MattyF

Is the tree showing signs of die back in the upper crown ? It’s all well and good posting pictures of roots but if the crown is healthy I would leave it alone ! Any extreme girdling I’ve seen has usually resulted in die back in a part of the crown ,that can be removed and balanced out according..Personally if it was mine I would plant another and wait and see if this actually dies back significantly and needs replacing ... Norway’s grow fast and in the grand scheme of trees imo are a relatively short lived species anyway but cutting through any of those roots you are opening up a whole new can of worms !

And snow loading can cause this ... very common on yew branches though.. I had a wood Turner go through a pile the other day and said they where all shook to bits!

I have never seen any thing like that! Got any links ? There should not really be any difference for a fit an able climber if anything SRT should be easier as the friction does not vary it is consistent and coming back in you are pulling up half the rope you would Ddrt, unless you get carried away and melt friction cord which is easy if you keep the RW disengaged the friction should remain consistent,it definitely would with a mechanical system ,unless sap on ropes gets involved . I climbed for 19 years on double ropes and spent the last 6 on SRT I would never go back to a double rope unless it was a tiny tree and not worth the hassle of hauling a 60m SRT rope on site ! I do feel adding SRT to my climbing kit means I will be able to climb for a good few more years at a level that is productive and not as near fatiguing.

Good then , glad we have cleared that up.

In other words you have come on here expecting an easy way to the top.. there is none it’s all hard work and word of mouth by this recommendations if you are good word of mouth goes a long way if you are too lazy to do the comps or put any thing else In you get nothing. I could of given you two very good leads absolutely fool proof that have given me more hedge laying than I want and I didn’t want any in the first place but have learnt it’s easy money in comparison to trying to fell 90ft sitka in a bog in December but whilst sucking on my role up I thought na ....F off..

Electric Fence perimeter, we live in a forest and surrounded by foxes , you can see there eyes at night with a lamp and they are surrounding you ! but they hate electric fences.. had this lot of hens over a year and regularly we focxes within 20 m of them and they don’t bother them , they could easily jump on a wall to get in the perimeter but they don’t bother.

Are you gonna wear them if your mate wants them pops doing? They look just my thing... hand split a load of timber up for the customer to just to keep warm this arvo .. that was after a 100 m drag across a playing Feild and through some alleys , groundy was flagging a bit but he’s just text me saying he’s relieved after drinking 5l of water he’s finally managed to piss... so cold yesterday I had to go and sit in the tractor with the heater on to get the chill out.

Getting a bit chilly at work this week so wondering what folk are wearing in this cold weather?

Glad you have cleared that up , totally illegal to go two abreast on a single track road-unmarked road but see, get held up for miles nearly every day. I saw a hilarious one the other day cyclists choosing a main extraction route for timber out of keilder for a jolly hanging in a ditch after going around a series of tight corners going two abreast and knocking each over when a timber lorry passed the other side of the road ... not acceptable really and bloody dangerous.

Where have you been Tony ? !

Where do you start!

If you have worked your arse off all week and are good at your job and probably booked up in advance for months and on a Sunday some Gollum looking cunt on a Vespa wanted to take your time up for a job not even worth your teams money for the day, I would of made my excuses too... at least he had the decency to tell you , In fact I can think of so many reasons why but at least he told you the evening before he was not going to be there... here is my take on what happened, you went out , got plastered , ignored your phone when it rang for him to cancel. Got up and went to the place you had agreed and waited ... waited a bit more ,feeling like a french man had done a shit in your head and wishing you had never gone out whilst looking at your phone after about an hour of waiting realised you had a message and listened to it ....after forcing yourself with a raging hang over to drive or ride out on the Vespa you cracked and had a rant on a arb forum about how lame people are. He could of had football with the kids. His misses could of said I haven’t seen you all week and if you go and look on work on Sunday I’ll be pissed off. He could of heard about how hard you are from all the time you have done that you keep going on about that he was too scared to meet you..... my bet is on any of those..... Just saying whilst hiding behind my dreadlocks.

Too many gaps for sawdust pete

I think for the money it would be a great start to using pretensioned lines ... you can rig with out but it does open up a lot more possibilities. I’ve only looked at the 3001 when reg was doing demos at the APF years back and it looked a capable bit of kit.

