Doing a lot of firewood lately

[72c20customcamper]

Trucks are put away but a friend calls me in a bind. He owns a horse ranch and had some loggers come in to help with his taxes. They left the place a shambles. All his trails impassable with tops and collateral damage trees . I've been cutting for three weeks now with my BIL and my sons and his. Taken out about 15 cord of wood and haven't gotten 1/4of the way in . Fiquired it will be next fall by the time we finish up . Going to be in excess of 200 cord of wood by then and that's being conservative . Great for my heat but I've gotten into mill work . My first live edge red oak slab

Were using my dump trailer ,his, and my aluminum flatbed 4 days a week usually twice a day . And I fill my truck bed and his every trip

[72c20customcamper]

Wood in the bed. And what better excuse to by a used larger tractor and a new husky 395xp with a 36" inch bar

[72c20customcamper]

Some more of the green wood. The maple in the bed is already cut into lumber . It's called ambrosia maple . Because the ambrosia beetle bores into it and it gets the stains in the wood from the bacteria. And it is deer season to

[truckster]

That's a beautiful slab of wood, but I'm confused. What do loggers have to do with taxes, or did I misread something?

[72c20customcamper]

Originally Posted by truckster

That's a beautiful slab of wood, but I'm confused. What do loggers have to do with taxes, or did I misread something?

Well when they pay you in excess of 100k to harvest the wood and your taxes are 20k a year . It helps to offset the taxes for few years

[72c20customcamper]

The oak is just before it topped. So they left it I got a 22inch wide 6ft long slab on the second cut. The middle slab will be about 28 I'm going to leave it about 4 inches thick .I'll get a good price for it as a table plan to join two pieces in a mirror image so it will be dining table width . But that's a few years from now need about a year per inch to dry . They took the base which I estimate to be 40 plus in diameter and about 35 ft long. A good 10k dollar trunk.

[truckster]

OK, I get it. It would be nice to have that kind of land.

Still curious - how do you dry a slab that big without having it crack?

[72c20customcamper]

Originally Posted by truckster

OK, I get it. It would be nice to have that kind of land.

Still curious - how do you dry a slab that big without having it crack?

I paint the end grain so it slows the drying process . But you always get a few anyway.

[cornerstone]

We must be brothers Mark. My brother in law and I are getting ready to build a sawmill. I've been on the hunt for long, straight, big, and free logs for the same purpose. Around here they are not so plentiful. I do have a few offers for several nice and straight standing oak trees, from 12" to 18" diameter. I just need to fell them and leave the limbs small enough for the property owner to be able to carry off. I'd rather get started with a softer wood though. What kind of mill you are using?

Nice buck! I will not take any this year since I still have quite a bit still in the deep freeze. It sure is nice to watch them get real comfortable having breakfast or dinner in the front yard... next year..... KA-BOOOOOMM!

Brian

[72c20customcamper]

Originally Posted by cornerstone

We must be brothers Mark. My brother in law and I are getting ready to build a sawmill. I've been on the hunt for long, straight, big, and free logs for the same purpose. Around here they are not so plentiful. I do have a few offers for several nice and straight standing oak trees, from 12" to 18" diameter. I just need to fell them and leave the limbs small enough for the property owner to be able to carry off. I'd rather get started with a softer wood though. What kind of mill you are using?

Nice buck! I will not take any this year since I still have quite a bit still in the deep freeze. It sure is nice to watch them get real comfortable having breakfast or dinner in the front yard... next year..... KA-BOOOOOMM!

Brian

I'm just using an Alaskan mill. 36" inch as of now but when I get bigger trunks I'll modify it accordingly. I used my 460 magnum untill the 395 was broke in. What a difference with the bigger saw . 460 is 76cc the 395 is 94cc.

[72c20customcamper]

This one ran past me while I was cutting my buddy who wasnt cutting got him from the tree stand on top of the hill about 1/4 mile away

[72c20customcamper]

Well these jugheads are at it again . My buddy sent this to me today while he was hunting. We had just gotten this area cleaned up and they dropped 3 more trees and left the tops and brush on the trail. I even asked them last week if they were done in this section . Guess they saw a few more nice trees dragging out the others that were dropped 2 weeks ago. Its more wood for me but its cleaning up the trail twice

[1976gmc20]

As a logger I am sorry you are having this trouble, but why do you let them back on your land if they are not doing the work according to contract ???

[GerhardH]

Hi Marc would like to join :-)

[special-K]

Hey Mark, that's some awful fancy firewood cutting there . My friend had the woods on her farm logged back in May/June. Tops left where they fell. I've been cutting over there lately. But today I cut logs cleared last year where another friend developed building lots on his land. Lots of walnut, hickory, and maple. Too bad that wasn't milled

Originally Posted by 1976gmc20

As a logger I am sorry you are having this trouble, but why do you let them back on your land if they are not doing the work according to contract ???

Ask his friend, it's his friend's place. I figure a logger cuts the wood the same in any woods, trails or not. The tops get left where they lay and they remove what they came for.

[1976gmc20]

Originally Posted by special-K

Ask his friend, it's his friend's place. I figure a logger cuts the wood the same in any woods, trails or not. The tops get left where they lay and they remove what they came for.

Well, normally whether it is a government or private timber sale, there is a contract specify what is to be taken/sold and how the work is to be performed. In MT there are state rules governing even private timber sales, primarily for the purpose fire prevention.

