Chris Sheppard

One idea that's been bounced about is to try and get a bit of an arbtalk meet at an Enduro or Hare and Hound somewhere fairly central for those interested. Anyone any suggestions? Might be doing first MX in over 15 years in a couple of weekends time - fairly excited but proper bricking it too!

Flail collector works well on some sites, especially if there's bramble through it too. We've even used it on smaller birch regen where it all would have needed gathered up after too. It's not so great on rougher ground though as the centre of gravity is a bit higher and also it's a bit more flimsy compared to the normal flail and doesn't like being dragged as roughly. Problem would be finding one small enough for an AGT to handle, physically rather than power wise. The one behind the landini (28hp) is the smallest I've seen before but that knows it as it when it's full. As well as the flail collector, there's a topper and a heavy duty flail sat in the shed too so the simple answer is there's no one perfect machine unfortunatley. The flail mower comes out most often though, but does make for interesting raking.

Am blushing now

'ere Chris, you don't happen to have any experience of machining 2 stroke motorbike heads do you? I've got one that eventully I want a bit skimming off the squish area - partly to lower compression but also to lose some damage too. Just need to find a grown up who knows more about how much/angle to take than I do

hmm, be interesting to see how things progress with it as I know more than one company have looked into bringing them over and haven't despite plenty of interest.

If your meaning the depth guages still, even if they are in need of a rub, I'd be surprised if that's affecting how it's cutting if it's cutting well on one side of the bar and not on the other. Still sounds bar groove/drive link related to me.

^ Wot he said. Unless you bring one in yourself, you're unlikely to ever see one for sale officially over here. They need straight grained wood too.

12T should be fine on most stuff - there's probably more 10-15T splitters out there than any other size. Typically, 25T is about the biggest vertical you'll see with any frequency, though there are a few a bit bigger. I had a 20T and work reguarly with an 18T and can only remember a handful of pieces that got chucked to one side. The main thing with a bigger PTO powered one is going to be the speed. Most commercially built splitters are two speed - a slower but full power setting and a faster but less powerful setting, usually jut a case of moving the levers a little further (or less) so very easy to switch between. Some of the larger do it automatically where they will stay on fast speed until they build up enough pressure to open an internal valve and switch circuits. A machine with bigger tonnage will be able to spend more time on it's faster speed setting, even more noticably when using a 4 way head.

I haven't cut any coppice for ages - I'm even beard free and live in a house and everything I just got all phoned out in a previous job and can't be doing with them now

Reckon you're not far off the price of the basic PTO Farmi processor without selling the tractor, and if you've already got a decent vertical splitter and are going to have approx 150T of processor sized stuff this first year, I'd be giving the processor some thought. The beauty of the Farmi is that it works well as a small splitter too so even if your vertical splitter wont do 1m lengths, you can break rings a bit smaller and then bung them through the 4 way on the farmi and benefit from the elevator too. Handles wobbly branch wood pretty well too as they have a big throat width. For handling arb waste, in my experience, a big tonnage Vertical splitter with 1m stroke and removable table is the most versatile. Being big tonnage it will work on the fast speed for most of the time but still have power in reserve. No table for billeting, no table for breaking man sized rings on the floor to make them lighter, table in for manageble chunks.

I'd not too fixated on cutter length - most people I know end up slightly heavy on one side when hand sharpening and it's never made a noticable difference. In my experience, a curved cut is nearly always the chain rocking in the groove (so either worn drive links or worn bar rails) or the rails being uneven heights (usually a result of the first going unnoticed for a while). Either way, I'd not expect to encounter any of those problems in 3 sessions of cutting a few logs.

Whih bit of East Yorks? Driffield's fairly bare this year compared to normal.

That's pretty cool. Liking the tiny grapple on the back of the digger bucket

Me Can't stand the bloody thing and half the time all I know is it's in me dinner bag or the landrover. Mine's old enough it doesn't even have a camera

Noticed round us there's hardly any too this year, where there's normally loads.

We've found it the other way round - my 550 goes through a tank a good chunk faster than a 560 doing the same job, but it's a right little screamer. Don't know how the ful tank capacities vary between the 550/560 and the older saws though.

That looks ace, liking that a lot. I've seen a few converted Sankeys but they usually used the original, rotten tub and looked a bit clunky.

Bit like the others have said - I'd have a look at the Sigg fuel bottles - pretty sure you can get 0.5L and 1L - I reckon the smaller one for oil and the bigger one for fuel would give a couple of fills with a small saw. I've been meaning to do it for ages for those site where we're already carrying loads of stuff into the wood.

......and then on to the sticky floors in Blues or Toppers after. Someone told me Blues had been flattened and there's a supermarket where it used to be now?

Starting to get windy here now. Not raining so much now either.

Picked this up the other day - same as my other one but a proper EXC rather than an SX looking like an EXC. Even has a V5 with it! It had been on ebay a while and slowly dropping in price and it was sort of on the way back whn we were out the other day with the trailer on. It wouldn't start when we saw it so haggled fairly hard and was happy enough. Tried starting it the following day and it went after about 4 kicks! Plan is to strip it this winter whilst still riding the other, and make a really nice EXC out of the pair and use what's left to either make the SX back up and sell or keep as a big pile of spares. Or, if I ever get round to it, shove a 200/250 4 stroke in the other rolling chassis First pic is where I'm aiming for, second one is how I picked it up. Can still get the original graphics and seat cover and have got an original headlight and rear mudguard already. Racing again next weekend up at Helmsley as they've put us a vintage only class on the Saturday.

Have done similar with the forwarder crane or front loader grab on the tractor