Timber stand improvement or sport tree felling?

I have 20 hours in helping a friend complete their Forestry plan. Last Summer they had a Forestry mulcher grind all the small stuff, now a Forester has marked all trees that must be cut and stumps treated. IMHO, the woods look terrible before and much worse after but I am here to cut trees and do about 100 a day.
So a more accurate term is "Sport tree felling".:

Safety is paramount and a person needs to know when to say NO, this is a case:




Same tree, different angle


After:





Before:





After:





The wedge is 6".

 

The forester said this was the biggest Ironwood in the County.



After:



Obligatory saw pics. Fleet of XP's and ported Jred 2159,

 

A pile of slash still looks better than a paved parking lot.

 

You make it look easy FB. Everyone on FHC knows it's anything but... easy. Great job!

 

Looks fun!!! And tiring

 

This is a whole lot easier than logging and cutting pulp. All the trees need to be is on the ground. It is kind of like a puzzle though. You need to look at how everything is growing and create avenues for the trees to drop into. Other wise they would hang up and make a real mess. It gives me a lot of practice though on directional felling and swinging trees.

Yeah, it does make me grin though!

 

The owners have and OWB and will use some of this, but there is so much wood it is decades of wood and the box elder doesn't last long once on the ground. We are doing about 25 acres of woods.

 

Are you just going to light it up where it lies or try and hoard some of it?

 

Can tell by your comments, you've been thrown into the briar patch
You getting paid too ?
Being selective, some nice wood to be had if that is part of the deal ?

 

Yes I am being compensated for this. I supply my owns gas/oil and saws. I am not interested in running the MS250's they have.

It's 40 miles away and too far to haul home. I am quite selective on wood anyway and only take, red, white oak and hickory.

I have a fair amount of wood anyway, This was 2 months ago and almost all is split now.

 

That's up to the landowner.

 

Selling some of it will up the compensation

 

I'll say. How many cords? What do you burn in?

 

I don't burn any. The Insurance Co. put the kibosh on my woodburner in the garage.

I figure there is about 30 cords.

 

I wanted the rounds off the ground before the snow melted. I picked up about 2 cubic yards of sawdust and splitter trash so as to not kill the grass. The pile nearest and to the right is 80% gone and moved to the other stacks as I split it. The grass under those pallets was stressed but still alive. I have about 3 hours of splitting to go before I can pick up the remaining double pallet. There were 5 double pallets when the pic was taken.

I've got a pretty nice yard, it's over 3 acres. Of course 900#'s of fertilizer and having a chemical applicators license and sprayer helped too.

 

Looks quite a bit more than "fair" to me. Great work!

BTW, I haven't cut down 100 trees in my entire life ... perhaps 25. I guess when it comes to firewood, I'm a bottom feeder and mostly get the stuff already down.

 

I try to be very accurate in felling. Setting the face correctly so that there are no over or undercuts is very important. The cuts should match exactly. You can get by without this but it is a bad habit. I look at each stump as it tells the tale of what you did right or wrong.

For novice fellers, the most important thing I can tell you is to LOOK UP! Everything that can hurt you is above you. Even after the tree has hit the ground, limbs can catapult backwards a long ways.