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HELP! 'describe the typical work day of a logger!'

Started by kristina, October 14, 2001, 05:32:07 PM

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kristina

:'(
hello. my name is kristina and im a 9th grader.
i have an assignment to 'describe the typical work day of a logger' and im having trouble finding this information on aol! if any of you have ANY information what*so*ever...dont hesitate to...help me! lol   ithank you all sooooo much! your help is greatly appreciated!
~kristina~

RavioliKid

C'mon, loggers!

Answer this sweet young thing's question!

Kristina,
I can't help you with logging...but if you want to know about a typical work day of a third grade teacher, I'll be glad to help.

RavioliKid

kristina

lol not yet! but if i ever need info about 3rd grade teachers, ill take up your offer. thanks anyways! :D

Gordon

Jeff posted your question under ask the forester. Might want to take a look in that part of the forum. You have a reply there from Kevin that has a couple of links in it.

Hope this helps
Gordon

Jeff

Kristina, It's been a while since I worked in the woods, but I am sure there are a few operations out there that still run chainsaws and skidders. (A Skidder is generally a 4 wheel drive vehicle  with a blade on the front and a winch on the back for pulling logs.)

When I worked in the woods, I did not have the same job each day. Some days I drove the skidder, other days I was a trimmer. A Trimmer goes out to the trees that had been cut down, and trims off the branches and then cuts off the top where it becomes of  unmerchantable size, meaning either to small or to crooked.

Here is a typical winter day for a skidder operator.

I would usually arrive at the woods before daylight on the coldest mornings, as I knew it would take a while to get the cold diesel engine started in the skidder. When I got there I would pull my pickup right up to the front of the skidder to warm it.  My pickup was equipped with hoses that would connect up to the skidder, pumping warm antifreeze from my engine to it, thus warming it so I could get it started.

While the skidder engine was warming I would grease all the grease joints on the skidder. I did this twice a day. Morning and noon to keep it lubricated and reduce wear. I would also check all fluids to make sure they were full. If something was noticeably low it would tell me that I might have a leak.

After warming and prepping the Skidder, I would start it and let it warm more under its own power. Sometimes we also had to hook up cables to the batteries if it was very cold.

Once the skidder was warm I would check with the guy that fell (cuts down) the trees to see where he had been working and where I had to go to get them. Once I knew this, off I would go.

Generally if you have a good feller, he falls all (or most) of the trees pretty much in the same direction. Preferably with the tops away from the direction you want to haul the trees, so you can just hook on to them and head for the landing. The Landing is the clearing where the trees are cut to length and loaded onto the trucks that haul them to the mills.

As I mentioned before, the skidder is equipped with a winch. After you positioned your skidder in front of the logs you wish to pull, you would release your mainline (cable). You then set the brake on the skidder, got out and grabbed a choker that is hooked to the mainline. A choker is a short length of cable that is fastened to the mainline and this is used to slip around the log to hook it up. We usually ran 4 or 5 chokers at a time, enabling us to pull several trees a skid. Once you connected one tree you would winch it up to what is to the back of the skidder till the end was off the ground, go to the next and the next until you had a full skid.

Once the skidder was loaded you would head back for the landing, being careful not to run over or damage other trees that were not intended to be cut at that time. It was very important to protect these trees so they could continue to grow undamaged.  Once at the landing, you would release your winch, jump out and unhook the chokers, then jump back in the skidder and go again. You would do this all day stopping only to eat lunch, or if you got ahead of the feller.

Usually when I got ahead of the feller, I would grab my little saw and help the guy trimming that day. The more we got cut and skidded the more money we made, so nobody ever sat around waiting for someone else. A good crew is always busy with their own job or helping someone else.  Occasionally something might break, so you had to be prepared to be a mechanic during the day if need be.

The skidder operator keeps roads smoothed with his blade, plows snow out of the way so you can get in to the job, and a lot of times he is the wrecker for pulling Log trucks in and out of the woods when the roads are slick.

The skidder operator also would take care of danger situations like trees hung up in other trees. You would clear the area and hook a cable on to pull them down so they would not fall on someone. At the end of the day you were usually dirty, tired and ready to go home.

Man, I kinda miss it!

Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

Ron Wenrich

It's been even longer time for me.  I had a couple of jobs in the woods.  One was a faller in hardwoods, the other was a choker setter in Oregon.

