I guess the idea of the show is to make it a viable woodland business in today's world. As much as I love the old tools and the old photos of the fellas out in the woods there no way you could make it work as a business nowadays and make vast amounts of money out of it. When I was managing my reserve in newcastle I spent a some time looking into making the council some money from their woodlands and for amount that it'd cost them to get stuff felled and removed it didn't make enough money to make it worth while. Mind you I guess I was more excited about making vast quantities of charcoal and felling trees all winter than anything else
Orric
Pretty much.
Don't get me wrong, I quite like well made handtools but in almost any trade where you are paid by the amount of work you do (as opposed to the amount of time you spend at work) some element of mechanisation helps get things done faster.
I have and use power planes at work but prefer the gentle swish that a well honed handplane makes, sometimes its faster to use a handplane to ease a door than to set the transformer, powerleads and power planer up but other times if there's several doors in a line to do the power planer comes out and I only do the last couple of strokes with the hand plane just to get a better finish.
Same with nailguns, I didn't spend knocking on 400 quid on one because I just like spending money and enjoy having to wear ear protection to put nails in, nope, I bought it because in the arms race I work in I'm competing against other people with them and if I'm not producing the same amount of work I don't get hired.
Or on pricework my prices (or more accurately the prices that the company I'm working for is willing to pay) is based on using one. Not using one in many cases is too slow and consequently without one I won't make the same amount of cash per week. I pays for it's self and chainsaws are the same.
Line I said I don't
like working with a chainsaw in woodland either (it does kind of spoil the ambience slightly) but its so much faster when felling and bucking trees that it seems silly not to.