the rainforest stuff. The state sale gives me control of my log supply rather than being dependant on others, and it gives me a eucalypt hardwood resource which is good for cashflow products but not real profitable because I have to compete with the big boys on a level footing and my cost of production is higher. The rainforest timbers tend to be high value sales but poor cashflow and you can starve to death with a quarter million dollars worth of lumber in store between sales. Been there and done that.

The right answer is "both", but theres only enough $ to go one way or the other. I cut around 1000 tonne of log a year and need to double in size to bring my fixed overheads down per unit of production... and I can see resource and market to absorb that forever no problem. Thing is I don't want to be big... and I also dont see the resource and market to absorb me heading for 20,000 tonne a year. Three trailer loads a week and a crew of three is my goal, and a lot of value add on the back end... and its not that big a jump equipment wise. Thing being theres not much bull edger between 2000 and 20,000 either, and yeah there's a hole in the floorplan to suit a big gangsaw now :D

You have a great Christmas too mate.