Marc

Yes to the above, but keep the pegs flush on the side your stood, you don't want to be thrown against a peg. Generally I just leave a little peg below the topping strop/sling just as a little precaution/added security, its not really needed but it makes me feel better. Everything else is flush, I'll throw the saw down quick when snatching and get a hold on the stem just in case, if its going to be bumpy enough you'll be thrown from a peg anyway.

On Monday I have a 1st aid at work course just a 1 day course by the red cross i've already done the 4 day course, 1 of the new guys will be with me on the course. Our emergency procedures are the same as treesurfer. Its a RA sheet with the usual generic tick boxes. On the front it has a space for site address if different from job sheet, the best access air/4x4/road. Contact number of nearest hospital, as well as usual 112/999. And a tick box for mobile phone signal strength. An emergency plan is formed on everyjob, nothing to complicated, just along the lines of, shout for/get assitance, perform aerial rescue, carry out 1st aid. Then we nominate someone to be designated rescuer, he'll have his kit laid out and ready. Our emergency procedures work very well! As they were put to a test, without details a climber hurt himself in the tree. As soon as the designated rescuer saw this he alerted a new member of the team told him to go to the truck get the RA sheet with site address and call for an ambulance, then wait for this to arrive (and to come back and tell him that the call is made and estimated arrival time) this took minutes to do, and left him free to deal with the climber. The climber was able to get himself to the ground unaided, the rescuer gave him prompt 1st aid, and reassurance. The ambulance arrived quickly and the other crew member lead them to the site. All in all from the moment the accident occured till the injured climber was in the ambulance was around 15mins. Even with a well drilled team with good kit and training accidents do happen.

Flush cut nearly every time, I hate them pegs, they get in the way when rigging, snagging the line or cathing branches, can be a painfull hazard if your not carefull, a pain in the arse for groundies feeding the chipper etc etc. Its laziness to leave them. Ha its just my opinion though, and a pet hate. Sometimes i'll leaving a little peg if i'm snatching out a top.

11mm blaze would probably be good, I only had 8-9mm cords and 13mm rope, so went for the rope, its not to bulky, forms a nice size knot, and for me just feels more secure. I climb on a treemagic now so I never got to give my bridge mod on the dragonfly abuse. My only concern would be how quickly it wears, its easy to replace though. I did some climbing in my dragonfly this weekend and the bridge is far better than that on my treemagic, it slips and supports a twisted positions much more easily. Now if only I can think of a way to mod the treemagic.

Thanks again Lee, i'll have another search today. This is just a learning excercise at the moment, i'm trying to educate myself on all areas of tree health care.

I'm struggling to google decent articles on verticular mulching of trees, finding plenty of articles on heart problems though, venticular mulching wtf? Is there a better search word?

LOL thought it might be, I've seen some pics in magazine and read a few articles, how you actually go about it though is confusing me. All I can think of is i'm going to need a boiler suit as its going to be very messy and probably wrong as you pointed out. So the pm would be greatly appreciated Lee.

I'm not convinced its the best idea for stags, yours sounds much better. Spear cutting has more to do with trying to replicate strom damage where torn limbs would break out and stab into the ground, and hopefully provide habitat. In some of the nature reserves, parks and trust sites i've worked at leaving potentially dangerous trees standing is an unacceptable risk. So creating standing monoliths or trying to replicate storm damage as a form of reduction is more desirable, and leaving the fallen branches where they fall makes for a more natural looking and better enviroment.

You have some cool pics nuttyarb.

How do those of you who carry out verticular mulching go about this? I have some to do myself, I was going to hire an airspade and compressor to carry out the job. I thought of just fluffing the top of the soil lightly to the drip line, then adding some mulch on top, try to blast this in a bit, then put another couple of inches on top of that. Or Again lightly fluff the soil but also make some deeper trenches with the air spade radiating away from the trunk like spokes of a wheel upto the drip line. Incorporate the mulch into the trenches, then spread mulch under the rest of the canopy. Sounds easy enough, in theory. Any tips you can share? Also do you have to be carefull about pathogeons? If I was spreading mulch onto the top soil, I would not be to concerned. With verticular mulching its possible the chips will come into direct contact with the root system. Is this going to be a concern? Is it possible to find sterilised mulch?

Arb gary I think Big A's advice is best, companies will be more willing to take you on as an extra labourer with his tickets, than as a full time employee. That way you can get more experience, even if your not doing exactly what you want to do i,e climb you can still learn a lot watching others. Thats how I started a couple of years ago, I worked as a groundie saved my cash bought my own equipment, paid for my own kit, taught myself how to climb, put myself through my tickets, all the time learing from sites like this a reading books. After a few years I think i've done allright, and probaby learnt far more through real world experience than my few weeks training ever taught me. Did my first big crane job this week, it went really smooth and safley, i'm well chuffed.

A link to treemagineers website on how to change tree motion bridge, and sure enough it is the same. http://www.treemagineers.com/downloads/flow_chart_def.pdf So its got to be safe as,,,,,,,

Can someone correct me if i'm wrong here but I believe the new tree motion harness attachs the bridge in the same way as I do. So it must of been CE rated??? Besides mine has also been pass'd by 2 different loler inspectors. The stopper knot I use is a type of fishermans knot, and in use it only binds tighter, so tight in fact it'll be almost impossible to undo. As long as you leave an inch and a bit tail to allow for a very small amount of creep until it binds down good and strong. Don't dismiss it just because you don't like the look of it! It is the superior method in my humble opinion and i've used both. It works best with 13mm line. If you use a fishermans terminal knot then 10mm prussik is better. And I second using the larger rings, ART make nice ones at a good price rated to 28kn.

