Rope abrasion protection ?

[Steve Bullman]

11 hours ago, Olly47 said:

In my couple of acres of sycamore, ash, willow, chestnut, elm, birch, etc. over the last 40 years the only problem I have had was Dutch elm disease, and this was before using spikes.

In my humble opinion, the tree attackers are not waiting patiently for me to spike holes "to aerate their inner whatsits", they get on quite well without my help. How many ancient carvings, nails, fencing wires are there in the bark of healthy trees?

Trees also get naturally damaged all the time without having their wounds treated. 

My pruning is for safety reasons.

Theres a huge difference between naturally occuring damage to trees, and wilfull damage caused by unecessary spiking of live trees.