Quickthorn

Unless he's legit and processing it properly, £40 is very greedy. You might as well get your waste carrier's licence and take it down to your local green waste tip. If I ever need it, mine charges £35/ton ex VAT. You might find a site near you here.

I think it's Lincolnshire as well.

Some great advice on here..thanks. I've got some sycamore to mill soon, probably about 1 cu m or so. It may end up as shelves and various bits of furniture. I haven't decided, so I'm not exactly sure what to cut..the plan is 2" boards. Any advice on what dimensions I ought to mill?

This is what I understand. I went through the tacho stuff myself..if the whole outfit is over 3.5 t gross plated weight (it doesn't matter what it actually weighs on the day), then you need a tacho, unless you're claiming exemption. A forestry exemption (and forestry may not include arb) would allow you to operate within a radius of 100 km from your base without a tacho. GV262, available as a pdf halfway down this page is the reference. Here is the o licence page, and the exemptions are here. On exemptions, what might be of interest are... "Dual purpose vehicles (eg Land Rovers) & their trailers. Includes Range Rovers, Jeeps, certain Japanese vehicles and those designed to go over rough ground as well as on roads. NOTE: All dual purpose vehicles must not exceed 2040 kg in unladen weight." and.. "*It is also worth knowing that, when towing a trailer behind a vehicle that is around - or slightly below - 3.5 tonnes gross plated weight (e.g Ford Transit/Mercedes Sprinter sized vehicles), if the combined gross plated weights of drawing vehicle and trailer do not exceed 3.5 tonnes or (where there is no gross plated weight) the total unladen weights do not exceed 1,525 kgs, an operators licence will not be required. Please note that any trailer with an unladen weight of less than 1,020 KGs, need not be taken in to account in this calculation." That's the first time I've noticed the last paragraph..which would be important if you're towing a chipper under 1.02 t with a Tranny or similar.

It might be worth working out what your inflation is. RPI is something like 2%, but that's bollards as far as I'm concerned..my bills are going up much more than that. If there's a lot of travel, I'd be assuming that diesel will carry on going up at the same rate each year, and factor that in..I'm sure fuel's going up at least 10% p.a.

Yes, you do. I try my best to keep within the law, but I'd never be 100% certain that I'd remembered or checked everything. Years ago, I'd have been ashamed to be prosecuted for anything; now, I reckon it's just a matter of time and luck. Nothing like living in a climate of fear to keep you on your toes, is there?

If you ever get any apple or pear, that makes the best maul head.

I don't agree with the last point..I don't think anyone controls the economy any more. We're at the mercy of the collective greed and cowardice of market speculators and fund managers, all acting in their own self interest to the exclusion of everything else. Recession might be a self fulfilling prophesy, and there are a lot of financial journalists and the like talking everything down, but I can't see how my actions will change anything. It's a time where you have to bend with the wind rather than stand up to it..so, no rash machine purchases, cut costs, try and save up a slush fund for when work gets really thin on the ground. It would be a good idea to diversify, if the initial costs are not too high, and you're not diversifying into another industry that's on its knees.

I agree with rolla, that it's a lot harder nowadays to start up and survive, unless you're bringing a lot of stuff in (eg. free use of land, sheds, gear, or money from parents or otherwise. But I think that the main reason a lot of us self employed are "against" self employment is that we've seen so many - either employees or on these forums - with not that much experience think that they're going to walk straight in to self employment and make a mint. It's not often like that, especially if you look at how much you're earning per hour. I get the feeling that some people look at what a company charges per day and think that the boss keeps it all, after paying staff. Well, we don't. Everyone who's worked for me and reckoned they were going to set up on their own, are still employees somewhere else.

I use that split level cut quite a bit. It's not much use on bigger trees unless the lean is negilgible, or you have light breezes from all sorts of directions which could close your kerf. I found it useful clearfelling softwoods in a plantation situation, for example. I, too, have managed to break one, tho' more through metal fatigue than sheer brute strength.

I'm using a 10 lb sledge, but I reckon a wooden maul might be better. Peter, do you know roughly how heavy the head of your maul is? I might have a go at making one. The two rings idea works. Before fitting, I put my rings in the oven for a while, so they just drop on, then quenched them under the tap so they didn't burn the shaft too much.

