Monkey Puzzle take down

[ballymac]

Good luck with the monkey puzzle. Felled a couple of dying ones a good few years ago and got some of the stems planked up into 2 inch boards. Got a friend to make a kitchen table out of it for my folks and made a small kiddies table myself. The pale timber looks good with the big dark contrasting knots in it.

Dismantled a dead and a live one recently-pigs both of them. As others have said wear good leather gloves and long sleeves in the tree, make sure your spikes have proper purchase and be prepared for the sticky gum even in a partially dead tree. There's not much hold in the wood and branches tend to snap out quickly. The branches and timber are pretty heavy and I found that it was very easy to underestimate the volume of chip in a tree (but that might be a chronic problem I seem to have with most trees!!!) We took approx 8t chip from those 2 medium sized trees (60ft ish)

Best of luck