Quickthorn

It doesn't look very nature conservation friendly, but when these countryside officers see how much money they save from using it..it got those stems down a lot faster than you could fell them by chainsaw, even if they didn't get hung up.

If it's important to you, you are limited in how much you can store before you need to buy a licence. Petrol storage .. It looks like the maximum for plastic containers is 6 x 5l..you can store more if you transfer it into metal containers

The cost of the breaker and spinner wipes out the saving of the first roll if you buy in the UK. I wondered how safe this is to do (whether there's more chance of a chain breaking), but I've seen people break the chain by filing off the head of the rivet, then knocking it out with a centre punch. They make up the chain by peening the rivet with a ball peen hammer. This may be ok for chainsaws, but I'm told not advisable on harvesters or processors. You might save by ordering the chain, breaker and spinner direct from the US, from Baileys or Sherrills, especially with the £ situation now. I'm sure I costed this out years ago, and the whole package, even with the shipping and VAT, was cheaper than the equivalent number of loops. I didn't go for it, because it would have taken me a decade to use it all!

What scheme or organisation is that? i remember doing something like that for Business Link Nottingham, in the hope of getting £1k towards a chipper. After a meeting with a business consultant, I went away and did my plan, and came back a week later. Of course, by that time, all the money had gone and there was nothing left for me.. I wonder how much the business consultant charged for his time? As for me, I wasted around 3 days on it for nothing, when I should have been out earning real money..and I thought I was the one who was supposed to be getting the help!! If you can get grants, then good luck, but in future I'll be asking more questions before I start jumping through the hoops. As for the plans, they work better if you take the figures you first thought of, then halve the income and double the expenses. Having a plan is better than total guesswork, but like roller and jp says, in this game they tend to work a lot better from behind a desk..they can only be a very rough guide once you get into the real world.

I saw this at work recently, taking down sycamore.. giant shears on the end of an excavator. They can shear through 9" or so, I believe. I heard they were charging it out at around £500 a day, or something.

Have you had an arm or shoulder muscle or tendon injury recently? Sometimes, the scar tissue of a healing injury can squeeze a nerve. It happened to me after I had had a lower back injury; the back problem cleared, but then started getting dead legs and sciatica if I had to stand still for any length of time. It was that painful that, if I was stuck in a crowded pub and couldn't get a seat, I had to go home early. Even heavy drinking didn't stop the pain! Luckily, it cleared up over a few months.

I don't know of a use for horse chestnut myself, I always understood it was pretty poor timber. I think they used to use it for false limbs, because if it does break, it won't splinter.

I think funding for Germany after ww2 was more down to the US and the start of the cold war more than compassion or anything like that. Originally, I believe one plan would have kept Germany as a rural nation incapable of hardly any industry. However, the US realised that to leave them to it would probably allow them to fall into the hands of the USSR. Also, some believe it was the harsh terms of the Versailles treaty after ww1 that created conditions in which Hitler could flourish in the first place, and so they were desperate to avoid repeating that mistake. The money poured into Germany at the same time as the tap was turned off for Britain, initially at least. As for Remembrance day, never forget them. And remember that the bodies are still stacking up in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'm doing 7am til around 4 at the moment. If it's hot, and I'm doing chainsaw work, I found getting on site for 6 suited me, then working til 2 or 3, so only the last few hours were really hot. Of course, you can't do those hours for domestic customers - or if you have employees to carry.

Are you still talking about horse chestnut here? What would they use it for?

I disagree with the rates bit, too. You can ask a lot more in certain greener and leafier areas on the outskirts of bigger towns and cities. And the running costs vary, too, depending on where you are. I can still get diesel for less than £1/l in Notts, but where I live, it's £104. And in Lincs, and any other rural county, you have to travel a lot further on average to get to the jobs, because it's so sparsely populated.

I have one. It was £150. I only needed it in place so I could quote for a job that involved carting a few straw bales to a composting site. I didn't get that job, because I was undercut... by around £150. "produced by your own business" was the test I used for not having one years ago. I used to be able to tip at a composting site run by WRG without having to show any licence (in fact, it as the manager that told me I didn't need one). Since then, the EA have redefined the meaning of "produced by your own business". They told me (a year or so ago) that, the customer - not me - produces the waste by ordering the work to be done. The only situation you, the contractor, can say that you produced the waste is if you had, say, a wide ranging maintenance contract, where you decided what had to be done. And, yes, we should be applying for a waste management licencing regs exemption for every time we chip anything .. or burn anything, for that matter.

I've been thinking this for a while now. There seems to be less work around, and less grant money for landowners to do anything. The only work I have are a few jobs I've been doing for the last 5 years, which should last till Christmas - no new business at all. I've had one enquiry since last spring, and I quoted quite low on that one, but they've not rung back. Then again, I've found it's always been a bit boom and bust doing this stuff.

Yes, I did, but I haven't developed the film yet. I'll post something as soon as I have pics.

If you're claiming forestry exemption, you can operate within 100 km of base (it used to be 50 km). Look at this link and check the latest edition of GV 262. Annex C explains the changes in the rules since 11 April, allowing 100 km instead of 50 km.

No, they're subject to the same rules as everyone else, it's just that there are a few dinosaurs amongst the hedgelaying fraternity, and not just the old boys, either. Some people think wearing a helmet is a bit "soft", or it "gets in the way". The organisers put a sign up saying that we are responsible for wearing the right PPE, but that's it. In my view, the stewards should enforce it, and even disqualify those selfish people who won't comply. If the national media are showing people not wearing the right gear, it won't be long before it comes to the attention of the HSE - if they decide to take a closer look at us, we could all suffer.

i tried burning green ash once..it wasn't much good at all.

I did one this year, but not as well as those instructions - I like the pole idea!. I built one, around 4-5' high, probably contained about a tonne of wood. It proved you need the shims, because it collapsed after a month! I had to restack it into two smaller ones. I also built it on concrete, rather than laying out bearers, so the bottom layer never dried out. I covered mine as well, rather than relying on the bark to keep it dry. It's a bit of effort, but it's a nice feature to the garden for the summer. It was split and stacked in April, and I'm burning it now with no problems

I'm glad I'm not the only one, then. I've had people laugh at me for using it on the wheel nuts, but why not?

Andy, if you're tempted to go to Mason's, pm me, and i'll tell you my experiences with one of their chippers.

And if anything serious went wrong, you, the employer, might find yourself liable. I never had to do it, luckily, but my policy was send them home with a warning on health and safety grounds..same if they came in reeking of cannabis.

Did anyone go? I was there, not competing but cutting for my accreditation. Some of the work was immaculate..especially the welsh styles.

I'd question that first sentence..if they did that much damage, are they competent?

Does it have a ce mark? If it doesn't have a ce mark, how come it's on sale here at all? If it does have a ce mark, but doesn't comply with UK safety regs, what's the point of the ce mark?

Like he said, HP makes it your asset..as far as tax goes, in the year you buy it, you can also claim first year allowance, which is 40% (or sometimes 50%) of the asset's value, then 25% depreciation of what's left in following years, to be offset against your profits. That's probably why lease hire is a little cheaper..the leasing company gets the capital allowances. One thing to watch out for is lease hire agreements with a final balloon payment. Some of these agreements, especially for vehicles, can have hidden pitfalls. You get sucked into cheap monthly payments, only to lose out at the end when faced with a last payment far in excess of the kit's residual value. Here is a link to a farming forum discussing finance of machines.