I might make one from a straight razor. I made one from a file a few years ago and used the whole file. 6" blade or so with curved end. It works well but a short blade would work better for same applications.
Should read "some apps." My long one works well for hollowing out things but not well for it's intended purpose. When doing fine work as the host outlined I have 4" of razor sharp blade sticking out! Not a great scenario.
Yes, occasionally we come across one that is still in good shape. I've had old timers tell me of stands of balsam that were close to 24" on the butt, although I've never seen them that large
And yet two sawmill manufacturers that I know of have copied this exact design for machines of their own. All I know is its worked well for me for twenty years.
Thanks been trying to figure out what was wrong with my 08 WT ,replaced plug, coolant sensor, and thermostat and still same problem. Now if I could fix the horn that works when it wants to. Any suggestions?
The basic principle in woodlot management for maximizing long-term income is to groom your woods every five to ten years by taking out the the stuff with the least potential for gaining value on each pass and leaving behind the stuff with the most potential to gain value plus some "woodpecker hotels" to house the birds that devour forest pests. Obviously you're not going to do the whole woodlot all at once so you just do a few acres each year. Btw, all that forest deadfall and logging slash is gaining value as a raw material for fuel-wood pellet production for export to Europe and there is a whole new generation of high-efficiency wood-pellet and wood-chip boilers coming out of Europe now, such as Heizomat and Froehling. The provincial government also needs to "get smart" and insist that loggers replant Crown land as a condition of logging and also that all sawmills which draw wood from Crown land must ensure that their wood residues go to a fuel-wood pelleting mill and also that government buildings switch over to heating with automated wood-pellet boiler units. This ain't your grandfather's forestry industry anymore, there's a lot of new technology and economic trends out there which will increase returns to "forest farmers"! 🙂
at 20:00:- a "board-foot" of lumber is actually a piece of wood 1" thick x 12" x 12" square and not 1" x 1" x12" which is just a useless little stick:- just say it's 144 cubic inches of un-planed sawn lumber and save yourself reciting this little ancient sawmill "poem"! The number of "board feet" in a saw-log is the actual amount of sawn lumber you can get out of it before planing it so it's a somewhat subjective measurement but both you and the sawmill need to know that number, along with the final grade of the lumber after sawing, so you can establish a fair price for your saw-log.
@@ERLong-ww7yn Yes, but you need to explain that to your viewers, many of whom don't have that background knowledge, and some of whom have an "easy-money, get-rich-quick" attitude when they start imagining millions of dollars of profit in their little 10-acre woodlot. 😉
at 16:35:- That's a right proper "woodpecker hotel"! Honestly I would just brash the lower branches up to 8' with a power pole-saw to give the big machines some working clearance and otherwise leave it for the woodpeckers which do plenty of good work eating forest pests. Yeah, it looks a bit untidy and disorderly but the woodpeckers and chickadees like them like that and please don't underestimate the ability of those little birds in keeping your woodland healthy. 🙂
thanks for the useful info. I happen to have an oregon chainsaw sharpening machine. I think I will give this a try. If I can get it to work, it will save me a fortune on a bandsaw sharpening machine, and the hassle/expense of taking the bands in for sharpening.What do you use for setting the teeth?
I don't have a setter currently. I only get four or five sharpening per blade before they develop stress cracks, and in 18 years I've only had a handful of blades get a tooth badly out of set.
@@ERLong-ww7yn I have just finished sharpening my second band. The first one went slow, second one was quick by comparison once I had developed the technique. Unless one makes contact with foreign bodies in the timber, there is no reason why the tooth pitches should change. Quite correct. If I can get 5 sharpenings per blade, the savings on outsourcing the sharpening will afford me a new blade. Thanks again for your invaluable info!
Absolutely. Winter cut wood that is junked and split and stacked to air dry will be at 10% moisture or less in early September. Just cover your ranks with a bit of plastic making sure the plastic doesn't hang down to the ground. If it does that, the plastic will trap moisture inside the pile. You just need a top covering to shed the rain.
