If you're running Ultimate 1.0.1, and don't mind tacking on an additional mod, PowerCraft's harvesters are beyond simple to use. I think all you need to make one is a dispenser, a piece of redstone, and a PC conveyor belt. Hit it with a redstone signal, and it'll send out a laser that chops down all vanilla trees and replants the saplings according to which kind was lopped: oaks will have one sapling placed per tree, and jungles will have a 2x2 area of saplings planted per tree, for example. You can even limit the range of the laser by placing stone brick (I think obsidian works, too, but stone brick's simpler to get) any distance in front of the harvester.
Hell, I managed to automate one completely using nothing but vanilla redstone, regular old turtles, and a single harvester working on jungle trees. Just place the turtles facing the saplings (and therefore, the resulting trees), put a piece of jungle wood in their first slot, and make (and run) a program with the following code:
Code:
while true do
turtle.select( 1 )
if ( turtle.compare() )
restone.setOutput( "back", true )
sleep( 0.5 )
retstone.setOutput( "back", false )
end
sleep( 5 )
end
This tells the turtle to select slot #1 (the jungle log), compare it to the block in front of it, and if its the same as the item in the selected slot, to send a redstone pulse out the back. The 5-second delay at the end can be set to whatever you wish: lower for speedier harvesting (but more lag), or higher for slower harvesting, but with less lag.
After that, just run a wire (red alloy or regular old redstone, your choice) to the harvester, a chest on the back of it (the end with the black rectangle at the bottom), and...done. That's all you'd need to do. Fully automated, extremely easy to extend, and might even be able to best a SC tree farm in terms of speed and volume.
[ETA]
OH! Also, placement looks kinda like so...
Code:
SS SS SS SS SS
CH SS SS SS SS SS B
T T T T T
C = Chest
H = Harvester
S = Sapling (Jungle sapling, in this example)
T = Turtle
B = Stone Brick block