18 stoner

Just being lazy I guess Dave. My point is, sometimes groundies are very under-rated. They have the ability to control whole working site, being on site supervisors. More multi skilled i guess and tend to be still willing to get the job finished with quality when its 5pm, raining and the climber is "tending his ropes" Big up the groundie for a change, a site can easily be a mess without a good one!

:lol: Nah, not the one you are thinking of, he is usually worth his money, and you do need to make allowancies for age sometimes:001_rolleyes:

Interesting thread this. Just to throw my ten in, what if a climber cant (or wont) do the groundies job? I have two groundies(with rescue tickets) that sub to me that will turn up EVERY morning fresh, full of beans, willing to pick up any saw, any amount of kit, not ask for coffee or what time we finish and not even moan about the weather if its crap. However, i had a subbie climber who thought he was worth £150 a day, would turn up half an hour late(regularly), then ask for coffee when he turned up, have a couple of smokes and seem to have all the time in the world as he was "a climber". He would then eventually get to the job and proceed to build his kit, tittle with saws, drink more coffee and smoke some more, eventually get into the tree 2 hours after start of works, spend 4 hours in the tree in total for the day then think he didnt need to pick up logs and not help clear up after a "day climbing"! Who is worth their money? IMO, i would rather climb myself and hire a good groundy ANY day. Groundies are well under valued im afraid and have said it before. They tend not to be premadonnas!

I would say you guys are going a little over the top with a 90cc saw for cross cutting, especially if an 18" bar has done the job so far. Personally for a 99% of the time logging saw, I would go for either the 365 with 18" bar or the 372 with 20" or 24". Both these saws are a little more old school than the others on your list, cheaper, will be well on top of the job cross cutting all day and will last years. If there was to be a downside at all, it will be the AV is not so good on these due to being older design. The XPG would help though.

Ah, that explains it Steve, had mine about 6 weeks and I overlooked the z bit! They were obviously talking about the older one at the time. If there is one slight disadvantage to the full touch screens and thats the size of the keypads but if you are used to blackberry i think you will be fine:sneaky2: When you turn the phone "landscape" the keys are bigger. Not a big issue i guess and i heard you can by a stylus for them anyhow.

I heard the desire was soon to be discontinued, but may have just been sales pitch. I got the wildfire, just about the same as the desire but slightly more compact. Mike has a blackberry and after fiddling around with my HTC i have converted him! I can say the HTC really has changed my life!

Many thanks for all you have done Paul as I was one of the ones who asked for your help. I would be interested in your reply to Skyhucks question though.

TC, for a few quid its worth trying. The reason i said so was many years back, in a former life i was working on a farm that bought a new combine. It had a big v6 in it and was fine running normal cutting but when it had the straw chopper in gear it over heated. The combine manufacturers (New Holland) after much scratching of heads, kept ringing Merc and saying there was something wrong but the only reply they got back was "It will not be the engine" To cut the long story short, they eventually came out to look at the combine and discovered the wrong belt had been fitted by N.H. Merc ended up billing them for time. It turned out they had either fitted a toothed belt and should have been smooth or vice versa. Cant remember now. In short the merc guy who solved the problem said that the type, condition and tension of belts on all merc engines was critical when under full load. I just hope this is the case for you too and solves the issue. Let us know how it goes.

Just wanted to say many thanks to all the members from Arbtalk, and the new customers that have been in touch for firewood, also thanks to all for the compliments about the quality of the logs. Cheers, Pete:thumbup:

Cheers for that John, glad you realised why i asked. It seems to be a large can of worms and I'm sure there are many who will jump on the "green" band wagon to get shot of treated waste. Would take some policing i guess.

This is how i would present the deal; say your firewood is £100 per cube, offer a 10% discount if they take 4 cube at a time instead of 1 cube. If you sold 4 cube to 4 seperate customers, if you were quick it would take half hour each cube labour on delivery. Say your labour and transport costs are £20 per hour, thats a total of £40. To deliver all 4 cube to your pub at once with discount would be £360. It would still only cost you £10 to deliver, so in real terms thats the only discount it has cost you. £10 for a £360 sale. I would rather have that arrangement, i.e, the customer is happy with the discount, you get more time at home and you've less hassle with multiple customers. This type of thinking is what sorts the boys from the men. Go for it fella!

Spot on fella:thumbup:

Who are your other insurances with? Might help

On the basis of 1 cube a week, no. On the basis of 4 cube every 4 weeks, yes. Get where im coming from?

Ok, just a slightly random question here but its been bugging me for a while. Are these briquets always made from untreated timber?

No worries fella. Whatever our different opinions are as far who does "the deed", in the end its a shame such specimens are lost.

Dave, i never said i would be happy to fell them:confused1: In fact that was the whole point of doing what i did! It was to preserve the trees. As a result of what happened, as i told her, the trees were lost. That is the shame behind it.

True Dave, but when ringing for the quote, this Lady asked for advice. I gave that to her and it wasnt what she wanted to hear. She wanted her trees butchered, and thats what she got but i wasnt willing to do it for her. I did not agree with the works she "will have done", and therefore did all i could to prevent it happening. At the time she did not want to loose them as "she really liked trees" only to have them removed when she didnt like the results of the pruning. The trees in this case were both healthy, with no real defects and the reason for reducing them was the gardener is getting old and there are too many leaves for him. Not enough of a reason IMO, and i would happily do the same again.

Not sure what you mean by a lame excuse but anyhow, no worries, time will tell. Alternatively, you could go and have a look at the full compelation of Daniels world on youtube, but he will charge you for the education.

On that basis, i will never climb again!

Change the belt fella. Not going to go on about it, but it has cured merc engine temp probs before

I have seen many of Daniels vids that have not been posted here(yet) and believe me, they are not all safe. When challenged daniel will either ignore or give this type of response when confronted by people who DO know what they are doing;

I guess what the customer wants and all that, but this removal reminds me of a job i looked at years back. I was asked to top, and mutilate a pair of weeping ash trees at either side of a very large farm house. Quite a spectacular property. The client wanted a 50% height reduction and removal of several scafold limbs. After advising, and discussing at great lengths the disadvantages doing this I ended up saying I wouldnt do it or give a price. The client responded with many insults such as "I thought you were a tree surgeon" and "I know a bloke much more qualified than you said it was ok" and "They are my trees and if i say i want that i will have it" After leaving, I rang the TO to see if this mutilation could be prevented but as the frontage could only be seen from the estate, and not any public access point they wouldnt protect the trees. The work went ahead anyway, and six months later the trees were removed completely as the client was not happy with the appearance after pruning. Perhaps I should have done the pruning, then got the removal also, or were my ethics more important I wonder.

Nice one Rob, glad thats cleared up. If thats all correct, if you sup 5 or 6 cups of tea or coffee in the day it will be ok as long as you take 3 liters of water on top. Sorted. Think i need to go to the lav now!

There is a list of them from me, but as i know his track record he refuses to reply to me.