Thread: need a FALLER to help me near mt buller vic

you have a few problems.

if you imploy someone to help you even for free and they get hurt you are in big toruble.

they will need to have the sutable ticket for falling trees of that size.

someone that has done the amount of training that you require to fall big trees isnt gunna work for free.

not sure of the vegatation laws where you are but u will wanna check them out. if u cut a tree anyware around here without a permit. teh property owner is looking at a $3000 fine the bloke doing the work is looking at anyware up to a $50 000 fine depndign on quantity.

if these trees are that big its gunna take you 2 weekends witha chainsaw mill to mill one tree.

do u have a machine to snig the logs out?

id help u out but im a bit far away.

Originally Posted by booza

this is a massive project for me as there are 50 acres of tall timber and from what i saw on sunday months of weekend milling missions.

50 acres of timber with a chainsaw mill I agree with Carl - that's bigtime dreaming. It's about the same as trying to crack a sledge hammer with a peanut.

Even dealing with this conservatively 1 tree per acre = 50 trees, each bole will have at least 4 x 6 m length of useable timber (some will have more) which is at least 200 serious logs that will take one weekend to mill each, that's at least 200 weekends or ~4 years rain, hail or scorching sun.

Then, what do you do with all this timber, do you really want to be in the timber selling business, on teh phone 12 hours a day, big trucks, forklifts, worrying about the price of diesel, haggling over that extra $10 a cube etc (Sorry Carl) but that's a crap job in my opinion. If that's what you want then a Lucas at least would be the minimum way to go.

Assuming you have all the permits etc you would be wiser getting a commercial logger in to take what is legal and leave you half a dozen nice big trees on the ground to mill, that's at least 20 big logs which will get you pretty buff if you can mill all these in one year!!

Chainsaw milling is not about bulk production, it's about accessing that unusual and wide range of timber that would either be burnt or turned into wood chip or let rot. I love the whole chainsaw milling process but to keep me interested I chase different and unusual logs, I deal with them 1- 3 - 5 logs at a time. Chainsaw milling is like eating Xmas pudding for desert, nice for Xmas and every now and then, - but if I had to eat 200 in a row ? . . . . . I'd be selling my mills tomorrow.

well thanks for your views. I still have time to sort permits as it is going to be something i need to plan and look at starting in september. at this stage the dse have said to contavt the council and we may have a possible saw mill but still to confirm. at this stage you may think i'm a DREAMER but i like to be optimistic and yes you need to live in reality so that is where i may just take the blackwood out and look at a few of the monsters that are currently on the deck and cut them and walk away with 5-10 cubes. better than nothing hey!!!!

I still need a pro faller if this goes ahead and am happy to work a price out. if i was back home in the south west wa i wouldn't have a prob knowing some bunnings fellas but here in vic my contacts are a little limited.

can you take some pics of what and where you want trees fell and how many trees are there to fall

Hey Booza,

nothing wrong with enthusiasm - good on ya!!

One thing the others have mentioned, a chainsaw mill is for taking advantage of the odd log, here and there. To get an amount of production out (access to 50 acres of standing tree's), you need a Lucas, easier on the body to work compared to a chainsaw mill, better recovery than a chainsaw mill, but heavier on the pocket than a chainsaw mill, although I feel it'd be easier to return investment. I admit the initial appeal of a chainsaw mill is the lower investment, but with it comes a lot more physical effort as compared to a Lucas. Ask Bob how long it has taken him to learn his tricks to make chainsaw milling easier (mind you it'd take an amount of time to learn it on any gear)

One good thing with a Lucas is the re-sale price after you use it. I had someone stop me in the street last week asking if I wanted to sell my mill, he saw the power head on my truck and obvisouly I didn't want to sell, so his next question was how much do I charge to mill, he mentioned how hard it was to find a second hand mill.

Regardles of which way you go, selling off logs is a mugs game, you get almost nothing for them, especially compared to what you can get after breaking them down into timber and the outlay for something to process them is pretty small.

Good luck with it and keep us posted