Having obtained the license, we accepted the bid from Kronospan Limited at Chirk for the standing trees. This means that Kronospan were responsible for arranging contractors to fell the trees and transport the wood to their factory. Payment per tonne carried out becomes due against weighbridge receipts.
On 24th July 2014, I made another visit with Rob, towards the start of the felling period. It was a hot, summer's day. A fuel bowser stood immediately outside the access gate and one car was already parked. Looking through the trees, we could see felled timber lying on the ground in neat piles and we could hear the low growl of a forest machine. We entered the site and found a Ponsee 'Ergo' harvester at work. There's a very simple description of modern harvesting in my earlier post Ty Gwyn ships out Timber and this post has links to the Ponsee website for more technical information on forest machines.
Ponsee 'Ergo' harvester at work at Ty Gwyn.
When the harvester driver stopped the machine, we approached and Rod was able to discuss the felling plan. The harvester driver was rightly proud of this machine and I was invited to ride in the air-conditioned cab for a while to watch the felling process close-up. The operations focus around the Harvester Head (an H7 on this machine, I think). The head first grasps the trunk of the tree just above the ground and the chain saw at the bottom of the harvester head is pivoted so as to cut through the trunk. The harvester head then rotates, lowering the cut tree to the ground. The trunk is then smartly pulled through the head, removing bark and de-limbing minor branches, until the required length of log projects from the head. In this case, logs were being cut to 12 foot lengths. The chain saw then cuts through the trunk, dropping the cut log onto the pile ready for later removal by the forwarder. The remaining tree is de-barked and de-limbed in a similar manner, producing a variable number of cut logs depending upon the height of the tree. The top of the tree is then tossed to the ground and another tree is selected for felling.
View of the bottom of the harvester head showing (in yellow) the chain saw which pivots to cut through the trunk.
Once the Harvester had made a good start on felling timber, a Forwarder would arrive to transfer the cut logs to timber stacks adjacent to the internal forest roads. From here, timber lorries would load the cut logs and transport them on public roads to the Kronospan site at Chirk.
Mature trees awaiting felling.
Related articles on this site
All my Ty Gwyn posts.
The Manufacture of MDF (Describes a visit to Kronospan, Chirk).
My pictures
Harvesting 2014.
All my Ty Gwyn pictures.
