The Official Work Pictures Thread

[FireFighterZero]

I forgot the before pics.

To give you an idea the ends of the branches were on the ground.

 

[FireFighterZero]

 

[pantheraba]

End weight reduction....raised the canopy. You been paying attention, boy!!!

Beautiful flowering there!

 

[brendonv]

I can do one of these every day of the week, if I?m not running my felcos of course. Easy peasy.

 

[flushcut]

Not too shabby for a farmer Jim!

 

[Ryan]

I asked Hydro to hotspot these trees for me and here's what they left me. Once I cleaned up a bit it was time to knock the rest of it down. Heavily edited video: You don't get to see how slow I move, some less than stellar notching, I pulled the saw when it was already running, and the second to last cut in the vid came back on my foot when I was standing in the crotch of the elm. There's still some mistakes in there but after 4 hours of editing I'm burned out. Could I have pulled most of it over from the ground? Probably, but where's the fun in that!



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[ATACH=CONFIG]85986[/ATTACH]

 

[MasterBlaster]

I loved it when I could get them to knock out the tops for me!!!

 

[forestkeepers]

The Keepers from the Black Lagoon

Today's job was... different. Today was a day for us to actually live up to our name -- Forest Keepers. We headed out in the boonies in Tonganoxie, KS. We brought the skid steer we have access to and used it to bring our chipper down into the woods below the home on the property. Our mission? To clear inside a fence and around the perimeter of a lagoon, as well as clearing 50' around the outside of the fence.

lagoon |ləˈɡo͞on|
noun
an artificial pool for the treatment of effluent or to accommodate surface water that overflows drains during heavy rain.

We direct chipped into the woods, moving the chipper with the skid steer and keeping it from rearing up with the grapple bucket of the machine. We fed some trees into the chipper using the skid steer and pushed over one tree with the machine, but mostly it was some pretty yucky winch work today. I got the honors of winch duty, keeping the chipper well fed.

Within minutes of getting there, we hit fencing embedded in one of the trees with our 346. Then half an hour later, our 372's bar sprocket went south. We were down to climbing saws and had to totally re-sharpen the 346 on site.Today we did the nasty work, tomorrow we'll go back out and finish the better half -- the 50' perimeter outside of the lagoon area. Today was 50+ trees (hackberries, locust, American elm, sick-amore, cedars, osage orange, mulberry, box elder), ~50 more tomorrow! At least we get to keep a few black walnut logs out of the deal, in addition to some decent pay given the working conditions.

 

[pantheraba]

Wow! As they say...."Far out!!"

Cool gig. I would have hope the "lagoon" would have been a crystal clear spring...that's a pretty ugly cess pool looking bit of water.

Maybe the work y'all are doing will let it clear out some. Good work there.

 

[MasterBlaster]

In the SHIT!!!

 

[forestkeepers]

Cool gig. I would have hope the "lagoon" would have been a crystal clear spring...that's a pretty ugly cess pool looking bit of water.

Maybe the work y'all are doing will let it clear out some. Good work there.

That's the owner's hope -- that more sunlight will help matters. My straw vote is for him to get some cat tails and water lilies going, as well as flooding it with 5,000+ gallons of his well water. That might make the water less black and lean more toward gray. As it is, I threw away my gloves from today and washed my hands about 10 times and took a 20 minute shower when done, as well as spraying down all my scratches with H2O2. Hopefully all those countermeasures will help me avoid any chance of septic shock

 

[pantheraba]

hahaha...Lordy! Like the boss said...in the shat!

Sound like pretty good counter-measures.

 

[Mick!]

Good documentation of your work FK, thanks.

Love seeing how other guys organise and execute their work.

 

[stig]

That was an unusual gig.
Here is a trick for you:
When you push trees over with machinery, make your back cut a ways below your face cut.
In effect the opposite of stump shot.
That mitigates the risk of the tree being pushed forwards off the stump and going backwards on top of the pushing machine.
Not so much an issue with a tree that size, but important when one goes big.