How it is done varies with region and type of timber. Back in CO on USFS sales of primarily lodgepole and spruce, we were required to lop the slash down to 2' above ground level (or sometimes in practice just more or less level in a clear cut where the bulk of the slash would be deeper than that). Up here, the general practice is to skid whole trees and cut out the merchantable wood/logs at the landing, and the tops pushed into a big pile or piles to be burned when there is snow on the ground.

People with smaller tracts with a home on it often expect rather unrealistic results, especially in the immediate aftermath of logging, but I've never seen any timber sale contract that would allow the sort of mess left behind in this situation.

[special-K]

I know you know your trade. And I know it's a matter of how the contract was done. Back east where we have the rain fuel is not such an issue. In fact, in parks they leave all deadfall with nothing removed. It just rots away. I have come behind loggers to clear tops on quite a few farms and it's get in to where it was felled, cut, and get it out. Sometimes I can't get up to the work across a stream, steep grade, rock outcrops, etc, and have to move the cut wood to the truck. I have also cleared bridle trails on public land for clubs with the authority granted by DNR, where it had nothing to do with logging. Either way, it doesn't sound like 72CustomCamper's friend was anticipating blocked trails. It's another area and it may well be there was a contract stating the trails would be left open. Now collateral damage, that's not very good logging by today's standards. Skidders tear things up enough as it is. We have guys who are back to logging with horses for that reason. My grandfather was a drover.

[1976gmc20]

in parks they leave all deadfall with nothing removed

Yeah, and I've seen the Forest Circus come in and make a terrible mess of a timber sale just a few days after we were required to get it "just so" according to contract. They always find something wrong to make you go back, even if they have to take a branch and move it so it is poking up in the air. Then a few days later a FS crew came in and just dropped all the small pines that we had so carefully left and protected from damage according to contract, leaving branches sticking up six to eight feet in the air. And it was right by the road so the whole world driving by could see it, and of course it was all the "logger's fault" for leaving such a mess.

With government agencies it is always "do as I say and not as I do."


I don't know what the standard practices are back there. For a little while I worked with an old guy from northern NY or someplace, but he said that he used a farm tractor and chain chokers. The timber is generally higher value so one log might be worth more than an entire semi-load of logs out west.

Skidding is always going to cause some damage, even with a horse. We actually considered a draft horse or oxen years ago, but the season was just too short and 40 below and five feet of snow was a little much to winter over draft animals. Machines can just be parked and left to be buried in snow.

Whole tree logging usually causes the greatest amount of damage, but the woods are left pretty clean when you are done. I've run Cat 518 and Clark 666 and 667 skidders, but on my own account we just used a small cat, farm tractors, and a small high lead setup (58 Chevy boom truck).

[special-K]

That's true. You can't drag a log and not leave a mark. The Amish have always logged with horses and these days they use a thing kind of like a chariot they stand on that lifts the nose of the log off the ground so it is rolling on wheels. You can see that would eliminate the nose end cutting a trough, just a weight depression left on the ground. Minimal damage, pretty slick.

I can't imagine logging for the gummit. Mt friends in Cave Jct, OR who contracted reforestration called the Forest Service Piss Fir Willy

[1976gmc20]

Originally Posted by special-K

That's true. You can't drag a log and not leave a mark. The Amish have always logged with horses and these days they use a thing kind of like a chariot they stand on that lifts the nose of the log off the ground so it is rolling on wheels. You can see that would eliminate the nose end cutting a trough, just a weight depression left on the ground. Minimal damage, pretty slick.

I can't imagine logging for the gummit. Mt friends in Cave Jct, OR who contracted reforestration called the Forest Service Piss Fir Willy

Those log arches are designed to make it easier for the horse (or anything else) to pull a log. Years ago I put together sort of a log arch on my buddy's old Allis CA using the two short hydraulic arms. He went from barely being able to pull small logs and getting snagged up all the time, to being able to pick up the butt end of 24" x 33' spruce log and just putt-putting away with it without any drama. We rigged up a choker cable anchored to his pin hitch and ran it up over a pipe roller and out to the log. When he closed the valve to lift it, the thing doubled up the length of the choker and hung the end of the log basically right between the rear wheels. It was one of those things that actually worked 10x better than I ever thought that it would right from the first try!

I really tried to deal fairly with the Forest Circus. But the mixture of corruption and stupidity was appalling. We ended up logging on private land even in CO, cutting right of ways for a proposed new subdivision. Much of the logging in MT is on private land.

These days all I do is cut firewood and some thinning and making access trails on my land. I've experimented around and generally now I just drive the 4x4 pickup into the woods, cut up the trees, and load the pieces on the pickup by hand. Sometimes I drag a log out with a combination of chains, cables, and sometimes straps just so I don't have to carry so far, but unless you really have all the equipment it ends up just as easy to do manually. At one point I was skidding trees to the slash pile with my Case VA and working them up there, but there's places on my land I can't use a 2wd tractor.

[72c20customcamper]

Originally Posted by 1976gmc20

People with smaller tracts with a home on it often expect rather unrealistic results, especially in the immediate aftermath of logging, but I've never seen any timber sale contract that would allow the sort of mess left behind in this situation.

Ya they are a real crap outfit . The area they are doing it in is not known for large racks of land. Up around my house loggers come and cut on a couple hundred acres of land. May be some trails get covered but the owner clears them up . But in this instance the teauls are his livelihood. I'm doing this for free and It will save me thousands in heating costs.

[72c20customcamper]

Originally Posted by GerhardH

Hi Marc would like to join :-)

Come on over I have a few German saws in my arsenal