the 'todays job' thread

[AHPP]

4 hours ago, Stephen Blair said:

 

 

 

 

I once did a day near Watford for a bunch of moderately horrible gypsies. Loads of bits here and there around a forty acre woodland. The penultimate tree was, "Lovely oak tree. Just a fell. Might need a branch off first."
It was apparently quite a away across the site so I assembled the bare minimum of climbing gear and saw, fuel, oil, wedges, axe etc.

"Would you like some help carrying that?"

"Yes, please."

Orders were barked and five kids descended on my chattels. We started walking and after about ninety seconds we were all lost, separately, and my stuff was god knows where. My mood was short of ebullient. It was 15:00 in January, I'd been doing a load of fiddly bollocks with woolly specs all day and I was fed up with listening to pikey lardarses shout at each other.

We found the tree. It was an utterly buggered oak, four foot DBH, on the boundary of a small domestic garden, crown (dead as) weighted towards said garden and the house at the end of it. The bottom was goosed so I spiked up forty feet, set my climbing rope as a pull rope and dropped back to five feet below the crown break, where the wood was OK. Still not good but OK.

I wedged the crown over while some mercenary fat bastard shouted at the aforementioned kids to yank the rope. The woodland owner turned up on a quad bike and yanked it a bit harder and, eventually, over it went. The right way, thank christ.

This was five or six years ago and I can't recall doing a sketchier fell since, nor one so wretched: double bar on spikes with no mainline, then hitting the sort of wedges that sink your heart when they sound back hard and don't move a micron.

 

 

Stacking a staging of logs for the high feller is a neat trick btw. I'd have probably stood on the machine grab.

 

[Stephen Blair]

Managed to get back to the stumps yesterday afternoon and this morning for a couple of hours between climbing job, customers happy.  Job list is getting shorter for Christmas so happy days.

[AHPP]

Can you describe the workflow of cone splitting and digging stumps please. Do you do a pass along the line with the bucket first to try your luck getting some out whole or to expose more joints to stick the cone in? Or do you cone split everything from the top first and dig to finish?

Edited December 8, 2022 by AHPP

[Stephen Blair]

I dropped these trees about 5 years ago so hoped they would of been pretty rotten.

  So I tried with peeler first as the tip on the corkscrew is £300 and the ground is stoney.

  After a couple of hours of bucking bronco I decided, screw the £300 let’s use the cone.

 Single pass busting up all the stumps with cone.

  Then start with tooth bucket digging out what I can and passing back making fresh pile for lad in Avant.  When I need the stump peeler to either cut or mattock I swap between and work my way up and turf patch fill and pad down as I go.  
  The customer is aware it needs soil and seed in spring if he wishes it to blend in with the rest of the lawn.

[Mark Bolam]

Finished the year yesterday with some Biblically wet connie killing.

 

 

[Stephen Blair]

How’s the wee loader doing Mark?

[Mark Bolam]

It did bloody well yesterday shifting the chipper around in those ground conditions.

Timber shifting (although it’s all staying on site) will have to wait until it dries out a bit. It was like the Somme when we’d finished.

 

Just going to wash the machines down now, they got put to bed dirty after a diversion to The Woolpack for a couple of festive Peronis.

[Stephen Blair]

It’s amazing what a machine can do, my kit all lying dirty in the containers which I hate but weather conditions don’t allow a good clean just now.

[doobin]

Some great pics there Stephen. Looks like my kind of job- a decent amount of trees sorted with minimal effort and maximum profit by towable kit with the right attachments 👍🏻

[Stephen Blair]

3 hours ago, doobin said:

Some great pics there Stephen. Looks like my kind of job- a decent amount of trees sorted with minimal effort and maximum profit by towable kit with the right attachments 👍🏻

Only let down I didn’t have a suitable Avant attachment for dealing with the arisings.  4/1 only grabbed big stuff and small fell through, big stone rake was the same, forks and beak no use as I didn’t want a q00m trail across the lawn that needed tidied up at the end, so lad had to handball everything on neatly.  I need a big oversize bucket, the Avant will handle it no bother.