How'd it go today?

No. Everyone got rated. In private. These guys all share. I haven’t even seen these cards yet but apparently I’m the standard A man. I don’t really care except they are all whining and bitching. And they think it’s my fault. My role is not to be on every job. It’s to bid and be where I am needed. I earmark jobs for me and jobs for each crew based on their strengths. Problem is no one is willing to push their comfort limit so I end up with being the full time estimator plus doing a lot of work. Job today was nothing hard for a bucket. Power lines were involved. Why it was earmarked for the crew leader with 8 years working for a line clearance company. He turned it down. Easy bucket work in my mind. Anyhow. Basically the boss is asking guys to step up to their pay grade and they want mine with out the effort I put in. This of course has been building for a while. Last week after receiving a call about an unchained loader on the high way I let everyone know that if I caught that they would be unemployed and have a broken jaw. Telling, yelling, and write ups don’t affect this group of guys. Cant fire everyone. Me having a bad day and getting that phone call could’ve tripped it but I’m on the verge of going back to the mid 90’s. Back then you worked.
 
Good start to the day. Found my new burn barrel on a job...

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I'd prefer a smaller one, but I'll take what I can get. Also found a full length piece of rebar, and made property corners out of it with my trusty hacksaw. Boss didn't need me out there running perc tests, so I went back to the office with the intention of hauling logs out of the woods with my new choker. He just called, and some asshole pulled the points we set, and he may need me out there to replace them. That sucks. I'm being threatened with work, but it's indefinite, so it's hard to judge what I have time to get into. Being threatened with work is worse than working :^/

BTW, that's my future removal in the pic background. Nice tree. I'll be sorry to see it gone. Norway spruce you think?

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Oh, and yesterday I found out the "white oak" next to my drive is actually a black oak. I couldn't makes sense of the leaves looking at pics, but they looked like a white variety to me. I didn't know they had shade leaves and sun leaves. The shade leaves look white, and the sun leaves which mine doesn't have yet look red. That's kinda cool. White is the "premium" oak, but it's not like I'm gonna make lumber out of it or anything. It probably came from my now deceased black oak in my backyard, so it's lineage goes on. That makes me happy. Also found a couple pods in my drive that look like small honey locust pods. Not sure where they came from. I guess animals brought them to me.
 
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My new choker's the bee's knees. Makes connecting everything easy. Hauled 13 logs, and a couple large branches out of the woods today. There's two logs in that pic from last time...

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Got another knot stuck in the other end of my rope :^D I put an anchor around the shackle, and it's a permanent addition now. Oh, well. No big deal. I already decided this was gonna be my skidding rope. I'll buy another one for "cleaner" work. Might get some ⅝" Treemaster. I was asking about bigger rope, and this might be a good bet. Good day.
 
Uh oh...I'm on a run of equipment damage...the hydraulic motor for the feed roller spat its key and the keyway on the shaft is buggered too. It's at the mechanics until at least Friday. Then I dropped my 150 about 8' and cracked the handle back by the air filter, it clipped a log right next to a nice pile of composty leaves...duct tape should hold it for now.
 
More plumbing today. We got the 2" line hooked up. Pressure tank issues. We get about 150 gallons in a minute, then it goes dead and has to recover. Pretty sure the pressure tanks are not set up right. On the plus side, the automatic chicken waterers are on line. Happy chickens. Happy farmers who don't have to fill waterers. Now I can go back to being a timber framer for a while. :)
 
42" at the bottom (cut it at 30" above the ground at the customer's request - hated losing that compression curl in the buttress root area) to 38" at 11 ft up the trunk.

The next section of the tree was 38" at the cut and splays out to 72" after the crotch. This mill will only handle up to 52" width, so we'll cut the "Y" down, and have more coffee table slabs ;)

Inside milling, how luxurious! How wide is that maple?
 
Yesterday I was feeding Hawthorn with a side order of Blackberry brambles to the chipper half the day, and thinking there can't be a worse way to spend time.
Well, today I spent half the day in the hospital, hooked up to a bag of chemicals.
So I guess there is :lol:
 
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