There is that but once you start using one you won’t go back.. opens up a whole new dimension to rigging , I haven’t used a crane in years as a result so although the initial thing investment is expensive all money going back to you instead of the crane company or speeding up a job makes it worthwhile.

Depends on the tree don , more often I do but I just don’t understand why it’s an issue. I’d rather not though carry more than necessary.... that includes spare krabs nd the like.

I’ve gotta go back to this ! Is this really a thing that bothers people ? I will take a 150-2511 up on most trees but I’m phucked if I’m gonna drag anything bigger around whilst setting up a big tree for working... never have and never will. What does pish me off is ground guys who have no organisation skills, leave ropes in awkward places that snag rigging, or can’t be bothered to move my climbing ropes and cut up stuff over the top of it and stand there in there phones when you send a saw down for refuelling ... useless little shits , these deserve getting yelled at so that every one in a mile radius can hear what I think of them, it does help maintain that image of a prima Donna climber ... the screams then continue in to just a tirade of abuse as the day continues and I can blame the bastards for all my errors of judgement made whilst climbing... gotta love some team work.

£1200 for a days work on Kew green finished at 3 thanks to a cheeky stunt fell and some large snatches ... one of those jobs I’d priced by photos and the tree was over a 3 story house , driving over Kew bridge I saw it in the flesh for the first time and thought wtf have I done! Went all smooth though. .. there next quote was 3k ! G man on the stick, happy days ! Think the most profitable job I ever did was days stump grinding , mate had rigged his big Vermeer with a kubota engine out of a chipper after the original had blown, 70 stumps at £30 stump did the lot in one pass then dropped the dozer blade and back filled in the second pass , done and machine returned by 4.

Another good way of making things easy is if you know any lads in to forestry or firewood and the site allows is leave the trees in lengths and get them to pick it up with a tractor forwarder based unit.. I would always give a friend a call if the trees allowed and there was one or two trailer loads , always gives you an edge pricing and if your bunging that’s a drink was worth while every time.

Sorry I didn’t read that you had to ring and stack , I still take the avant to jobs if there is a lot of rings to move a distance but it would probably not worth the hassle if there is a couple of you with barrows .. just remember to include the time it takes to rake up the saw dust ... better if you can put sheets out but there will still probably be a truck load of saw dust and rakings up to take away. I do like using the avant if there is only three of us as if there is only three of you the avant can drag whole limbs to the chipper and move a Stack of cord once processed.

I think no two people will quote the same or more to the point do the job the same , personally I would go in with a minimum of a 4 man crew and expect to be out by day one. My ideal crew would be 5 and consist of a decent lead climber , a decent second climber on the rigging, a well greased up saw operator to handle what’s been rigged out and guide tag lines another who can drive the avant or skid steer and share the tasks of general chipping and tea making duties... that’s in an ideal world and I would expect to be raking up at 4pm and the customer writing the cheque... alternately you could drag it out with three of you on site for a few days and that’s usually how it ends up being done for me.... then you end up with the monsters that’s take 5 of you 2 days. Enjoyed climbing that tree mark .... well maybe finishing it as it was the stuff nightmares are made from but you and Shaun where absolutely spot on with the rigging keeping it smooth on a tree that was not easy, along with the grumpy Northumbrian on the JCB.

Yeah get where your coming from , if it was my sole business I would maybe look for some thing similar but Ive never found them too limiting ,not needing brakes I feel more controlled in grinding situations ..last three serious grinder accidents that have appeared on the forum are from the same style machine , that would indicate they are either more popular and used more resulting in the inevitable or easier to over ride which Most of us would of seen done ...personally I just don’t like them.

Maybe for access they are good but I would take an old Vermeer 252 over any of them and it can probs get in the same places but a few.. a lot safer and less hard work.

I really dislike those larger push style grinders like those Carlton’s and Raycos , usually any safety features don’t work , they are hard to use all day compared to a machine with hydraulic head sweep leaving the operator fatigued and taking risks , they have hydraulic drive forwards and backwards which is jerky and out of control at best, it always seems to be this style of grinder that is involved in these horrific accidents..