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Osage harvesters

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osage outlaw:
Ed is right,  there will be a lot of physical work involved no matter what equipment you have.  I figured I'd pick up and move each stave that I sold at least 10 times.

Badger:

--- Quote from: osage outlaw on October 21, 2022, 01:10:23 pm ---Ed is right, there will be a lot of physical work involved no matter what equipment you have.  I figured I'd pick up and move each stave that I sold at least 10 times.

--- End quote ---

 That would be exactly the thing we would need to talk about. Let's suppose we had a very well-designed flatbed trailer equipped with a splitter, a saw, and grinders for sapwood and bark. Also winches for dragging out of the woods and cherry pickers or hoists to lift them. It may even need a chipper for cleaning up the mess. It is fully processed before ever leaving the field.

willie:

--- Quote from: Badger on October 21, 2022, 02:36:15 pm ---That would be exactly the thing we would need to talk about. Let's suppose we had a very well-designed flatbed trailer equipped with a splitter, a saw, and grinders for sapwood and bark. Also winches for dragging out of the woods and cherry pickers or hoists to lift them. It may even need a chipper for cleaning up the mess. It is fully processed before ever leaving the field.

--- End quote ---

a well designed trailer with all the processing equip mentioned would be nice if one anticipated traveling to different areas for harvesting.

the trailer that large would not be very handy for getting too close to the tree though.  you might consider skidding the log to your trailer as a separate operation?  perhaps the truck that pulls the trailer could load the skidder on the truck bed and also mount the crane?

are you visualizing a F250 sized operation or a Kenworth?

BowEd:
An operation like that would take some brewing of thought.An investment as well.I'll admit it would be nice to leave the organized mess in the field before leaving.You would maybe need to take a tent with you possibly to stay overnight if it was too far away....ha ha if there was too many staves to process from a large tree or make a couple trips to seal the deal.
I've seen the mess on other peoples land that loggers leave after harvesting oak trunks for pallet wood.Not a pleasant site at all.No clean up at all.Plus their equipment tears the woods up hauling out trunks.Mess of a pile of limbs left in the woods too.Speculative nonfarmer land buyers buying land on pure commission profits and land hike prices that do this are a detrement to the woods IMHO.They'll get around $200.00 a trunk.Cut hundreds of mature 50 to 70 year old oaks.The good loggers leave a few parent trees but the bad ones take everything.
Watching fencing companies harvesting posts they come with a trailer with a skidster on it.A couple of men with chain saws.Then later a bull dozer to clean the mess up and smoothen out the prior fence line.They'll take out a 1/4 mile of hedge growing along a fence line.Piling what they don't use for the land owner to burn.Those piles set there for years before getting burned also.
Using a hydraulic splitter I think might leave a lot of waste opposed to wedges and a sledge hammer..I'd say it would be hard to beat a draw knife to get to a ring too.Some hand work would need to be done I'm afraid.
Cutting a large tree down will leave a large mess requiring equipment horse power to handle....crooked limbs etc. not worthy of being a stave.
I find by being opportunistic harvesting 6" to 12" handleable trees getting 15 to 20 staves at a time is doable for me in a day leaving with the staves in the bed of the truck.Cleaning them up on the yard to get stored away.
Maybe someone else can figure something out.

Eric Krewson:
The McGuire's had the biggest osage operation I had ever heard of, two people working full time around Nashville, Mike said they sold 30K staves over time. A good part of their time was spent traveling all over the country to tournaments so they could market the staves, this in itself is expensive. They sold some online but then they had the packaging and shipping. They weren't getting rich in the osage business and appeared to be just scraping by. There was also the physical toll that this kind of work does to your body; Mike's shoulders, arms and hands were a wreck from drawknife work.

I don't think an operation of the scale that you envision would be profitable, the market just isn't out there, most of us serious (in my case former serious) osage bow builders cut our own wood.

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