Cutting hedges

[Dan Maynard]

I reckon your ideal job would be travel round to do tricky fells for tree surgeons on a Saturday. Most of us don't do many fells especially any size.

[Donnie]

2 hours ago, Dan Maynard said:

I reckon your ideal job would be travel round to do tricky fells for tree surgeons on a Saturday. Most of us don't do many fells especially any size.

Mainly soft wood cutting in Scotland in forestry. I'm very inexperienced in hardwoods as we normally leave them as there's not much left here. All Sitka, pine and larch 

[Dan Maynard]

Fair enough, I was kind of thinking side hustle has to depend what you're good at - any good at chainsaw mechanics? If you get into porting saws there seems to be plenty of demand.

[Mark Bolam]

I wouldn’t totally discount hedgecutting, although it’s physically hard and we all hate it.

It fills gaps in the diary for us, and keeps us in with choice clients with plenty of trees, like maybelateron says.

 

One of the big things is getting rid of arisings.

We did two full Transit loads today.

 

I’d go for a Husky long reach battery set up, but couple it with a Stihl HS82R for rougher stuff.

You’ll also need a decent set of A-Frames and a double or triple ladder.

 

Fairly steep initial set up if you need a vehicle as well.

 

One advantage you have is you could price fairly high because you don’t ‘need’ the work.

 

Logs might be easier if you have somewhere you can be based.

A half decent hydraulic splitter can be had for under £1k, and you’ve already got saws and access to timber.

[Stephen Blair]

Get yourself a harness and climbing kit and get up the trees, that’s where the money is.  An experienced feller of your standard and stamina will be a great climber, you know how wood works so it will be easy for you.  Hardwood/ softwood doesn’t matter, first cut of a branch and you’ll read what it’s doing  and crack on.  Your saw fit already so you just need to get time on spikes I say.  
  

[Conor Wright]

If you really want to do something arb related on the side, become a physiotherapist.

[Blackbriarwoods]

21 hours ago, JDon said:

Aye. Always wanting to make more that's my bother. 
 

Maybe I'll stick to cutting as everyone here has nothing really good to say about it. Glad I asked tbf!!

If I could do it over I'd do the cutting through the week and the firewood in any free times, I could be as busy as I wanted or needed to be. At the time I already had a small yard in a local woodland that hgvs could access, so that helped.

I did do the tree climbing side of it for a while, I don't think I was suited to it, If I was knackered I just wanted to ground level prune it, I was way to impatient to do it to the standard of many on here. Didn't mind using spikes, they proved useful at times

[Rich Rule]

I remember watching a guy I was working for, accidentally on purpose, break his own long reach hedge trimmers.

 

He said he wasn’t going to do hedges anymore and now he didn’t have any hedge trimmers, didn’t plan on replacing, he would never have to trim a one again.

[Haironyourchest]

[Haironyourchest]

I blame the catalogs...happy, attractive people, sculpting their little box hedges... Power tool version of recruitment propaganda.