@ERLong-ww7yn thanks for the reply.. i usually fall my wood in August at the full moon, but i find it doesn't get dry enough it dries some more in the basement but takes all winter before it gets just right .
@@atv950 one trick I used to see the old guys do when cutting wood in the summer was they'd fall the trees while they were in full leaf, but not limb them immediately. They'd let the leaves wither and dry, and in doing so, the leaves help suck moisture out of the wood. I would say cutting wood past early September for winter use is pushing it. In a dry year, wood can be cut in September if it is split and piled immediately. Wood cut and left in long lengths will dry in about 12 inches on the ends, but then that dried wood prevents moisture from escaping from the center of a log. I've seen hardwood and softwood logs cut two years, and the center of the tree would be as wet or wetter than a fresh cut tree. The key to drying is expose as much surface area to sun and wind as quick as possible. Hope this helps.
If you're speaking of the orange whip that extends behind the saw, that is a "tail" or "chainsaw measure". It is installed with two screws to the rear handle then cut to a length. We set ours in such a way that from the tip of the bar to the end of the tail is 4 feet and one inch. That way, when measuring up logs for bucking to length, we lay the saw on the tree at the butt, give the saw a shot of gas, marking the log at 4'1". Then, as we proceed up the tree, we mark lengths at 8'2", 12'3" and 16'4". The wood products we sell are either 8'4", 12'6", or 16'6". The whip gives us a quick way to approximate the lengths without using a tape measure.
just out of curiosity, because how it is done in BC is far different and we have an timber appraisal manuals which are followed: Who should foot the bill of cut timber appraised weight? Seems a bias towards the woodlot owner. But what of what the Mill actually gets? - should it be the land parcel (woodlot) owner trying to get more, appraising cut timber and additionally weighing the wet/frozen/soiled - should it be the mill/licensee, trying to pay less, appraising cut timber when dry and lighter Not sure what message is trying to get conveyed here, getting the most bang for your buck? But in doing so, give the mill the sleight of hand? In reality, shouldnt wood be appraised on wood? Not on any additional soil, moisture, ice, sap that contributes to weight just after harvest?
The issue we see here is that , for example, in 2004 a tandem load of logs scaled by Bangor Log Rule and delivered to the mill would pay me about $1600.00. At that time, we had numerous mills operating in the province, and most if not all stick scaled. Today, with one major player in the business and all mills buying by weight scale, that same truckload of logs will pay me between $800-900 after trucking. Meanwhile, lumber prices in the building supply stores have quadrupled, chainsaws have doubled in price, fuel has gone from around .75/ liter to $1.68/liter, chain oil has jumped from $7/ gallon to $19/ gallon. The mills are winning, the landowner is losing. Plain and simple.
@@ERLong-ww7yn Mills are winning? Since when? Canada has seen massive mill closures since the 1990s. Major licensees have been pulling out of small towns throughout the West, dooming them in their job markets and people, with their mortgages/homes/families. Licensees still pay for fuel, chainsaws, maintenance, road use agreements. Do you know a sawmill pays a general work labourer a wage upward of 31.00/hourly? This is an extraordinarily high wage for near unskilled-labour, basic material handling. The licensee pays that. Then we have First Nations reconciliation, wildlife and riparian tree retention areas, leave tree basal area specification, old growth area, migratory bird / ungulate range / grizzly habitat government action orders biting into Crown land and timber supply areas, biodiversity / plant rangeland availability / and visual objectives biting into timber supply areas. Absorbent high road-sharing fees with oil and gas, mining, telecomm industry. sigh... the mills are not winning. They are crying. If anything, Woodlot Owners face less of these regulations and government orders than the licensee and mill do.
@@demetrioshristovski4518 your viewpoint is West Coast centric and doesn't reflect the issues New Brunswick and other east coast woodlot owners have faced in the past 25 years. This Woodlot Management series is dedicated to helping newcomers to the game get their footing in small scale forestry, not to promote west coast industrial forestry practices. Thank you for your input.
