MS441 is the smallest saw we run for logging.
We bought a MS362 at one time, but nobody wanted to use it, it was simply too slow.
So we sold it under the table and put the money in the travel fund.
The bottom log is bucked to whatever standard the mill asks for.
These were bucked for transport to China, so no logs over 11,8 meter ( Shipping container length)
The call was AF+A+B+BC+continuing C.
That means you can't buck a C quality log unless that quality is backed up by a length of something btter.
So a pure C log gets bucked for firewood or flooring logs.
You walk along the log and grade it as you go, depending on watersprouts, branches, twist, curvature, old scrapes, and in the case of beech, amount of false heartwood.
When you get to the point where the log doesn't match the set standard, you buck it.
The rest of the tree is bucked into 2,8 meter lengths for flooring mill logs or firewood.
Bucking logs is a bit of a science, but once you know how, it is pretty much done by instinct.
We had a discussion here once where Jed felt that loggers were WAY above arbos ( Of course we are, and those who do both are really top of the heap
) and somebody said that if Mark Chisholm took to logging, he'd make a hell of a logger in no time.
My though on that was, not around here, he wouldn't.
Takes at least a season before one has the grading system down pat.
Mathias, our former apprentice now turned employe, asked me to take a look at one of his yesterday on the way out of the forest.
Just wanted me to confirm that he had made the right decision. ( He had)
Bucking wrong can cost the forest owner and in the end the faller a lot of money.