 

[PCTREE]

Good tip there Stig, never occurred to me before and we push our fair share over with equipment

 

[Mick!]

Using the temporary road today, Cherry removals, pleased with the lack of rutting after multiple passes heavily laden.

 

[pantheraba]

Great tip, Stig...I have heard of big trees coming back on the equipment.

Looks good there, Mick...really like that grapple/tractor.

 

[forestkeepers]

Using the temporary road today, Cherry removals, pleased with the lack of rutting after multiple passes heavily laden.

Hey Mick, is that an Avant articulating loader you have? We've considered them but have been more leaning toward a mini skid steer (Vermeer/Ditch Witch). Love to hear your impressions & firsthand perspective.

 

[forestkeepers]

Day 2: Out of the Poo Pit

Well, today was day 2 of of our Keepers from the Black Lagoon adventure. Thankfully, we usually do the worst first, so today was a lot more pleasant. We were outside of the lagoon area, clearing the surrounding hillside, opening up a minimum 25' clearance around it. We had new chain for our 346 and a brand new bar for the 372, so we had no difficulties with saws today. We largely kept the chipper stationery today, chocked the wheels, and rolled with the track machine, knocking over trees and feeding the chipper with the machine -- very little winch work.

At the end of the day, even though piles were dispersed in the woods, it looked as if we had generated about 90 cubic yards of chips. We did lose a track twice on some stumps, so we had some downtime putting it back on, but apart from that, things went like clockwork. Treated all stumps with Tordon and left the owner happy with his newly sun-exposed lagoon.

 

[MasterBlaster]

I've cleared a couple of those before... never knew water moccasins were so aggressive!!!

 

[pantheraba]

How deep is that lagoon? We dove some in Florida years back that were 40-50 feet deep and connected to caves...looked a lot like that.

 

[forestkeepers]

How deep is that lagoon? We dove some in Florida years back that were 40-50 feet deep and connected to caves...looked a lot like that.

I'm not diving in that kind of lagoon! I didn't take depth measurements, but given the slope and diameter of the pool, I wouldn't think it was more than 4-5' deep currently. It looks to be at low levels since we've been in drought conditions -- it needs a couple good rains to get it back up to normal levels and more clear water mix to get it functioning normally.

 

[biggun]

You mentioned in a post a while back that the water could clear with more sun.

I would have thought the UV would attract algae and make it more of a sludge pit.

 

[forestkeepers]

You mentioned in a post a while back that the water could clear with more sun. I would have thought the UV would attract algae and make it more of a sludge pit.

That's actually what you do want -- more sunlight to stimulate positive algal growth. Here's a good primer on it from a Missouri extension article. (I used to live on a property in Missouri that had a functional lagoon, properly set up).

The process that takes place in a lagoon is a natural one, with microscopic plants and animals coexisting and dependent on each other. This relationship causes the water in the lagoon to turn green with algae at certain times of the year. Sunlight is essential to promote this algae growth. Algae produce oxygen through the photosynthetic process. In this stabilization process, bacteria release carbon dioxide that is used by the algae in their growth process. Another oxygen source is breezes blowing across the lagoon surface. When wastes are broken down, some of the material is given off as gases in the air and small amounts of solids settle to the bottom of the lagoon. In a properly constructed and managed lagoon, solids will not likely build up to where the lagoon will need to be cleaned out.

The property we were on sure definitely bypassed the septic tank portion of the setup for settling out solids for at least 48 hours before overflowing and was lacking the tall grasses around the perimeter. At least adding sunlight was a good first step, but the owner definitely needs to take further steps to fix the lagoon setup.

 

[Grendel]

Big sappy old dog. Had to make a flat spot so she didn't want to kick back off the stump. Tree put a lot of compensation weight on that back side. All chipped up. We'll mill the log.