As a faller, I would arrive on the job early morning. I didn't have to worry about warming up equipment or the like.  I just grabbed my hardhat, a saw, gas and oil, a file, and a couple of wedges.

I then walked out to where the timber was marked for harvest.  My job was to cut them down.  Trees had to be felled in a direction so the skidder could easily get to them, and to cause the least amount of damage to the remaining trees.

Felling involves cutting a notch from the direction you want it to go, then making a backcut so the tree falls.  You must do this carefully, having adequate room to run in case of a mishap.

After the tree is down, I would then cut the limbs off of the tree.  I would also cut the slash (tree top), so there were no limbs sticking up in the air.  It gives a better looking job, and helps the limbs to rot quicker.

Not much more to that job than that.  When the saw got dull, I'd sharpen it.  When it ran out of gas, I filled it.  When I ran out of gas, I went home.  :D

A choker setter is a guy who puts cables around logs so they can be dragged out of the forest.  The company I worked for had several different types of operations and was a very large company.

They used dozers with winches, yarders, high leads and balloons.  

A dozer is a track vehicle that drives out to the tree and drags them in.  A yarder is a stationary rig that works with cables.  The cables send a bull block out into the cut area, which has smaller cables that are attached to the logs.  The logs are then dragged to the landing and loaded on trucks.

A high lead is basically a bigger yarder.  A balloon system uses a small blimp to put lift onto the logs.  It increases the distance they can drag.  I don't think they are used much anymore.  Now they use helicopters.  

Yarders, balloons, and high leads are used on clearcuts.  Dozer and helicopters can be used on partial cuts.

A typical day was to show up at the mill at 6:00.  5 minutes late and you miss the day.  You then get in a crummy, which is like a small bus.  Usually there are 6-8 other guys with you.  The ride to the job site will take an hour.

At the job site, you would walk into the area where the logs were being skidded.  The trees had already been felled.  There were 4 choker setters working. in one area.  Other guys on the job site included the yarder operator, a chaser (who unhooks the logs), and a loader operator (to load logs onto the trucks).  The bull buck (foreman), would stop in about once a day to check how things were running.

The yarder operator would send a large cable with a bull block attached to it, into the work area.  This is a large cable that goes around several molly blocks, which are placed at the edges of the clearcut.  These blocks are moved to keep the main cable over the logs that need to be skidded.  The main cable is attached at both ends to drums on the yarder.  By moving the drums the bull block and logs would be moved.  Tension in the cable would keep it taut and raise it high above the forest floor.

There was a head choker setter who had a talkie tootie.  They probably use radios today.  A talkie tootie would tell the yarder operator when to start or stop by blowing the horn on his yarder.  

When the bull block stopped, we would grad a choker and set it around the log.  Then we would get out of the way and the logs would be drug out.

Typicaly day was 10 hours in the bush.  Truck rides were on our time.
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

kristina

o my gosh thank you sooooooooo much!!! this is exactly what i was required to get! your a life saver! THANK YOU!!!
~kristina~ ;D

timberuk

Hi Kristina.

Would a UK perspective be any use to you? Let me know.

Norman
I don't do it for the money, so it must be for the love.

Jeff

Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

Tom


Corley5

Burnt Gunpowder is the Smell Of Freedom

Bill Johnson

Bill

Gordon

After reading all of these posts I think that we all want to hear the UK perspective . Go for it.

Gordon

Jeff

Have you guys ever heard of performance anxiety?

Its O.K. Timberuk You can do it, nobody is watching, its like were not even here...
Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

kristina


timberuk

OK, you asked for it!

I have a choice of two logging systems, depending on the ground. If the ground is very wet, or steep, or there is any other reason why I can't get the tractor right to the timber, I attach a 5 tonne winch to the tractor, and skid the timber out as whole poles. This has already been well-covered here, so I'll move straight to the second method, which we call forwarding, which is quicker, cheaper, and much easier on the old boss in the tractor, namely me.

In this case, the poles are converted to their various sizes in the wood, immediately after felling. Let's say the fellers are working a clearfell. These are the sizes they'd be working to:- (sorry,  we're metric over here, but I'll roughly convert)

SAWLOGS (most valuable) 16ft long, with a minimum top diameter of 12inches. Must be straight and not too knotty.
PALLETWOOD (middle value) 8ft   long, top dia. min.6 inches. Also straight.
PULPWOOD (low value) 6ft 6in long, min. top dia 3inches. Reasonably straight.