@@ERLong-ww7yn Fair enough. But as a professional, I am governed by a code of ethics. My code of practice highlights that I practice in BC, under the association of ABCFP, but the ABCFP is regulated Federally, as one province of CIF. CIF regulates forestry throughout canada. About ethics though, not as a person to show partial treatment to any of: Crown Land tenure, mill or licensee, to a christmas tree permit owner, a tree farm license holder, a woodlot license owner, a firewood collection permit owner and seller....but rather seeing this as a wood issue. What is the wood worth? Not particles attached to the wood when wet, or absent when dry. Its my duty as a professional, amongst other professionals, to cruise and scale logs, and produce stumpage on a dry weighted product, which more closely resembles wood entering processing - rather than additionally capturing irrelevant constituents which add weight to the sale of the product. (ice/soil/debris/insect larvae/moisture content) You are looking out for WL owners and small scale startups - okay. But nevertheless, its a stated bias? I am not looking out for anyone, any party - but rather scientifically measuring the true value of wood? A mill, or a persons mill saw, isnt after soil, ice, moisture content, Etc.....correct? Why should any party benefit from it attached to a sale? On another note, this is why we regulate professionals. I have nothing against your channel and its videos, its fine content. And I am here watching it? I use it to learn of forestry (to which I havent had means to learn of maritime forestry before) If you dont want me watching it, that is fine? But I think its pertinent, the help you provide to other woodlot owners and small time startups, you should also disclose more often it isnt the advice from a certified professional.
Going back to balsam though, i think there really should be some consideration. Balsam (lasiocarpa, which greatly resembles balsamea) is generally accepted as an silviculture re-stocking *acceptable* species. Across a whole lot of sites and regimes. But it never gets planted, because industry doesnt want it. What ends up happening in silvicutlure regen plots, if seedlings of Balsam are seen they just arent listed as undesireable.....lol But through legislation and BCs biome in place, it is technically acceptable. But never purposely procured. Making a push for Balsam would reduce mono-culture forestry. It would push for increased stand level biodiversity. Balsam grows slowly in some sites, so it could ward off free growing and mature stand declarations too, pushing back harvest cycle. While Balsam is susceptible to pests, it certainly is not as susceptible to spruce budworm being west coast, and would not be influenced by mountain pine beetle, which is hurting alot of the lodgepole pine in BC. And lodgepole IS PLANTED, despite this. In solving kiln times, this would push for mills and majors, to invest in more temporary and service road log dumps to help reduce kiln time, which invests in infrastructure and more jobs. Balsam always has the potential in christmas tree cut permits, and the lumber isn't so inferior to spruce, if eventually getting to sawlog DBH BC needs to find out more uses for larch, tamarack, hemlock, black spruce, balsam fir - this fiber exists. Which reduces the needs from cedar, doug fir, lodgepole, white/engelman and just adds to biodiversity, and pest management over the long run.
Good to know. I have a couple of trail cameras, a Bushnell and a Wildgame Innovation, set up in close proximity pointing at the same target. I experience similar issues where one camera will pick up multiple shots of the same animal while the other camera registers nothing or maybe the animal’s tail as it leaves the field of vision. What makes it even more frustrating is that it’s not always the same camera that shows nothing. They seem to alternate missing shots. Anyway glad I caught your review. I’m up in Canada and I am searching for another trail cam that can handle cold winter temperatures and the iZeeker came up on one of my searches. I think I will pass.
i d also point out, logging of the logs, the logs themselves are just a portion of the appraisal being calculated. What the wood ends up being worth per cubic metre You have logs being excluded, such as wildlife area, tree patches, old growth allotment, leave seed trees, strip cut partitions. You have distance logs (km) being ferried to appraisal point, the time it takes because of forest service road speed limits of loaded / empty hauling, you have the wood grade of course, and the wood % rot excluded. Waste and resides also factor in, post harvest.
Here in NB, harvest of land by the major players seldom includes the factors you are mentioning. I've seen them leave a perimeter around raptor nests, but even the setbacks around watercourses have been decreased in recent years. A few years ago I was offered a stumpage agreement on two woodlots I own. There was no allowance for anything to be left behind. It was a flat out clearcut deal. I know a good many people that have taken that route, and they're left with a field of stumps and brush.