This is true..and if they do drag you down the the local weighbridge, they often weigh each axle after they've weighed the whole vehicle. This happened to someone I know who puts up kit garden summer houses. he was underweight, but overloaded on the back axle. They didn't prosecute him, but he had to empty the vehicle and reload it until he could get the back axle weight down. The whole process took hours, which meant that by the time they were satisfied, it wasn't worth going to the job that day..

That's 2, then..

On a related subject, I have problems boring in with chains that are almost at the end of their life (eg 1 mm/40 thou or so from the line you sometimes get scribed on the top plate). This would be with sharpened semi chisel chain, all cutters same length, depth gauges set to 25 thou. I thought it was my sharpening, or some other problem with the guide bar, but a friend now tells me it's because the top plate on a cutter at the end of its life is a lot further away from the depth gauge than when the chain was new. The geometry of it means that not much wood is cut as the cutter goes round the nose of the bar, and that's why boring in is harder with an older chain. Is he right?

£1.50/m - is that for 5 plants per m? That's the sort of rate I'd charge for 40-60 cm stock. 60-90s might be slower going, especially if they're a bit bushy (takes longer to get the spiral on).

..and it's even more galling when they get subsidies to diversify into other people's businesses.

Most of us can only dream of that sort of thing now. Only the very rich can afford it. The land in BigA's link was arable, no planning permission for anything else, and worked out at £5,000 / acre. This bit of land does have permission to convert the barn. This comes in at £250,000 / acre.

The first link has everything you need. A Newton is a measure of force, and is, by definition, the force needed to accelerate a mass of 1 kg by 1 m / s 2. Put another way, gravity on Earth gives you an acceleration of 9.81 m/s 2, so a mass of 1 kg on earth would need 9.81 N force to hold it in place.

And I'm one of them, for the climbing, any way. Mine went from £1k to £5k, and that's when I had to throw in the towel; years of AA and ISA membership didn't help me. Also: Rightly or wrongly, I got the impression, from a discussion on UKTC, that my AA membership fee was helping to fund the AA contractors scheme, something I doubt I would have been accepted on because my little operation was too small. If that was true, I'd have been subsidising a scheme that was squeezing up and coming businesses out of the most lucrative areas.!

They have a compliance check tool, so you can see how this affects your vehicle. My landrover is ok now, but it gets tighter in 2 years time. Personally, I don't plan to visit London ever again, let alone drive through it, but what worries me is that other UK city authorities might dream up their own schemes. Nottingham, for example, is run by one of the most grasping councils there is. They plan to tax employees who benefit from a city centre car parking space, they liked the congestion charge, and want to introduce their own, so they're going to love this one. If this spreads to all UK cities... And whoever mentioned about co2 produced when making new vehicles, you are right. A lot of this legislation plays straight into the hands of the car industry.

Used to be in the AA and ISA, not any more. Was also in the FCA, but packed that in too. I'm only in the RFS and the National Hedgelaying Society now.

I'd agree with the lean year bit..I might have to look into diversifying a bit, see if I can get trained and set up in something different..i'm already setting myself up to be a NPTC assessor, which should be a steady low risk earner, providing people come up with the work they've promised..I've got no plans to buy any kit at all.. I need to get some money in this summer, whatever I do, although last year, the only choice round here seemed to be to join a landscaping crew cutting grass for minimum wage..

I'm starting to think it still is round here. A lot of the forestry is in private hands, in traditional estates. They pay as little as they can for as much as they can get, especially if some sort of agent has stuck his nose in there. At the moment, I'm having to live in a caravan in Notts and work over there. As for Lincs being a desert..A mate came over to visit one Saturday night: we went to the nearest town for a few pints, and just about every pub was dead-on a Saturday night!! I think that says it all.

Is anyone else here based in Lincolnshire? What are rates for ground work, and turning up with saws and a chipper? Is that self employed or employee? Just about the only bloke i work for round here only pays £8 / hour for stuff like felling, scrub clearance, and that's with me supplying my saw and fuelling it. He'll pay £150 / day for me and my chipper, but that seems low based on what people were saying on another thread. I'm told that's the going rate round here, and that wages are low in Lincs across the board, but, after reading some of these threads, I'm starting to wonder if that is true, or whether someone's taking the p1ss!

ditto