How'd it go today?

Great news Stig, pleased for you, grabbing life by the pussy!

That is one amazing chunk of machinery

It sure is! Congrats Stig!

Really pleased for you Stig. I hope it makes you some good money.

How are you going to process the felled trees - manually or with a processor? I suppose if it is hardwoods you can be effective manually.

This will be used in pre-commercial thinnings in both hard and softwood, mostly.
Feller buncher will cut trails, thin and leave everything in nice stacks for our forwarder guy to bring out to the road.
Then it'll be chipped for biomass.

Denmark has recently switched a bunch of coal fired powerplants over to biomass, so there is a huge market.
Prices are very good right now, meaning that a first thinning in hardwoods, which used to cost money, can now be done at 0 cost, or even make the owner some money.

So it is pretty much the perfect time to invest in a machine like that.
Too few out there to cover the market, and our force is, we don't have to try to tell a bunch of foresters, who we are and that we do good work.

They know that, since we've been logging, doing pre-commercial thinnings, planting etc. for them since Christ was born.

We are simply offering a new thing under our brand.

Funny thing, I hadn't realized that until a State forester told me .
He said: " We all know you and what you stand for, so we'll all be calling for the new machine. When do you start up ?"

Sounds like a well constructed plan Stig. Precommercial thinning is going the same way here, as the thirst for biomass chip is growing exponentially.

Kinda funny when our American friends here have to pay to get rid of wood and chip, ain't it.

Here it is gold.

As it should be. I often wonder why our coal plants here don't run bio, and I wonder if our plants are bigger and maybe that's why. I do know they are switching ours to natural gas, which is stupid cheap for industrial buyers, but still more expensive than coal.

A buddy called, I guess he's the head baseball coach of a high school in town now, and he needed some aluminum welded on a portable batting cage (the kind that goes behind the plate on the field). So I went over there and did that today. Angled it so I was running slightly uphill to help control the slag which is heavy and runny, and ended up waaaaay hotter than recommended because the bottom of the tee weld was 3 times thicker than the vertical pipe. It wasn't the prettiest, but it's on there. Forgot to get a pic tho, so that sucks. Kinda cold on the starts and hot on the end, but it definitely worked. You need a DC machine to do al stick, but yet again another thing you can do with a stick welder that would cost a fortune to get the appropriate alternatives, and I did it right there on the ball diamond.

When I worked line clearance we dropped chips several periods of time at different biomass "feed lots".

They were far & few between though almost never under municipal control.

We'might use one for a couple weeks or a month, then it might be a year or two until we found one again. All were simply a "dump for free" type deal. Always easy access, solid ground, and room to dump.

I wish our biomass was in full swing. Nope. Too much red tape. Only letting the big guys use the drop sites. Then 2 hour plus trips to the plant.

stig said:

Kinda funny when our American friends here have to pay to get rid of wood and chip, ain't it.

Here it is gold.

Click to expand...

Don't forget us Canadians. Some of us have to pay as well.

Looks like a money maker, Stig!

Helped out my buddy with 4 dead ash, EAB is brutal here. Also a small dead cherry there. First time climbing since November, not counting screwing around with SRT techniques and toys.
I'm gonna be sore tomorrow, I can feel it.
Had alot of fun though, and weather was perfect

Keep em coming!

Yep, keep em coming.


Awesome, Stig.

Nice Stig. As much as I like being able to do things manually, iron is so much fun.
There was a factory of some sort being built a few miles from me 14-15 years ago that was supposed to use biomass as an energy source. It went way over budget and the investors backed out. Sat unfinished for a few years and then the banks had it tore apart and scrapped to recoup (pennies on the dollar) their money. My buddies dad was one of the iron workers that put it together and took it apart. Said it was a very odd feeling doing so and also thought it was a bit of a dirty deal.

Nice work on the ash Jonny. I agree that I’d of cut a bit above or below the branch union but I can see how from the other side it could go unoticed. Always pisses me off when I don’t check first.
Sorry Jonny. I got my threads confused

Wow huge investment Stig, but it always a good feeling when you know you've got the work to cover it. New dimension to your business.

Soooo... Stig went to the dark side of the Force !

If you can't beat them, join them.

Richard is feeling the wear and tear after decades of hardwood logging.
He has been wanting to do something not so strenously hard for a while.
We've been bouncing ideas back and forth for the last 5 years.
He likes machinery, I don't.
You won't catch me anywhere near that thing.

Then this opportunity shows itself.
Basically, we were contacted by two foresters who run a number of private districts.
They needed the service of a machine like this, and none were available.
So they said, if we buy it, they can guarantee us 700 hours yearly for the next many years.
That is half the hours it needs to run in order to be profitable.

If this turns out well, there may be room for another feller buncher in a few years.
That way, when I retire, Richard will have something good to continue with.

I bet ya'll will never regret it.

Tree09 said:

As it should be. I often wonder why our coal plants here don't run bio, and I wonder if our plants are bigger and maybe that's why. I do know they are switching ours to natural gas, which is stupid cheap for industrial buyers, but still more expensive than coal.
.

Click to expand...

We have a big and updated coal plant that is unused most of the time close to me. The way I understand it they have to bid on producing electricity and they can't compete. If power is real short they get called up. There is talk of converting to gas.

Just caught up on this thread.
Wow Butch and stig, I wish you both 'fair seas and following weather' with the chemo.

Thanks! There are interesting times...

Thanks, Frans.

Had a friggin' circus the other day. Backing up a bit, I have spent the last 2 years trying to re-invent myself. Stopped climbing. Turned into a job organizer/ roper/ chipper type person on my jobs.
So, I landed a sweet crane job. Good money 4 hours max work and I walk away with 4k after expenses.
O.k. On to story:

The crane company lectured me saying they wanted their own climber because the operator and him work together and are very efficient. Not a big crane, I think 40 ton.

Crane shows up at 10:30. Sets up, it is now noon. He sets up, booms out over the tree, then the climber says "hey are you gonna climb"? WTF? I didn't bring climbing gear. Climber looks worried, says he will 'try', then gets his gear on. (Btw, freaking EASY removal)
. the crane operator then says his crane is unstable. Asks me if I have a tape measure so he can determine if moving the rig 2feet closer will help. Got the boom stowed, outriggers up, crane guy asks me " got any cribbing, I forgot mine". Sure I say, asshole, (it's now 1pm). I will simply run to the lumber yard and get some. Shall I buy you lunch??? ( I am channeling Skwerl now) It will be at least 2 hours before I can make it back. NOT happening at 2pm!
I had an excavator, 10wheel dump, 5 guys, chipper truck and chipper, all lazing around, picking and scratching and communing about life, sports, politics, etc etc.

Fucker crane people, I told them all to leave. Cancelled the job. Crane while leaving dumped at least 5 gallons of oil on the customers gravel road.
These are high maintenance gay guys. Used to own web MD, whatever the frig that is. Medical tech company I guess. Oh so politically correct.
Overall very high maintenance customers. I have worked for them for maybe 10 years. I am positive I lost a client in this.

I return the next day with a grader and clean up his precious gravel road. He said his llamas might get sick from the oil

Crane guy calls me later and says I owe him a grand for traveling out there. I said, "sure that sounds fair, I need $2800. For lost wages, equipment, travel time, fuel, and oil clean up, how do you want to work this out"? He hung up. I have worked with him in the past and all went well up to this point. Hell I paid him a grand an hour for previous jobs.

Sometimes business sucks. Rant over, thanks for listening.