@@ERLong-ww7yn Within 2 years, a licensee is required to re-plant complete clear-cut harvests with biogeoclimatic approved stocking standard desirable and/or acceptable species. This includes strip/partial selection cut too. Most of these approved/acceptable species would include doug fir, Sx (white and engel and sitka) although in north interior (real north black sp too) lasiocarpa (abies) lodgepole and ponderosa pine, and larch / hemlock. I am not coastal, so l exclude alot of things like the big balsams This is important, because licensees are held to obligations within 5yrs, silviculture green-up. And free growing, 10-20 years. Also, after harvests waste and residues surveys are needed, and dispersal of CWD (coarse woods) for soil revitalization and wildlife habitat This isnt done in the sense of home-steads, procuring local timber and non-timber products....but rather industrial forestry to meet province/nation, international timber supply needs.
@@demetrioshristovski4518 i know that in Sweden and maybe some of the other Scandinavian countries, when a block of land ,including private, is cut, the government withholds a portion until proper reforestation is carried out. I think the withheld funds can be used to pay for seedlings. I had a chat with a gentleman from Sweden that was here demonstrating harvesters years ago. A good plan in my mind, although here it would raise the hackles of the fut and run crowd.
this is just, sigh.....tremendously backwards. East coast is just, my goodness. And for the life of me, i don't understand why it is. - You appraise your forest stocking standards with an appropriate BEC zone or equivalent (stand type) - You decide on prism BAF prior to cruise, you grid your cruise plan. - You complete timber cruise, only 3 BAF prism changes permitted per stand unit. Cruising done per province w/ Timber Cruise Manual? I dont know if there are province equivalent - Timber cruise data included in final cruise appraisal, submitted in appraisal summary prior to any harvest - Appraisal summary rejected or accepted, or conditionally accepted, harvesting follows through. - A body, like province forest service or ministry, or even Licensee internally done, perform check cruise. Pass or fail. - Harvesting takes place, decking on side of the road may have logs present for up to 2 years - Wood from decking, is trucked and driven to POA, an appraisal point, to be scaled. Timber scaling done by Timber Scale Manual, every province has different Timber Scaler certification. - Scaled wood taken to the mill, for a further internal scale, which really is meaningless, but done anyway. Wood then kiln dried according to species. For example, black spruce or lasiocarpa (very similar to balsam fir) are different kiln times than doug fir or larch or ponderosa pine - Only after these processes, are stumpage made physical and logging dividends presented. Stumpage maybe assessed prior, but isnt presented until all steps completed. BC and Alberta are a light year ahead of the east. And its baffling. I have spent time looking through the northern interior forests of Northern Ont, and it isnt so much different than BC (not the coast) The jack pine, white spruce, red pine, black spruce, tamarack, aspen forests scene throughout boreal resembles the lodgepole, white / engel spruce, black spruce, larch / tamarack, aspen / birch forests of interior BC. Where is the disconnect exactly?
All good points. I know the major player here used aerial projection software that analyzes the overall stand. The software uses satellite imagery and can identify softwood, hardwood, geographical features, relative tree size, age, etc. Unfortunately, harvest on Crown Land, and by transference, private land management plans, is aimed at producing three species of trees: white pine, red spruce, and a new variant of Scandinavian spruce. All other species are tiered below the Big Three. For a private woodlot owner to receive funds from the woodlot association ( from check off rates deducted from the sale of wood) the chosen silviculture program must be geared towards producing the Big Three trees. Do I agree with this? No. Do we have a choice when faced with the present day monopoly? No. Will I forever be a rebel who works his land with an eye toward local ecology and maintaining a natural stand Acadian forest? Yes. Your BC forest management plan has a lot bigger players than we have here, and has a lot of input from environmental groups that are strangely quiet on the east coast. Different ball field, different rules. Please feel welcome to continue commenting. It's good for viewers to get a viewpoint from the professional scientific dide of forestry, something I am not.
