If anyone here is wondering what to get me for Christmas

[Michael]

[woodchucker]

Don't worry, we know what a hazard you would be, so we decided to get you a toy one instead. :-0

[krw]

Pine chips?

[J. Clarke]

I can imagine my Dad coming home from the logging camp grumbling about the Goddamn that broke down _again_ . . .

[Martin Eastburn]

Money making machine! Cuts all of the logs to size for the loader / truck to haul. Strips off he limbs flush to the bark.

IIRC, you need a driver, a cutter, a loader, a trucker (stream of them) and away you go in planted or flat ground. I've seem them in action on TV and they chunk logs. The saw men and another machine pull in the thin tops and limbs grinding them up for wood chips or mulch.

The chips have to be nice and mostly white wood for chip board use.

All of the junk can be used in a Bio-fuel power plant. More machine less overhead and lower cost for fuel. The local plant fights the price with several chip board plants. Supply and demand. They can use burnt wood chips while the wood guys can't.

Mart> >

[Martin Eastburn]

They have them here in the tree farms - fast production. Trees are about the same diameter so everything is regular on a farm.

The unit is big and powerful, but there are trees to large for it.

Mart> >>

[John Grossbohlin]

It would be like all the other remote controlled cars, trucks, planes, etc. that kids get for Christmas... fun for a while but then you run out of things to cut down and it collects dust.

[Just Wondering]

[J. Clarke]

After he retired from the Navy he worked for Rayonier in their tree farms. If you've ever been in Northeast Florida or Southeast Georgia you've likely seen them--nice clear pine forests with miles and miles of beautiful trees all the same size, with big fences and "No Trespassing" signs--I suspect Rayonier was worried about (a) some idiot burning their trees and (b) liability.

They had all k> > > >>

[John McCoy]

"J. Clarke" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Yeah, that sort of machine is intended for plantation pine. Trees with a very straight bole and very small branches.

Dunno why you'd call them "beautiful" trees. As landscape they're boring as hell, and as lumber they're construction lumber, not really useful for woodworking purposes. BTW, the fashion now is to leave a strip of "natural" woods along the roadside, so it's not so easy to see the plantations as it once was.

The "no trespassing" is for liability - specifically for some damn fool hunter shooting another damn fool hunter (you get a lot of those in the rural parts of the south). Fire isn't the big concern, in part because in a managed forest there's not all that much understory and clutter to burn (and the trees have evolved to resist low level fires), but mostly because lightning started fires are more common than human started (N Fla/S Ga has the highest incidence of lightning in the country).

John

[J. Clarke]

Perfectly formed, tall, straight. I guess you have to like pine trees though to appreciate them.

[Martin Eastburn]

The movie I saw showed it towing a trailer and putting logs in it as it worked. It was clearing the sides (both) of a logging road going up a mountain. So it takes variable and any angle. The head is rotated and twisted at will. The brush was gathered by another machine and the chips were spread down hill. It isn't a row machine, but is very very good at that.

Mart> "J. Clarke" wrote in