So they fell a tree, remove the branches, and then assess the pole. Once theyve decided on the sizes, they convert the pole. For example, a typical Sitka spruce here may give :-

2 sawlogs
2 pieces of palletwood
3 pieces of pulp

Their job now is to present the timber in a way that's quick for me to gather up. I use a forwarding trailer on the back of the tractor, which has a hydraulic grab. The grab has a reach of 16 feet, but it can lift heavier loads close up. So the aim is to have the timber stacked either side of a track, no more than about 10 feet from the track, so that I can load as much as possible at each stop (the trailer will hold about 7 tonnes).
The larger sawlogs are just rolled to one side, the other products stacked into small heaps, maybe 10 pieces of pulp wood, and a couple of palletwood in a separate heap. They should also have felled the trees in such a way that there is a carpet of branchwood on the track itself, to stop the tractor sinking on wet ground, and no branchwood under the stacks, to make them easier to grab hold of.

I have to make a separate trip for each product. I load up, drive out to the forest road, unload onto stacks  ready for a truck to pick up, then back in the wood for another load. Each 7 tonne load will take about 45 minutes, and my 2 fellers can produce about 20 tonnes a day..so I have to leave the comfort of the tractor and do some felling myself!

Thats the method. A typical working day....

Load up the Land Rover or Jeep, depending on my mood, and pick the guys up at first light. 15 minutes later we're in the forest, discussing last night's soccer matches, cup of coffee, cigarette, then sharpen up and fuel the saws, and off to work. We each have our own patch, and work a minimum of 2 trees lengths apart for safety. The saws will run for maybe 40 minutes on each tank of fuel, in which time we produce about 1.5 tonnes each. Sometime we will keep felling and converting until the saw runs out, then stack, or stack the timber from each tree as we finish it. By lunchtime, there's enough timber ready for me to extract, so I check the tractor oil, etc, grease the loader, and get a couple of loads out. If I've caught up with the fellers, I'll go back to felling myself, otherwise I'll keep going till the end of the day. But there is always something else to be done..paperwork, maintenance or whatever, so the guys tend to be at least a couple of days ahead of me.

Prices may be of interest to you US foresters....

I get between $15 and $20 a tonne( or cubic metre) at roadside, which has to pay for the guys, machinery, ME(!). Haulage to the mills will be about $10 a tonne. The mills are paying rock bottom prices just now, the lowest for 10 years, roughly $50 for logs, $35 for palletwood, $25 for pulp. So the profits for the landowner depend on the proportion of sawlogs. A first thinning producing only pulp will lose money, but in an ideal world, the loss would be offset against the increase in value of what's left.

Hope all this is of interest.

Norman

I've tried to upload a pic..God knows if I've done it right!
I don't do it for the money, so it must be for the love.

Tom

Norman,

What a cool drink of water that was.  You did an excellent job and I for one really appreciate it. That's a quality and worth re-reading.  

Your methods are similar to what I have read of the Appalachians and North here in the U.S.  In the South, Things are a little different since the bulk of the logging for so long has been pulpwood oriented.   The plantations have been developed for it and most company land is harvested before the trees reach sawlog size.  

It is changing and private forest are trying, against the whims of the tax assessor, to grow sawlogs again.  Most of our Urban developers don't understand a piece of land with wide spaced trees that hasn't got houses in between each one.

Our local governments are trying to save trees from the development saw now but are doing it with tree ordinances that tend to limit rather than encourage the farming of trees. It's unfortunate but current law makers and governing bodies have the idea that a forest should be left to its own devices and shift for itself.  That may be ok in a preservation but farmers need to be able to thin, harvest and burn and that is contrary to common Urban thinking.

I know we are getting away from an agrarian economy but I have wished many times that we could get 'Men of the Land"
back in government positions of decision.

Good picture too.

Ron Scott

Well done timberuk! Excellent description of a "loggers day" from one at work. That's a description of a good day.
~Ron

timberuk

Thanks for the praise, Tom. Also much appreciated. Those of us lucky people who love what we do also love talking about it.

