Charlieh

Fair do's, but i do a fair bit of work with EA and BW and the view would be to come down harder on them if it wasnt reported or sorted, maybe contact the club and inform them of this, and give them chance to clear it or as Mick says try and get some work out of it, and point out that BW wont take a good view of this being carried out, In many areas BW actually still have their own tree gangs and they would probably come out and do this work at the clubs request.

doesnt make a whole world of difference get hold of one of each and see whats comfortable to use for you, if you were doing 24" dia timber most the time then i would say the 460 if <20" probably the 372, if its between these two then there will in the real world be very little to choose from, so your comfort as an operator is more important, i prefer then way the 372 handles feel to a 440/460 but i dont like the 576xp as much, so would probably pick up a 460 now, it really is dependant on supplies of parts locally, although many larger mail order firms can get me parts for the following day and the local dealer can be several days! as they have to order parts in. but above all pick up both saws carry them round the dealership no matter how much of a fool you feel and look, and pretend to make the felling cuts and lifting the saw over a trunk, see how fluid it feels to you, and then make your choice

i would have dumped the brash in the river, as course woody debris, an important habitat for juvenile fish and many invertebrates are associated with water-logged decaying timber, I would have made tidy cuts however on the otherhand i suspect british waterways wont be none to happy, so i would drop the local office an email with the location,

dont sweat it, had several run ins with other vehicles (normally MOD trucks )over harvest when i used to work in hampshire, police would take the details and shift you off, as 99% of the time its the cars fault, and the spring u bolts have shifted so i doubt its a major job, rocker beam biggest job will be sorting the lights hope the car driver walked away ok though

seem easy enought to control, if i want it in all night i use a solid briquette from cpl called stove heat, as i use this is the rayburn and a small shovel full means both will still be in when i get up or get home from work

What the stove? I dont have any problems with it, i dont have central heating so the house is heated on the regal stove and a rayburn. it burns well and is easily controllable, i have mine out in the room and use the rear flue into the chimney, and we can boil the kettle/cook on it quite easily and it heats a 5mtrx5mtr room to the point where we have to open the windows and doors in the middle of winter, or the special open evenings? in which case they are also good if you buying cheaper tools as its limited to Clarke tools for the 17.5% savings, i think its about 10% off everything else,

dont forget if your registered with machine mart you get the offer special open event cards normally one in spring and autumn, and you essentially get the vat knocked off the price so we got ours for less than £300

I have a regal, highly rate it, much better made than I was expecting it to be. I would happily buy another, the throw a lot of heat for the size

from what you have said you want to do with it, and as a husky fan this pains me, but i think a tidy MS460/046 is what your after especially if you going to mill with it, i do a bit with my 372xp but it wouldnt want to be milling regularly, and the 460 basically has the widest selection of bar lenghts giving most versitility for what your after if you just want one saw,

what sized saw do you need?

seriously two members banned in an 11post thread, is that some kind or record? nice work Tony

isnt the Junkari a biomass chipper, and im pretty sure its designed for chipping small round softwood?

i would love the smaller kit as well! that field was 7acres and it took 36mins from start to finish, makes large areas so much easier, we used to take about half a day to do that field also on the wish list are a holder, iron horse etc, we picked the turner up as an ex demo machine for not a stupid amount of money considering we do 100+acres of hay and given the iffy weather being able to move quickly is key

like the little alpine press baler, anyhow here is how i have spent most my day, and tomorrow will probably be on a baler if the weather holds overnight click the vid to play

I have looked into this time after time and I can't make the figures add up, a decent fast tow unit, with powerpack and a solidy body for materials and transporting the atv is about 8k for the trailer alone I could buy a tractor and timber trailer or used forwarder for that kind of money, also look futher than timber dragon there are a lot better made heavier duty machines out there, google things like atv skogsvagn (atv woods trailer) the swedes produce loads of kit cheaper than in the uk with the basic dual bogied axel trailers with a wire crane starting at 850quid before tax! I would love a hydraulic unit, but I know deep down inside its only going to be odd logs that it would be required for as most stuff could be hand loaded a lot quicker, and in fairness most the time a wire crane and winch combo is handier as you can skid the log to the machine with it using a remote control on tbe winch, if you want I will dig you out some links as I have loads of pdf files forestry commision tech reports on atv set ups and loads of bits of info I could route out, but I would say look long and hard before spending that kind of money, if 6K+ isn't a substantial part of your income and you need to invest in the equipment for tax reasons then go for it! I know up here with the wigs money dissappearing fast I doubt I could find a lot of work for them now. they are cool though

FC/NE are on recruitment freezes with budget cuts of 20%+ they have pulled contractors of FC sites locally, The National Parks Authority here are having to sell several of their big moorland estates as they cant afford to run them anymore, Most small grant schemes have been frozen and any projects that weren't signed off aren't likely to happen, especially HLS agreements outside SSSI sites its going to get worse before better, but i think if they try and progress with this using volunteers, which is also what the government want to see at a ground level, it will wreck the sector and in most case do a poor job that in future will probably make future operations harder in the case of woodland management but hey, at the end of it those of us that ride through it will probably be better situated at the end of it for the future. I am still getting requests for work and surveys, but thats because i have a good working relationship with many local conservation bodies, and can deliver sensible solutions and realistic prices . Just glad i dont have kit on finance and huge overheads working in this sector.

we move suckers around by digging them out with a front end loader and planting them in a trench for instant hedgerows seems to work ok get about 50% success for very little effort, and will normally produce a small crop of sloes in the first winter, if you have plenty of space and a loader tractor with a bucket just ask around locally as im sure someone will have some you can have,

iTrip

i wish, no im merely a self employed conservationist, doing contract work and advice for organisations such as the wildlife trusts and National trust and private land owners gradually trying to build up my little land holdings though, but its by no means an estate yet

i dont work on a big estate though, but I have a couple of contacts that may be able to help, i will try and sort some numbers for you tomorrow Rob

havent got anything like what your after in, i think several demos are having bother because of the fact that the timber cant be sourced on site, i will have an ask around,

if you have the species data collected you could also run it through MAVIS and see what that outputs for you

here is the woodland one (if you dont already have it), you would need quiet a bit of time to sort all of them for all habitats, although i believe there is a summary booklet, the wife may have a copy i will ask her and get back to you http://www.jncc.gov.uk/PDF/fieldguidetowoodland.pdf

the back section of a book called the backyard lumberjack, has two pages of info on timber btu values per cord of wood, could be a starting point for you, although its mainly US species

you on flat ground then? as i have been in a few on slopes in them and think they are awful, quadbike every time for me, but then again some of the sites i access you wouldnt get a utv to, and the quad does everything i need of it, if you have something the size of a utv why not get a compact tractor which is far more versatile?