Tom D

its 8mm mate, early days yet in terms of performance, but it looks promising. be interested to hear others thoughts and experiences.

has anyone got an old well used peice? why not cut it open and check the core for signs of melting / glazing.

here's one to try, (experienced guys only) its essentialy the bastard offspring of the VT and the howard. I have been climbing on the howard for a while now but always looking for improvement I came up with this. I have always found the VT annoying when using it with the hitch climber; too short a cord and it jams up, get it running nice with a longer cord and there's too much sitback when ascending (I like to haul inderneath the HC). If you only ever use the traditional VT Technique of pulling a few handfuls through every so often then the longer cord VT's fine, but it kind of defeats the object of the HC IMO. I tried this yesterday on a decent sized oak, my old cord was past its best and i was using a brand new piece, I tied this as an experiment, it gripped well streight away and tbh i forgot i was using it. It never needed dressing or tweaking and performed really well, which is unusual for a brand new piece of OP. I think the full twist as opposed to a braid stiffens the whole hitch making it less likely to loose its shape, it breaks really easily after being loaded and there is very little sitback. I can measure the eye to eye length of the cord if anyone is interested. Anyway, here's a couple of pics, it has some wraps at the top, (use as many as neccessary) and then instead of a braid (left side leg goes right and vice versa) add a full twist (left side leg goes right round the right hand leg and back down the left side, vica versa for the right leg). then round the climbing line and repeat.

how much?

I just can't understand why people do this, he only knew one of the victims apparently, the rest were just shot at random, the sick ****. awful for the families.

ditto that, i hope i never do either.

my stepmum had it, she was pretty short sighted before, no glasses now. If i needed it i'd have it.

looks pretty good to me, perhaps the metal is a little thin, but its hard to tell from the pic, whats the plate thickness on the main body? i had a home made one which got bent when rigging a large beech. that was about 4 mil I think. and a good user should know the capabilities of his gear:blushing:

I do that but its more to stop it tearing and hanging on, sometimes with willow it still does. There's some dogtooths on this vid: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz_PKTFcPOw]YouTube - Felling willows[/ame] And some of lorry's willow cuts on here: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz_PKTFcPOw]YouTube - Felling willows[/ame]

The video Mike posted was the one I was refering to in my earlier post, as I said it serves the exact same purpose as the dog tooth except the dog tooth can be made lower and therefore preserve more timber, as NPTC / Lantra courses evolved out of the forestry industry that is why most are more familiar with the dog tooth. If I am felling big tops I avoid excesive weight on the gob side to avoid a tear down (upside down barber chair). I have seen this happen to a climber, fortunately he did not have a lanyard round the stem and was tied in on another stem, however the tear down, which was at least 8 feet long caught his prussic and lifted him up about 10feet as it hinged over then fortunately it dropped him as it broke free. Pretty scary for him though, I finished the tree as he didn't fancy it after that. Another way to avoid this is to fell just above a major branch union as this holds the stem together much better than a clean streight piece which can be much more easily cleaved.

those are that standard fittment are they not? Ring these guys and ask for neil. Redpath Tyres They do swaps with people who buy new landys and give them part ex on the xcl's against whatever they want, (i did that when I bought mine), they may have a set.

Its just a bore and release with the back cut below instead of the dogtooth, at least thats the way i see it.

exactly, Ihave seen a vid of that technique b4 and used it, the dog tooth was developed for forestry use and minimum wastage, that technique requires felling higher so no good for forestry but fine for us.

Not that impressed tbh, as dave says: why?? most looked like streight fells, and using the tensile strength of buttress wood is preferable to felling higher, especially with an unevenly weighted crown. secondly why does he always do a 45degree gob, far better to adjust the gob and land them flat if possible, especially with some of the big round crowned ones in case they come back, landing them tip first is not good. don't get me wrong I enjoyed watching some big stuff coming over, but why risk being tied to a tree when you could fell it from the ground.

how long before skyhuck comes on to say the gobs are too small? He didn't.

where did you buy that mate, i cant see it anywhere.

Ditto that, cutting clean wood hardly blunts a chain at all, I can easy go a week on an 020 chain without a sharpen because we never use them on the ground.

Nice work Reg, how do you rate the orange topper?

I used icetail for a while, its good but i found it tightened up as it bedded in, I do like mine dressed short though to minimise tha sitback. Now that I think of it I nevertried the icetail with a howard hitch so maybe its worth re-visiting.

have you tried andrew cuthill, or davie ewart?

excellent!

Spot the yorkshireman. He's like a wee terrier, never gives up.

Nice work mate, what did you decide to store the hobbs in? Find a fish crate?

I used to have a single roller entec, it was good, in some ways its better as there's less to get blocked.

28" is my biggest bar, as you say Mike, its very rare you NEED anything bigger, have wished I had a 48" a couple of times though for cross cutting.