This topic contains 4 replies, has 4 voices, and was last updated by 
Torbjörn Johnsen 2 years ago.
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Feller butchers to us here in Sweden and Northern Europe are small and mainly used for bioenergy harvesting. The big ones that you see in North America haven’t been used here for decades as the CTL-harvesters has taken over. But where, apart from North America, are the big feller butchers actually used? Are there any here in Europe?
A related question I have is why did the feller bunchers “disappear” in Europe? For us here in North America (western Canada) they are a very useful tool in the tool box.
I´m not sure, but it must have been the industry that pushed the development towards Cut-To-Length systems as pulpwood and saw logs never went to the same place. The forest companies thought that it was more efficient to do the sorting directly in the forest and bring the wood directly from the forest to the right mill.
That’s my guess anyway.Another issue was that the Swedes early decided that the brush should be left on site. To act as fertilizer and to keep the grass down. This was before bioenergy from the forest was invented. I remember systems with feller-bunchers and stroke delimbers being used on site, and the delimbed stems were skidded to a landing where they were cut in lengths by a stationary cutting device. This was in the 70´s. In some cases full tree lengths were transported to larger bucking facilities to be cut and sorted before they went to the mills.
Maybe the standard of CTL was already set when northern forests were eploited and the wood was drived by river floating in late 19th century? Logs were possible to floa, stems wasn’t?
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