Yep, bucking with a larger saw will sure wear you out. Glad you got BL Brad! Bummer about the chains, for sure!
Spent a full day there yesterday bucking. 500, 460, & 400 in action. Random hardwoods, mostly oak, red maple, hickory. I did get the last locust log. No pics as camera malfunctioned, but I got it to work this morning. No more BL there but I can take a load of other hardwood now and then.
Spent 5-6 hours cutting new years day. Mostly ash,oak, and red maple until a load of mostly beech came in. Bucked that up too. 400, 462, & 500 did the honors. Forgot my camera but it did happen.
That’s cool Brad. He’s fortunate to have you as a worker with your knowledge of species and saws. And of course, your work ethic.
LOL!!! Load of wood showed up while I was cutting and it got dropped right where I was cutting. Cool tree service truck. State of the art with wireless waist control for the nearly 100' boom. Fun watching him unload the logs. He later extended it skyward for this hoarders enjoyment. Had a real nice chat with the guy too.
Brad, have you tried 404 chain on the big saws? Holds up a lot better in dirty conditions. I've switched to hard nosed bar with 404 and plunge cut most logs to minimize the dirt pulled into the power head. (start at 10 O clock position, plunge till your almost at the back of the log, cut down and out the bottom and then push bar in all the way and come out throwing all the debris away from you. This also stops the kerf from closing and pinching the bar)
Never have run 404. I do plunge cut a lot to avoid the pinching and pulling the dirt thru the cut. The last bunch of logs I cut hadn't been sitting long or were near the top of the pile so little if any grit.
Would $30-40 per hour get you there? I think it would take at least $40 for me to consider it. I would reserve the right to reaccess after a month. At that price it would not be worth it for the owner to hire me, LOL; but, I guess that is my point...
That is a lot of wear and tear on equipment , you would have to pay me pretty good or even gooder for me to wreck my own stuff working for someone else. Sure, if the price was right, I might consider it. Maybe get a saw dedicated to doing just this work and nothing else. For lack of a better term a " beater saw" . One that you might not care as much about and could get paid by a portion of the hourly rate. No way on earth I would take either my 500i or 400 for a job like this unless the pay rate was off the charts.
Pro Stihls were built for such duty. All day every day no hot start issues. In the end it may be a better deal than scrounging. The man’s got to keep inventory flowing in.
If you enjoy it, get paid, and it's what you wanna do (and score some wood to process for sales at the same time!) then you go boy!
In a way what’s the difference using your saw to cut logs and get paid or investing the money on the tools we use to make our living Mechanics buy tools Roofers buy hand tools/air guns, grinders etc Lawn people buy mowers trimmers etc. Probably the professionals that don’t buy there own tools to do there jobs are surgeons
I guess those numbers would get me there, but not with my own ported saws and square chains. I’d have a beater that cut slow, so probably a Stihl like Chud mentioned.
That is a 2 station- Power Split (brand) with a conveyor in between the 2 vertical splitter stations. As much as it sounds expensive it’s 2 commercial vertical splitters and a 20-30 foot conveyor and it’s self propelled. 30k is a reasonable price. That machine will run 4,000 hours before much maintenance other than engine maintenance. I bet with 2 decent operators and a supply of rounds 3-4 cords an hour is reasonable multiply that per thousand hours or machine run time and profit per cord.
