Our sawmill insider has his say. 

THANKFULLY, after my ‘near-death’ experience I am making excellent progress and getting fitter and stronger by the day. This is just as well, as a number of ‘one-off’ jobs recently came in which needed my experience and efficiency to process quickly. 

I’ve been messing around with tractors and chainsaws since I was 12 years old and as I’ve just reached my ‘Heinz’ year, this has resulted in a vast catalogue of knowledge. I think when you’re young your brain is a bit of a sponge and when you learn things at an early age they seem to stick there for life. Trying to teach skills to older people can be very frustrating as for whatever reason you often hit an invisible ceiling. Learn to work an excavator when you’re 12 and it’ll stick for the rest of your life, but learn at 40 and it seems a much more difficult process. Operating any woodworking machinery is about being smooth and calm with everything nice and easy and the blades ‘zinging’ away. How do you teach that? Using one’s brain and being methodical is much more productive than working like a lunatic and breaking things. It’s that old saying: ‘Smart, not hard’.

Anyway, the purpose of this reflection is not to bemoan the lack of skills in the workplace. On the contrary, I see a vast range of opportunities for young people in the forestry and timber-processing industry. Just as it seems it’s getting harder and harder for young people to get into the likes of farming and haulage, it appears, at first glance, that forestry is the same, with multi-million-pound harvesters and automated mills. However, forestry is a very diverse business and people these days are looking for something different.

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For instance, over the last few years a large part of our business has been associated with the garden trade and the production of boards and sleepers, as it has with the big mills. However, we’ve also kept our hand in with ‘one-offs’ and unusual orders.

This is just as well as demand has fallen off a cliff for gardens and standard sizes.

Currently, most of our orders are one-offs. But I don’t care. Every day is a challenge, but it’s an enjoyable challenge – even if people don’t always follow my logic.

Forestry Journal:

At this time of the year, having done so many different jobs recently, it’s sometimes a good thing to perform a simple, straight-forward task at a nice, easy speed, like cutting up a big old ash tree for firewood. It just requires a sharp chain and a large dollop of patience. You can knock down your rakers or try a skip chain where every other tooth is missing, but you’ll end up spinning your crank bearings in the case or cracking the cage on the big end.

Or you have a job where you need to move quickly but saw slowly, as happened recently when we were tasked with cutting a pile of sleepers in half. The most efficient method is to pick up the piece of wood quickly, then slow up and saw it in half, all done nice and smoothly, and then slide it quickly to whoever’s stacking. So it’s quick, slow and quick. The novice would probably ram the blade into the sleeper and jam the saw, which is where experience matters. The veterans can save so much time and money by being patient and precise. 

A good example of this would be the planking machine on a moulder we use, which requires a high degree of tender, loving concentration. Any build-up of shavings causes the machine to jam and so constant vigilance and attention are required. The operator must constantly sweep the machine down with a small brush as the wood goes through, together with the intermittent application of a squirt of oil. It’s a real hare-and-tortoise job and if you get lazy with the brush or oil it goes horribly wrong. If the person operating the machine concentrates, then it’s an easy job and it pays well. This is where the smaller operators can slip into niche markets. So basically, if you work for me, you’ll have to be adaptable!

I often view these giant operations like the Titanic while we are a little tug boat, much more suited to dodging the icebergs. You can even apply this to the likes of problem avoidance and maintenance, whereby being hands-on and involved I’m able to see small issues before they become intractable problems.

At this time of the year everything is wet and muddy and I tire of telling the forklift driver (if only he’d started when he was 12 years old) to keep the forks clean. One of my pet hates is putting the forks down on a dirty surface and then stacking packs on top of each other. The dirty forks then rub on the nice, clean packs and it just looks untidy and careless and not very appealing to the customers. I suppose, on reflection, it’s quite tempting to want a bigger business and it’s the type of industry where it’s easy to expand. However, I like my role. I like being able to be hands-on, involved and flexible enough to be able to duck and dive with the fluctuation in customer demand. More than anything, I’m just not sure I’d want a larger workforce and all the problems which come with that.

One job which is testing all my experience and guile involves my in-laws. They don’t live far from me and own a small-holding which is surrounded by a wood. The ownership of this wood is somewhat vague and, as a result, it’s been neglected and abandoned. It seems as though some years ago it was gifted to the local authority for the benefit of the people. As I’ve intimated, the wood appears, to any observer, completely abandoned and from time to time one of the trees crashes down onto my in-laws’ land. This isn’t as bad as it seems as the trees are usually massive and provide a great source of fuel once processed.

However, as fortunate as this seems, it’s not the whole story. The trees are truly massive, but once you get about two thirds into the centre, the wood turns rock hard, which instantly blunts the chainsaw. I don’t know whether this is caused by the age of the tree or that at some stage of the tree’s life it’s been subjected to stress like drought or maybe someone’s even tried to poison or burn them.

This made me remember one of the few things I ever listened to at school. In history, the teachers would often tell us the British Isles were once covered in a giant forest.

As the population grew and farming evolved, the trees were felled to make way for arable land. Being a practical type of individual I asked the teacher exactly how they did this: “Please Miss, how did they cut down the trees?”

It was a question I asked quite regularly and one I rarely got answered. A hand saw seemed to be the stock answer, but when I began to think about it I doubted that prehistoric farmers possessed such an item. If I’m using a modern chainsaw and it’s failing to do the job, then maybe our prehistoric ancestors knew something we don’t?

Forestry Journal:

Another suggestion was that they used fire, but have you ever tried to burn down a living tree with a five-foot girth? I suppose it’s possible, but it would take an eternity.

I expect the latest tree to fall could tell a few stories and while I haven’t counted the rings I expect it’s of some considerable age. I just wish I could find an easy way of cutting it. Milling isn’t an option as apart from the fact it’s so hard it’s also full of nails. I just have to grind away with the chainsaw and keep changing the chains. Its brutal work and very tiring, but fortunately my health is improving and every so often I just have to nurse my aching arms.

The effort is shaking the saws to pieces and it’s rattled the top cover loose on my 395XP and broken the exhaust flanges. Any ideas anyone? TNT, dynamite? Are these products available online? BOOM dot com?