[lancek]

I think thats a great Idea Carl please join us kiwilogr we would love to have you Lancek

[lancek]

As I had stated before I would explain what I had done with the wood on the seven acre track! We started off with a over growen strip mining pit that they had extracted coal from , the ridges were full of mature trees and the coal seams full of new generation trees! The stand was primainly white oak and red oak. We removed the older trees wich had a lot of stump rot down to a 16″ dbh all though that is a little smaller than I usaly like to go it had to be done because of the stump rot! We prossesed the venner logs form these trees and the no 1 logs to a log buyer that was shipping them over seas! The total value of this material was 3500.00 ruffly 1.75 per foot average we then proceded to mill the rest of the lumber into board and the cants went to rail road ties The crooked and smaller trees along with most of the tops were produced into flooring stile and rail material and squares by just flitch sawing and gang ripping to size! All total we uittilised 83% of the timber we took down!
Now this opperation was one of those that the stars alind on and everything went perfect. The markets were there and the most inportant part was the land owner was willing to wait for his mony untill everything was said and done But he was rewarded for his waiting by realizeing a 247% increase in proffits to the amount of money that he was offered for it standing by a so called forester! as jason has writen here many times before and related in his last therd that a value added approch will increase proffits and by banding together as an orgainisation we can show that we are not some sort of fly by night opperation and that we are a stable ennity that can be trusted! And you dont have to have a whole lot of equipment to do this you just need to find the local people with the proper equipment and share the welth because by kocking out the middleman as much as possable you will have enough extra money in the mix to pay some one else a nice poffit to do the work for you and not have the tax or employ headaches!
This will also prove to the land owner that inprovments on roads and other enhaceing efforts will be worth while in the end even on larger tracts!
And jason that was what I was getting at that by devloping a horse drawn forwarder form inside our orgginisation would allow us to sell it to our practicaners and then open it up to the public as a money generating tool for the orginisation Lancek

[lancek]

boy that reminds me of a few people I have been around Lancek

[lancek]

AHH! But this is what I have been talking about, the smaller machine along with the horses be it tractor or the machine that I showed would work wonders! Now makeing a horse drawn machine that can fill the shoes of both would be our opptemal goal and I dont see other than the gross load capacity of a horse drawn wagon why we couldnt achive this.
In my oppinion a horse drawen forwarder with a loader and maybe wheel assist would allow us to compeat with more logging frims and still pratice good resoritive forest pratices! This would allow us allso to accecpt more jobs because we would be able to compleat jobs quiker. I allso belive that a net work such as the draftwood ass. would allow us to market our wood products to the world. This past few months I have ben reserching ways of uitiliseing wood that is not generly accepted on the open market and allso ways of useing shorter log leagths so as to generate more marketable and higher priced material from each job and have come to the conclusion that it can be done! The biggest problem for foks to take us serious is that most feel that a small indavidual company can not produce enough to satisfy there needs or the distance from your yard to there opperation is to far so a coop of smaller compaines would be able to meet these demands and make everybody money!Lancek
Now I will post a picture of one of my jobs and in another thred I will explain how I made mony off this job!

[lancek]

Simond I agree with you that the draft powered forwarder would be a good rig in the woods and would work well with smaller logs [ and I may be nieve because I have not seen any in use] but I have two concerens with the loaders one is the lifting capacitys the other is how long of skid will this machine make ! we have a 1/2 mile skid to a haul road sometimes and need to carry 1500 to 2000 feet at a time to make any money now this is usealy done on tractor roads that they use to get tractors into land locked feilds! or old skid roads that allredy are in place ! we allso have logs that are regluarly 2000 to 4000 ponds will one of the sweedish loaders handle this type of weight? Because if it could I could take smaller turns with the horses and still come out ahead! And then there is the question of if the horses can handel that much weight!
Now the other thing that I question is the price of the machines out there I have done some figuring and even useing highend products I think one of these horse drawen machines could be made for less than $5000.00 inclueding the hydrolics! Well thats enough for now I have a big cheery pie in forunt of me and now Im going to eat it:D

[lancek]

Finaly found the pic of the machine that I was talking about Ill see if I can up load it Lancek

[lancek]

I agree with Taylor there is machinery out there that would greatly inhance our abillitys but are out of the reach of most!This is machinery form over the pond and the price for them would be doubled by inport fees and shipping the alester on utube is one inpurticular and the sweeds make one that is not much bigger then a bobcat with trailer that can realy handel some big logs so the tecnolagy is out there its getting it into the US thats the problem! So the only concultion that I can come up with is to come up with our own ideas and develop them. As a coop efferot we should be able to come up with some grants to do this. Scott is there anything that the forestry dept has in there bag of tricks that might beable to help some sort of development grant we could tie this in with biomass probley Lancek

[lancek]

And many blessing to you and yours Carl I hope you and your family are safe and well! And that gose for everybody else out there:) Lancek and family

[lancek]

Scott and Carl you both have very good points my only conceren is how do we get people involved? As I stated before we had a lot of folks gumping in before but it has come down to a few of us now! As you said scott you only have had 4 responces to the contacted list and to be honest Im not sure if I submeted mine an if I didnt let me know and I will do it right away! We were in the mistted of our move and I think I put it off till we got here and as usual I spaced it out so my bad! And I am sure that other people have been busy with prodgects too but I think we need to find some way to get everybody engaged and participateing ! And Scott your comment on a buisness plan is a great starting place this way we can work out some of these things before we present them to the public! Lancek

[lancek]

Taylor,
The law I was qoteing I fond back in 2000 when I was fighting the state over my building there in Hillsdale! [ They were trying to get me on child labor laws for letting my daughter work for me for a wage at 14 ] It basicly said that if you wright a basic contracted between you and your apprentice stippulateing his hours and compensation for your training and training being the stand out word because if you stipulate training then it becomes a employer employ relationship! And as far as maketing goes Jason and I have been discussing some thing that amy help but they are just in the flegling stages hope to have something positive soon
We might want to invite some of these younger folks into DAPFI after we get everything settled to get there prospective and input what do you think Scott?Lancek
Ps Scott and taylor could you send me your phone numbers to my email its jak10860@yahoo.com it would be helpful Tim

[lancek]

I was allso moved and I think this would be a wonderfull start for this orginisation! He has hit the nail on the head with his coment on insurance I for one would be more interested in doing some interenship if the work comp situation was out of the way or if there was a loop hole like in Wisconsins satutes that workmens comp is not required for a apprentiace just a waver!
But I think we should tackel the marketing and networking frist I think that that is where most of the folks are having a hard time with according to past threads Lancek

[lancek]

Yes to all for me Scott

[lancek]

If Jhon wasnt the second then Ill second the motion if he was then ok Ill thrid the motion

[lancek]

O and by the way Oldkat my wife agrees with you but she lowered my mental age to my shoe size:D:D:D And big lug i would have taken you for a little older you are proble like me . With me its not the years its the milage:D:

[lancek]

Well Scott
Thats the reason for this thead I just wanted to see how many young folks that we did have! When I seen the post from Robernson I was inpressed with his dedication to our field of indever, and was curious as to what motavated him and how many more young people we had on our site? I too agree that these young people should go out and try and recrute more young people to join our ranks. I allso feel we should look more strongly into inticeing more young people on too this web! That being said I will have to admitt that I am not sure how to do this and would ask some of the other folks how this mght be acomplished any ideas folks?

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