There are over 3 800 hectares of regenerated Sitka spruce on forest sites in Great Britain. These areas all require treatment in order to achieve satisfactory silvicultural spacing. Current methods for treatment are mainly motor manual and the labour resource to deal with the problem is limited. Crop characteristics, with densities often into hundreds of thousands of stems per hectare, make any manual method of treatment arduous. Initial mechanised respacing, in combination with final motor manual respacing, provides a system which can deal with a considerable proportion of regenerating crop areas. This paper describes the work that Technical Development Branch of The Forestry Authority have been doing with regard to initial mechanised respacing. Projects have evaluated both horizontal shaft and vertical shaft flails. The machines and working systems developed are described. The results, in terms of output and other more general information, are discussed.
Key words: mechanised respacing, British respacing, MKR70K flail.
Correspondence: Gordon A. Adam, Forestry Commission, Technical Development Branch, Ceinws, Machynlleth, Powys SY20 9HA, Great Britain
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