@@ERLong-ww7yn Crown land here use aforementioned stocking standards for bio-zone repopulation. I am not an landscape ecologist or plant botanist, I dont know the generation seen ramifications of pure stands other than whats basically interpreted, which industry try to push for and desire. But yes, biodiversity is something our province forest LEG pushes for. I have toured some of IRVlNGs plantation stands, Norway Spruce, yes? It was my understanding yellow birch also a crop species for studs? White / black spruce, jack pine, tamarack are not major marketed spp east coast? I dont know the extent of rust damage on white pine out east, but west coast finding white pine suitable for any sort of mill is extremely difficult. No problem, by the way. My old man, was a steel machine centre (milling) and lathe operator for 5 decades. When I helped out as a kid and teen with firewood and wood-working, he thought I d make a fine carpenter some day. We had about 30Acres just outside greater toronto. But it turned I enrolled into forestry, the 90s highschool system were large advocates for university pushes, in that students MUST go to university
@@demetrioshristovski4518 in the 70s there was a big movement toward planting Jack pine, but once the initial plantations were ready to harvest, they found the wood inferior for pulp because it created a brownish color that was only suitable for cardboard. I've never heard of yellow birch being used for stud. There was a real good market here for veneer 20 years ago. I had one 9 foot yellow birch log that went to Austria. I got over $900 for that stick. However, that market has dried up considerably. It also led to a lot of piracy, but that's another story.
l could find rabbit stewing meat in Prince George Save-on-Foods. Sadly, cant seem to find it in grocery stores throughout the okanagan and Kootenays. A shame, really.
Rabbits are hunted and snared down here quite a bit by the Acadian folks who use it as the main ingredient in a traditional meat pie they make. Quite good I understand.
Both interesting and sad. Down here in SW central PA, the Beech grows everywhere, and it has a shiny, silver, almost muscular-looking bark. No sign of blight here. I've been working on breaking down a rather large windsnapped fork over the last two days. Beech makes a smooth, clear, tight-grained hard wood with a color that's nearly as light as Maple; sort of resembles Bamboo, but without the segmentation. It's dense and heavy, and as a fuel, burns hot. Its nuts are tiny, with little meat, but they can be roasted over a fire in a can to make a popcorn-tasting snack. Naturally, the squirrels here are gorged. On my parcel, the Beech is so abundant that it's _almost_ a nuisance. The area, I suspect, was once a Beech-Maple climax forest, and so the tree has developed a strategy to re-populate holes in the canopy by shooting up dozens of saplings from any near-surface roots. In the areas that have been logged (around 15 years back), thick clusters of these shoots can be both annoying and too abundant, so I've been forced to hatchet many of them in an effort to restore balance. Selecting the saplings also helps to keep the trees that _do_ end up making it straight, injury-free, and hopefully more disease resistant. Having personally witnessed what an invasive species can do (Japanese Knotweed), I keep my fingers crossed hoping that nothing will blow into my area. But people still keep buying their decorative plants.
Great story Thats what the pioneers did on our property we have a creek on the south end the only way there is across a black spruce swamp you can still find the trail through it and to this day we still call it the hey road
its a shame how low the prices are for the ordinary man to cut his own woodlot, i remember in the early 90's to mid 90's when stud wood was up around 150 cord, it is around 88 cord, or 44 a ton, a guy on a chainsaw cant make a go of it, and the guy on a harvester has to cut a shit load of pulp to make a go of it
BC, the pickers, there are 3 main groups. The mushroom/truffle/morel pickers. And its hard to name all they go after, but what l personally take whenever l stomp through the woods are butt/root rotters, like honey mushrooms. Armillaria ssp. l will snack on berries, like highbush cran, thimbleberry, solomon seal, a few vaccin/rubus berries. I have collected rose hops for friends before, they flavor homemade beer. After mushroom pickers, there are the berry gatherers of course. Vaccin ssp, the large ones. I dont condone people collecting devils club berries for hallucinogen properties. Finally, like mushroom but not like typical mushroom, the Chaga birch black conk collectors. Chaga is very popular in north BC collecting, for tea producers. People can make an honest living finding birch patches harvesting Chaga. Unreal. Tea collecting, can also include cedar collecting, and stinging nettle collecting, though be careful with nettle because it can be problematic if not careful. l separate this, from wilderness survival collecting. Lodgepole pine bark, dont know if jack pine is the same way, but LP P bark can be snacked on, if somewhat bleh. Again, rose hops and high bush cran are plentiful, if somewhat tart and hard to swallow. Didnt know about fiddleheads though. Bracken, yes.
