Felling trees in Gartly Moor Forest

Date Added: 05 September 2007 Contributor: Norman Davidson Year of Photo: 1980 Picture No: 254

Photograph courtesy of Roy Neish who is in action felling a thinning rack in Gartly Moor in 1980.
Rack ways 4 metres wide located about 20 metres or so appart were felled in a plantation to allow forwarders access into the forest to pick up timber felled by chainsaw operators (fellers). The fellers partially cut the rackways and then thinned out the trees on either side before continuing with the next section of the rackway which could be several hundred metres long. It was often a difficult process to thin the trees in between the racks because the dense branches would not allow the trees to fall easily and they had sometimes to be pulled by hand backwards quite long distances.

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Groups: Forestry in Action, Northeast Scotland , Tools, equipment and clothing

3 Comments

I remember doing this on various sites throughout the UK - it was hard work but looking back on it we were a great team and the cameraderie hasn't been repeated in any of the jobs I've subsequently done. Comment left on 29 September 2008 at 06:19 by Robin Bunniss

Yes it was a mighty dangerous job having to brash up the lower part of the tree with a chainsaw in the early days before chain brakes were fitted, also trees standing straight up after being cut off the stump this was common with Norway and Sitka spruce second thinnings. Comment left on 19 June 2016 at 15:22 by Leslie Phillip

When we were snedding by Axe the fellers just left the tree to us and we had to struggle with a Spoke to move the tree back.

Sometime in extreme cases we had to use our Horse to pull them back.

And all on piece work! Comment left on 19 June 2016 at 19:11 by Jimmy Thain

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