TALL TIMBER
Brian Reader celebrates 50 years in forestry in 2017 and he’s experienced some interesting changes in our industry during that time. He describes, in his own words, how he got into forestry and what it was like logging in native forests half a century ago.
PROCESSING IS MY LEAST FAVOURITE job in a harvesting crew, but I have to say that I wouldn’t be unhappy to be working permanently with this new John Deere 3156G and SouthStar QS630 combination.
I’m full of admiration for people who can spend eight hours per shift concentrating hard on making the perfect log, hour-after-hour, dayafter-day. It’s intensive stuff and I don’t think I have their patience or the operating dexterity.
Then along comes a machine and head that take the hard graft and stress out of processing and you think to yourself “I could do that for a bit longer – maybe a lot longer”.
That’s the feeling I had coming off the 3156G. I was a bit nervous to start with – I always am with processors – but at the end I was thinking that I’d like to get back on it. It’s a really nice machine and the whole set up is great.
It was helpful being able to stand behind Shane in the cab, watch how he does it and discuss things, then have him stand behind me while I processed. That’s the beauty of a rear-entry cab – you get more space compared to a standard cab, and they’re much easier and safer to climb into from the stairway. Although I did find it a squeeze getting onto the first step from the tracks because of the extra guarding fitted to the front. But with so much metal there, this machine is well protected from direct hits. It looks very sturdy all round, in fact.
The cab is one of the highest I’ve sat in, and the way it is positioned forward of the base
means you are right there in the thick of the action and you’ve got a great view of the whole skid. I particularly like those windows in the floor because you can see your tracks when on the move.
The way the Rosewarne team have set up this skid site, Shane doesn’t have to move the machine very much. Just reach and grab the stems then swing around and place the logs for the loaders to stack. So, for me it meant I could just concentrate on log making.
I like the way the seating and controls are set up. It’s super comfortable and everything falls nicely to hand. I wasn’t aware the controls are not Sure Grips, as they look similar and work in the same way. Shane has them set up in the Cat pattern, which suits me, but it is easy to swap to a Hitachi pattern with the flick of a button.
Although there’s a SouthStar hanging off the dipper arm, anyone who has operated a Waratah will find it works in the same way and the buttons are no different – on the left are the main and topping saws, harvester up and de-limb knives on the trigger; on the right is the fast drive wheel speed, nudge buttons to go forward to back and on the trigger are the open and close functions for the knives and wheels. With all the grades entered into the system, the optimiser does the hard work and I kept an eye on the screen just above eye level on the righthand pillar. Easy as, once you get into a rhythm.
The head holds onto the stems really well as it’s driving them through and the knives are very efficient at de-limbing, even with the bigger branches – among the best I’ve tried. The main saw is good, though not especially fast. Didn’t use the top saw much.
I know Shane misses the powerful slew on his previous machine, but I think this one has good swing, and also lift. More than enough for dealing with these stems – and bigger ones that may come through. In fact, all of the functions worked very well, with no slowing down if you were using more than one at the same time. And I liked the stability of this base, it felt well planted, even when stretching and grabbing a large stem.
One of the stand-out features for me was how quiet the cab is. Shane and I could carry out a conversion at normal levels and hear perfectly.
A great example of how two excellent pieces of equipment can make life so much easier for a processing dummy like me.
NZL