By injections you mean cortozone right? My doctor offered me a chance to have that, but advised against it, so did a few of my sports threapist friends. I was advised only to use cortozone as a last resort, and the operation as the final option. You say you only just developed the symptoms right? they are from the sound of it the same as what I had. It is not nice, but it is possible to deal with with out ops and injections. I say give it another 6 weeks, maybe try accupuncture followed by massage, it helps by increasing the blood circulation to the trouble spot aiding the body to heal naturally. But i'm no expert on the subject!!! I can also add, that the band around my tendons still gives me a little pain at times due to thee way it healed, but i'm not disabled in anyway I still have full strength and use of my arms. Operation or injections will be the last resort for me.

Thats terrible vdub, I hope he makes as full a recovery as he can. And thanks for posting, it can be a tough thing to do posting about a accident like this it can leave you open to criticism. But we were not there and probably will never know the full circumstances. I started treework at the same age as this guy, I shudder at some of the things I have done, but its good to be able to think back and realise what I did wrong, that I was lucky to not get hurt and how next time I will do it differently. Even now after 3 years on the saw I still consider myself very inexperienced, heck I'll be nearly 40 when I think i'll be able to call myself a fairly experienced treeworker.

Bill I would not reccomend Tenex, it is seriously strong stuff but to soft and picks easily. 11mm or 13mm climbing line is best, and at around 2-3 quid a meter its cheap enough to replace often. I'd reccomend trying it tied like in my picture, just be carefull and check it often, it is safe as houses though, them stopper knots ain't coming undone! I tried it like rocksntrees has tied it, but did'nt like the way the tails interfered with the rings, personally I like my rings to push up hard against the shackles than a knot.

Begining of last year I devolped similar symtpoms to what you describe vdub, for me the cause was obvious, i'd overstrained my arms doing work I was'nt accustomed to. It was horrible waking up with dead tingling arms, but because I knew what caused it I changed how I worked for a bit, used some support for my arms/elbows, and within 2 months the symptoms disappeared. Tendons and nerves can take a long time to heal! And sometimes never heal properly. Your doing the right thing though in my opinion, you know your body is telling you something and your trying to do something about it. Rather than thinking the pain is normal and to be expected! I do also think that we are all biomechanically different, some of us can do this job and never develop problems, some of us can develop RSI's and MSD's pretty quickly, and put up with it. Just my thoughts on this.

Nice looking for a coronet cut, our Tree officers promote the use of coronet cuts and leaving dead wood in the appropiate place. Did some nice highways work a few months back, the spec was to veteranise an Ash and Oak tree! We removed the hazards of the road but created hazards over the farmers field. Not only did we coronet cut, but we tried to create holes in the stem and limbs by boring out out slots in the hope they will be used by bats or woodpeckers. On one council contract we strapped deadwood high up in the canopy! And strapped a dead Beech trunk to the trunk of a living Beech. Another trick was spear cutting limbs in an attempt to get them stuck in the ground, apparently Stag beetles love the bit of wood under the soil. I just think all this work makes a nice change from the normal everyday treework.

Looks good Ed, I thought the same thing about vision, and about feathering the controls. If its hard to see the stump does it not make smoothly grinding out the stump hard? Still i'm sure a good loader driver could easily handle it, and our operator has a deft touch. And i'm sure some of the anal types would not like the idea of operating the controls of the loader from the side of the machine?!

I liked the look of that mod nice and slick, only saw the pic, did'nt read the thread. It seems a lot of work for the same results, or maybe i'm missing something? I bought a couple of bridges they were about 6.50 or something around that, i've never used them. The only reason I went with rope is the Petzl swivel works/slides better with the rope and I can adjust the length to customize the harness easily.

Here is a pic to show what I mean, the shackles have twisted round which can be a nuisance, but only a small one. Alternativley you can buy a new Komet strap in 3 different sizes 25,30 and 35cm for around 7 quid. Or ART make a replacement strap but its twice the price.

I replaced the bridge on my dragonfly with a piece of yale XTC but I imagine any 13mm rope would be good, just tie a barrel knot on each end. The good thing about this set-up is you can adjust the length. Frans off the Treehouse gave me the idea.

Yes thanks Tony. Especially the info on accurate pH readings, its so obvious, I can't beleieve I did'nt think to do that. I like the hole test for drainage/soil infiltration idea, its simple, and simple is always best in my opinion. But i'm curious about another device I read about a long time ago in a Bartletts article I think, it worked by inserting a tube into the ground, filled with water possibly? and gave a reading by vaccum pressure? Another questions :- How I can find out the lime content of soil, to see if its possible to try and change the pH levels. As I beleieve to high Lime content will make trying to lower the pH pointless?

1:18 on after a saturday night and i'm here posting about pH levels!! F$$$ whats happened to me.

O.k anybody do anything like this? I've started to get some intrest in this area, and was wandering on how to go about it. Does anyone know how I can get accurate soil analysis? Particularly pH level, and calcium carbonate levels. I've tried some garden center pH testing kits but the results have always been mixed with wildly varying pH levels from a small area. Also drainage tests any ideas on how I could go about this, other than digging a hole and filling it with water, then timing how long it takes to drain.