In BC there is the condensed pellet industry, for sure. Pac Bio, l thinks the name, working around Prince George. They will take everything, even cottonwood, aspen, birch - you name it. Even black spruce and tamarack, so long as truck costs aren't ridiculous. Throughout BC, there is a projected shortage of hog-fuel as well. For mills in use for heating, drying, power. Hog fuel is waste wood, and can even include large wastes you would find in certain stands, like alder/service berry/mountain maple growing large enough, concentrated enough. Due to many mill shutdowns over the past decade, think Mackenzie, Fort St John and Chetwynd, Grand Cache, Kamloops - waste wood that these mills would produce and distribute as miscellaneous hog fuel to others, is no longer an option. So businesses and enterprises needing waste wood, have to look elsewhere - and even have fallen into asking Ministry of Forests into tenures for waste wood projects and proposed area. But yes, pulpwood is struggling indeed. l dont think a licensee l have worked for since 2018, has requested out of crews for stand reconnaissance done for pulp. Not even for small scale or fire salvage, they still want ''grade'' out of it for something to go onto a shelf and sold. Keep up the great content. How deeps the snow? Bizarre year so far, okanagan hasnt even put together 1ft of snow yet.
We are only at about 1.5 feet of snow. Normally we would be over 5 feet by now. The sawmills here used to send hog fuel to the five pulp mills we had. However, we're down to two softwood and one hardwood mill now. Strange, though, that there's an unrestricted flow of pulpwood from Crown land, even being trucked into the US. The private landowners seem to be the only ones feeling the pinch. In 1990 a cord of pulpwood brought around 120 dollars and a hew chainsaw was $800. Now the pulp brings $80 per cord and the chainsaw is $1200. Oh how times have changed.
The market here has only picked up the past ten or fifteen years. Two particular companies buy the waste wood and grind it to make died wood chips for landscaping and mulch or compost. There has also been some attempts at marketing for biofuel, as in commercial boilers, and for wood pellet manufacturing for stoves. The movement forward has been from smaller companies creating niche markets. The large industrial companies haven't really gotten on board.
@@ERLong-ww7yn that's great for you here some of the big logging company's are leaving the pine tops in the bush because of no market hopefully we get some biomass market players
When cutting that smaller stuff, how much do you leave behind for regenerative growth? Do you look for a certain spacing to leave behind, or just basically take all the fir and leave whatever else is there? I'm managing my woodlot and am pretty new at it. I'm learning a lot from your channel. Thank you.
I try to maintain an eight foot spacing with young growing trees left behind. You kind of have to learn the difference between an actively growing small tree and a stunted old tree. I've seen 60 year old trees that were the same physical size as a 10 year old tree. Just that the 60 year old was stunted and dying. I'll be doing a couple of videos on precommercial thinning and how to identify active trees. Stay tuned.
Sorry, but you are factually incorrect on both points. A professional knows a bar should be reversed with each new chain to prevent uneven wear. The 500i is an 80cc saw. And if you bothered to watch any of my other videos you would know I own a bandsaw mill. Good day.
I tended to cut a push pole from a standing dead softwood. You don't need one to hold a horse just a man pushing on it. The lighter the better. 12 to16 foot. When pushing on a push pole your hand is on the end of the pole and your hand on your hip. No upper body strength used. Just your legs to lean into the pole. When working an area you would cut a push pole and a pry pole before you needed it. When your saw is stuck it's to late to cut a pole. Now in the winter I use a felling lever and the rest of the year a wedge. But it is still handy to have a push pole available. Instead of knotching the tree high up, if there are no limbs to push on you could stick your pulphook in the tree, up high as you could reach, then push on that.