One fundamental difference between us and you. ALL of our production conifer forests are man-made. After the end of WW1, the government decided that we needed a 'strategic reserve' of timber in case of future war. So in 1919, a process of large scale planting began, using mostly Sitka, but also larch on drier sites. At the time, and until maybe the 70's, there was no public opposition to this, as the vast majority never ventured out of their towns to see it! Since then, however, the mood has changed, and there is virtually no new planting of conifers..it's all restocking or amenity broadleaves. Of the 250,000 I have to plant this season, 80,000 is restocking of conifer clearfells, the rest broadleaves for environmental or social reasons.

As for thinning regimes, all conifers were originally planted to produce logs by about year 60. This involved several thinnings, starting as early as year 20, reducing the original stocking of 2250 a hectare down to about 250 by clearfelling time. But, with the problems of the pulp market, early thinnings are often delayed, to the point where it becomes  risky to do any thinning at all, for fear of windblow (another major problem). So we end up with an overstocked site of tall, thin stems. That's an extreme case, but it does happen. In the long run, it would be better to thin early and light, then again in 5 years, to keep the crop stable. But forestry is run by accountants these days, not foresters, and they can't see further ahead than the next balance sheet. Every thinning has to make a profit, and if it doesn't, we dont thin..regardless of the far-greater benefits in the long-term. Oh well.....it just hurts sometimes to know that we have the skill and means to produce a renewable natural resource from a tiny seed, and to be prevented from doing so by short-sightedness.

btw..the public here don't like Sitka. It's not a native species, so they feel it doesn't 'belong'. Seems they would rather see hillsides covered in bracken. Pity they can't make the link between toilet-paper and trees! :D
I don't do it for the money, so it must be for the love.

Bill Johnson

Norman

Thanks for the great description of your typical day, I sure as I read more of your contributions I have more questions or comments but only have a few now.

Are you actually clearcutting or is it more of a commercial thinning type operation?

If you're clearcutting (and to me that means removing every stick of merchantable timber and marketable timber unless other wise prohibited then) what is your average cut over size?

In my neck of the woods we probably average 35-40 hectares in size for clearcuts with some being in excess 1200 hectares.  There is a plan underway to emulate natural occurrences such as wildfire or blowdown that could see individual cuts of up to 5000 hectares.

The planting densities sound right on the money for conifer. The companies around here typically plant between 1800-2500 trees per hectare when planting  jackpine or spruce.
We are too far removed from the hardwood area to plant those species but do practice natural regeneration of trembling aspen, usually trying to achieve 10-30000 stems/ha within the first couple of years following a cut. Once it's established the aspen tends to self thin.



Bill

timberuk

Bill,

Most of our harvesting is thinning, removing about 40/50 tonnes/ha. We have a system called Yield Class. In case you have something different, I'll briefly explain it. If you use it over there...ignore!

A Yield Class is a measure of the increase in volume per hectare per year. So a YC16 Sitka is growing at the rate of 16 cubic metres a year. The usual wisdom is to thin out 70% of the YC per year. Thus 70% of 16 =11.2...multiply by the thinning cycle, say every 5 years, gives a thinning weight of 56 cubic metres to be removed every thinning. The same system also tells us when the ideal time is for clearfelling and replant, ie when the growth rate begins to fall. In practice, the threat of windblow usually dictates that we clear before that point is reached.

As for the clear fell areas..with the UK being relatively small and over-populated, practically every forest is in constant view. So the visual impact often restricts us to small areas. I have never done more than a 10 ha block, and the edges often have to be filtered and uneven. When replanting, there is now a legal obligation to include, I think, 15% broadleaves/open ground.

Well, my brain is tired now! And I've had 2 teeth filled today, and the drugs are wearing off..so...see you tomorrow.


Norman
I don't do it for the money, so it must be for the love.

Corley5

Norman,
  What kind of saws are you running over there?  Is your tractor a regular farm tractor or is it a machine built especially for the woods? and what make is it?  Great story thanks!
Burnt Gunpowder is the Smell Of Freedom

timberuk

Greg,

Huskys are the most popular saws here. I use a 254 and 346. Stihls are used mostly by farmers. As a matter of interest, a new 346 costs about $550.

The tractor is a standard Case 1694 4WD, much abused but still alive!
I don't do it for the money, so it must be for the love.

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