r/forestry

I have a chainsaw and a number of small ish trees less than 12 inches in diameter. A few are bigger, but not much. They are still heavy and tall so I know they are dangerous if you aren't careful.

I do not have plastic wedges.

A point of contention between my wife who doesn't cut down trees and myself is how deep to make the first cut. My feeling is that I want to make the first cut pretty deep - over half. That way when I do the back cut it wont pinch. My thought was I am making a large teeter-totter and I need to put the fulcrum/hinge at the point that makes one side heavier. By making the first cut deeper, the tree will be heavier on the side I want the tree to fall to and it won't fall back and pinch the blade.

My wife says I was doing it wrong and only needed to cut 1/4 to 1/3. She ended up going to the Internet and feels validated because that is the consensus. However, she can't explain why this is better. My understanding is based on common sense and I know that if I only cut 1/3, the saw will get pinched when my back cut gets to the hinge because more weight is on the back of the tree.

I know that if I had plastic wedges (which she thinks is unnecessary), then I would agree on a smaller first cut and pound the wedges in as I do the back cut. However, without then I am struggling to see how a smaller first cut helps. In my mind, it will make it more likely to fall the wrong way.

Can someone explain why I should be doing this or if my common sense feeling is correct?

Thanks!

I've started my own forest contracting company mainly doing timber cruising, boundary flagging/painting and SMZ delineation but also almost anything else a client might want including road maintenance, GPS or drone flights ect..

But one thing I haven't done yet is property line painting. I've asked a couple contractors from TX, LA and AL what they charge and the answers are all over the place.

I was told in Texas $800-$1000/mile. AL said $500-$800/mile and a Louisiana contractor told me $180/mile.

Does anyone have anything different? This is for full property line painting. Shave the bark and paint with a brush kind of painting. Not marking harvest boundaries. I'm curious if there's an average or if everybody is just that different.

(British Columbia-based) I'm in my second year of geological engineering (also a sweet program) and finding out that rocks are not nearly as much my forte as trees. I spent last summer doing consulting (i.e. forest tech) work and genuinely loved every second of it, loved learning everything from ecological to harvesting, and especially loved road design, cut/fill/blasting assessments, etc. My university offers a "Harvest Planning and Engineering" degree, a major of a BSc in Forest Operations, and I love the sound of it. What's sweet is that, if you minor in engineering, you can get your P. Eng. (PE equivalent) as well as your RPF, and I've already taken most of the engineering courses that would be required to get that minor.

I'm at a bit of a critical decision point now, and lots of the people (not necessarily in the industry) have tried to discourage me, saying "forestry is dying", and that the degree I'm currently in will have better job prospects (probably true regardless, but as long as I can get a job, I'm happy). From my (brief) time in the industry, I have to say that there was somewhat of a negative future view, but I also don't agree with everything the media is reporting about the industry right now. Even a senior development forester at the company I worked at told me not to switch because the industry "just feels like it has no hope". I know the situation will probably improve post-Trump, but overall we are in a reduction (a prof in the forestry department said figures along the lines of 15 down to 6 million board feet processing) which inevitably doesn't create the best likelihood of getting a job in the industry. My opinion, though, is that while conventional harvest forestry may not be in a "boom" now (and it is one of those industries), management is only going to grow (especially with the BC wildfire situation), and that will be overseen by RPFs.

I love forestry! I love bush work, I love the ecological aspect of it, and I love the culture. If we were in a "boom", say 20 years ago with the pine bark beetle AAC increase, it would be an absolute no-brainer. What do you guys think? I'm trying not to let what the industry looks like right now decide what my career will look like in it.

Sorry about the big ramble. Thanks for listening!