Pollards, the forgotten art-discussion

[Andy Collins]

I aint so sure, its all about making the very most of your products really, imagine if I was to fell an oak for subsidance tommorow, and was charging 1500 quid to fell and remove all arrisings.

 

so i am up, got the money for two days, so lets get a saw mill round the back, cut some planks store em for a while, and oh thats a nice burr well lets put an advert on e bay some bowl carver will have that.

 

or lets winch that walnut root out they will have that for rifle butts etc etc etc

 

it just requires imagination, look what these boys do with a carving tip! awsome stuff

 

I think many of the members here do look at all avenues re: "waste" disposal. Loggable material is logged, many plank decent timber from butts, or source a buyer, carvers carve, turners turn, and chip is sold for pellet fuel. It maybe a new take on an old theme, but it is out there, and it is growing, maybe through necessity to turn a penny when pruning work is slack, maybe to make a bigger profit, or simply to buy a couple of pints down the pub. None of this is anything new, and even lads who've just come from college enjoy trying selling a product made with their hands and a few tools.

[Stephen Blair]

I aint so sure, its all about making the very most of your products really, imagine if I was to fell an oak for subsidance tommorow, and was charging 1500 quid to fell and remove all arrisings.

 

so i am up, got the money for two days, so lets get a saw mill round the back, cut some planks store em for a while, and oh thats a nice burr well lets put an advert on e bay some bowl carver will have that.

 

or lets winch that walnut root out they will have that for rifle butts etc etc etc

 

it just requires imagination, look what these boys do with a carving tip! awsome stuff

 

the rd you talk of,i am well down mate, i have been heading this way for the last 4 years, but the 1500quid you talk of is on a page in a forum, these jobs dont really exist, i plan on having my own woodyard selling everything from bags of sawdust to woodcarvings worth a few k, but unless someone gives me a 100k to get it going so i can hit the market i want with out jeopordising my families home and my health it isnt going to happen. I am a friend of woodmad, i have taking his lead for a few years now, he hs always been one step ahead if you ask me, but all these things cost money, big money. I have had finance up to the hilt for machinery, i have paid wages, ran in overdraft and not slept a descent nights sleep for years. I have went from stressed out contractor to chilled out hedge cutter, firewood guy. It is a great idea, especially in your head, BUT bottom line is £££££, i have lost loads of jobs recently to guys with saws, anyone can cut off a branch or sell somefirewood, and as long as there is wars, murderers, poverty, famine and basically honest folk struggling to put food on the table after the last few years of boom then bust, then i think you can kiss arboriculture good bye for a few years, and lets face it, its a made up profession anyway i think, arb has went bigtime in the last 8 years, why is that??because folk could charge what they, when they want because folk had bundles of money and could afford to spend money on extravigances. Energy prices will go through the roof, firewood will become cheaper and the woodlands will get ravished, there isnt a stick left on our beaches, every day guys that have been paid off are out with bow saws and b+q chainsaws trying to earn a pound, and since when was the woodcutter of days gone bye a highly inteligent filocipher, he was an unqualified guy with a strong back, have a look through old pics back in the turn of the century and look at the treework, they werent target pruning or cutting back to the collar, they were doing what we all do, cutting where it is the easiest.

Edited December 23, 2009 by Stephen Blair

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

the rd you talk of,i am well down mate, i have been heading this way for the last 4 years, but the 1500quid you talk of is on a page in a forum, these jobs dont really exist, i plan on having my own woodyard selling everything from bags of sawdust to woodcarvings worth a few k, but unless someone gives me a 100k to get it going so i can hit the market i want with out jeopordising my families home and my health it isnt going to happen. I am a friend of woodmad, i have taking his lead for a few years now, he hs always been one step ahead if you ask me, but all these things cost money, big money. I have had finance up to the hilt for machinery, i have paid wages, ran in overdraft and not slept a descent nights sleep for years. I have went from stressed out contractor to chilled out hedge cutter, firewood guy. It is a great idea, especially in your head, BUT bottom line is £££££, i have lost loads of jobs recently to guys with saws, anyone can cut off a branch or sell somefirewood, and as long as there is wars, murderers, poverty, famine and basically honest folk struggling to put food on the table after the last few years of boom then bust, then i think you can kiss arboriculture good bye for a few years, and lets face it, its a made up profession anyway i think, arb has went bigtime in the last 8 years, why is that??because folk could charge what they, when they want because folk had bundles of money and could afford to spend money on extravigances. Energy prices will go through the roof, firewood will become cheaper and the woodlands will get ravished, there isnt a stick left on our beaches, every day guys that have been paid off are out with bow saws and b+q chainsaws trying to earn a pound, and since when was the woodcutter of days gone bye a highly inteligent filocipher, he was an unqualified guy with a strong back, have a look through old pics back in the turn of the century and look at the treework, they werent target pruning or cutting back to the collar, they were doing what we all do, cutting where it is the easiest.

 

thats the biggest load of rubbish ive heard to come from you wee brother!

 

You my friend have been beaten, and it shows.

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

And that you think the common garden forester was basicaly a hick with a strong back is insulting, to me as one.

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

i am not thick but the year i thinned out 2 trees they blew over in a storm a few months later, one landed on a main rd during the day and the other miseed a house by a cats whiskers, they were both root bound, one was about fo ft high and the other was about 3 feet in diameter. i never recomended the works, i originally wanted to fell them but i was convinced by the customer to thin them out, there were no visual signs of root problems above ground.

 

i have no doubt that there wood have been obvious signs that there was issues in the rooting area, be that ground obstructions to roots, or obvious compaction leading to the same, there is always a series of clues as to what is going on in a trees life, environment, body language. etc

 

and i have to stop spelling would with wood!

[Stephen Blair]

thats the biggest load of rubbish ive heard to come from you wee brother!

 

You my friend have been beaten, and it shows.

 

how am i beaten??and i never called anyone a hick, i am unqualified and had a strong back

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

I think many of the members here do look at all avenues re: "waste" disposal. Loggable material is logged, many plank decent timber from butts, or source a buyer, carvers carve, turners turn, and chip is sold for pellet fuel. It maybe a new take on an old theme, but it is out there, and it is growing, maybe through necessity to turn a penny when pruning work is slack, maybe to make a bigger profit, or simply to buy a couple of pints down the pub. None of this is anything new, and even lads who've just come from college enjoy trying selling a product made with their hands and a few tools.

 

you say that but are you in a more rural type environment?

 

I can promise you most of the firms in london and surounding counties waste ALOT

[Stephen Blair]

i have no doubt that there wood have been obvious signs that there was issues in the rooting area!

 

how can you say that?you werent there, you will never be there and all signs of that tree are now gone, roots aswell, its now a driveway i believe(well one of them) maybe this is why you are saying this, you cant be proved wrong..

[Ian Leach]

Sounds like everyone's opinion is wrong apart from your own, Chill to serious all the time.

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

how am i beaten??and i never called anyone a hick, i am unqualified and had a strong back

 

but you DID say that these men were basicaly too... mmm stupid to have any idea what they was doing, that they just cut where ever it was less work!

 

and kind of my point that everyone thinks these guys just went out there and hacked away willy nilly!

 

I am certain they knew as much abou the way wood/fungi and the ecosystem functioned as any of us out there doing it today, and probably a LOT more. maybe not biologicaly speaking, but being aware of something and managing it through practice and skill is different to having had an education.

 

trial and error, you soon learn what works and what dont. and what efects you have and there would have been other things that as a consequence became a bonus