Peter

Ply if your on a budget, wouldn't bother with steel personally. Ali plank does look nice and is fairly light and strong, it will cost around £600 in materials for a full box.

For £300 I probably wouldn't bother with an slr, unless you really want interchangeable lenses. If the person you're buying for already has lenses then go for something compatible, if they want to buy their own to suit the camera then I'd go for one of the better bare cameras, otherwise go for a compact.

Could also be the micro switch on the hopper, you can bypass that by connecting the wires together. Purely for the purposes of testing it of course.

Guys who aren't used to long bars always try to run the chains too tight, running a long bar and chain is a different skill set to running short bars, all the tips and tricks you learn on shorties go out the window when you get on 42" plus.

Plastic ones are injection moulded, so not really a one off sort of item.

NJ Aluminium if you want something snazzy. Local fabricator if you want cheap and cheerful.

Nothing hilly you mean Steve?

No, but I met the owner last week on an unrelated matter, he says they can't build them fast enough.

Or get one of these. Tonka Mini Wood Shaving Machines - Wood Shaving Machines for animal bedding - UK, Europe and Worldwide

Vinyl wrap or cut lettering work well on aluminium, as long as it's clean. You can paint but you need a really good etch primer to bond with the metal.

You can do a lot of grinding with a small machine but it can be tedious. I've got the little predator, if your buying new I would look at that and the fsi, as they both have a swivel which is much easier than the old style grinders with a single wheel brake and you have to slew the whole machine. If your budget dictates secondhand, then get a little rayco rg13 or similar, and make some money with it, then upgrade to a better machine. Cutting system doesn't really matter as long as you keep it sharp, low hp machines will really suffer with dull teeth.

Worth milling for sure, carvers like it too.

Thor magik 13 is excellent.

Indeed, I only have 2 years of car ownership, and I sold my last car 8 years ago to buy a pickup.

I haven't forgotten! Anyway, I think things are fine as they are fwiw. The domestic sector is never going to be regulated, and anyone working for corporate clients will have everything in order anyway.

Why do you think FISA is going to muscle in on th Arb sector? Genuine question btw, I haven't personally seen any evidence that they are going to. With regard to the AAAC scheme for small contractors, I'm sure you're aware of the simplified version for companies with less than 5 employees. Although the legal requirements for small firms may be low, the pressure for compliance comes from clients rather than 3rd party enforcing bodies now. (Personal experience from running a contracting business) I have not seen an HSE inspector on site anywhere in the last 5-6 years, and the last one I saw was training a local authority employee to do basic site safety checks. IE making his own job redundant. So I could completely ignore all the HS stuff, and just do domestic work without anyone questioning anything unless there was an accident,and AAAC would be totally irrelevant. If I want to work for LAs, schools, construction cos etc then they expect the same level of compliance from me as any other contractor. I'm not AAAC btw, but have been on the pre approval workshop and already meet most the criteria just because I need to have it in place for my clients. I'm not sure how you could have any kind of scheme in place which doesn't require all the same stuff as AAAC, having looked at it in some detail a few years ago for a project which you were involved with but never got off the ground.

There won't be an official UK/Euro distributor as they are not CE marked and may not conform to standards over here. They will meet ANSI Z133, which is the USA equivalent, but you still can't sell them in the UK.

It comes under nrswa, (chapter 8) so you need the ticket to do it. As silly as that may sound, if someone gets run over you are responsible so I would say it's worth doing by the book. If you need to close a footpath you need to provide an alternative, usually by closing a lane and putting 2 lines of proper barriers up to create a new footpath in the road.

Slice of cedar I turned into a worktop.

Mesh goggles are good in the wet. On windy days positioning yourself upwind of the dust helps, but it's not always possible.

I would suggest if you think you've found the right profile you order a single belt to check it fits. If it's a stock item you can return it, but if you order a banded belt it will be a special order and non returnable. A single C section belt will cost you about £10-15 depending on length.

There are a b c and z profiles, C section are 18mm deep by 22 mm wide. You can get banded belts in any profile and number of sections.

I use Bearing boys, they will get stuff to order if it's not on their website. Can't guarantee they can get yours but it's worth a try.

Scarpa Pro Ascent

Look for an inverter unit, at the lower end of the market they are all Chinese made. That's not a problem so long as you can get dealer backup and spares. You can run a bigger machine from a 16 amp socket, you can also run the same machine at lower amperages from a 13 amp supply, handy if you need to use it somewhere other than your workshop. Any welding process works best on clean metal, trying to weld through paint and rust will not achieve good fusion.