Big 'Ammer

Mewp and landy in the cemetery. Sweeet!

All the best, mate. Enjoy!

No joke Dean. The numbers are hypothetical to give 200 days @ £340 /day to make the VAT turnover example work out at £68,000, the threshold for compulsory registration. The 200 days are days you actually go out and charge for tree work. Like you, I stick a long week in, but I don't work at the weekend apart from admin where necessary. We don't specifically set 2 days a month aside for admin and pricing. Price up on the way home or maintain the gear on a wet or windy day. The point I was making was that, IMO, its difficult not to go over the threshold. e.g. if you do 151 days at £450 / day = £67,950 Don't forget to add in to the turnover hired in plant, bought in materials and firewood sales. This won't work for those who are one man outfits employing assistants by the day. I'm only talking about businesses with one full-time, on the books, employee.

I voluntarily registered for VAT when I first started. Can't be done and run a legitamate outfit 5 days a week with an employee. Discounting one man outfits using as and when assistants. Unless you are a part -timer or run your business as a 'lifestyle' thing, you'll only be working for wages. In which case, your better off sticking your 40 hours a week in for someone else, go home without a care every night and let someone else pay you. Sensibly working on 200 days a year worked:- 365 Days - 104 saturdays and sundays - 30 days holidays - 24 days ( 2 days per month maintenence, admin, pricing, etc..) - 7 days breakdowns, bad weather, illness, unforseen circumstances = 200 Days. 200 days x £340 / day = £68,000

I've only just used used up the last of me 3 strand!!! ... I'll get me coat!

Dean, avoid nasty and inconvenient forearm related cut and chuck injuries by going left handed !

There is no doubt you will get a strong left arm from using semi chisel and low rakers! ...and whitefinger from the vibes. Semi chisel is perfectly good for all applications. Semi chisel is better for skidded timber and felling dirty bottomed trees at the bottom (not 'ooomeback' height). Semi chisel is easier to sharpen and more forgiving of discrepancies between cutters. For me, full chisel, nice profile on the rakers, for the majority of work.

Felling a huge tree into a tiny space in a oner when your being paid dismantling money. Shooting pinkfeet on a rising tide under a full moon. The best thing is without doubt, coming back safely after a hard day to a comfortable home, a healthy, happy family, and good food. Anything else is a bonus.

Pulling rope snapped and it went backwards through the greenhouse? - or - all went perfectly and got £100 tip for not wrecking the greenhouse?

I'm interested too.

A timely reminder for us all, new and old alike. Glad its not serious Dean, well done for posting.

Thanks for the offer John, but then I'd be worried about the fuel economy of the car to Worcester and back every day....

Of course it will John, your the council!!!: 001_tongue:

That would have been Derbyshire Council, Ian! Then we got hold of it! We made it earn its money, but looked after it. It was good on fuel though, chipped a load of leylandii in a day, 32 m3 for less than 30 litres of diesel. On usual run of the mill pruning type jobs it used next to nothing. If I was after a road tow on a turntable, I would have another. Well it would be a Tunnissen 190 nowadays. Whats the Timberwolfs like then anyone?

I was wondering what the poular Timberwolf and Greenmech models were like. I've never used either make. I found the Kwik Chip 222 with the 27 HP engine very economical providing it wasn't force fed a lot of large stuff, but this was really too small an engine for a chipper of this size and weight. The next 222 I had had a 45hp 4 cyl turbo engine and was well on top of its work and very economical with it. I've used most of the Jensens and have one now. As a direct comparison, the three cyl Kubota in the tracked 530 uses a lot less fuel than the four cyl engine they put in the same machine on wheels. I found the four cyl Kubota very greedy on fuel.

Following on from Dean's Chipper Revs Mod thread; Which makes and models do you find greedy on fuel and which are the most frugal?

Jensen clocks mechanical, Kwik Chip was digital. If a workable system could be fitted, that wasn't going to be tempremental with dirt, dust and vibration, and could save half your fuel costs, it would be worth having. Providing it wasn't going to cost a fortune. I fully agree that staff tend to leave chippers running flat out, unless reminded not to! Might start a new thread on which chippers are the most frugal on fuel.

Top Job!

I am one of those old school types. Tried some of the newer types of harness but they just nip the old nads up!

Its very difficult to quantify. Remember that engine hours are not actual hours. Usually its hours at operating speed. Tickover speed adds engine hours on to the counter very slowly. Difficult to say how much fuel is used at tickover. Then again, you use a lot of fuel opening up the revs to full speed. Constantly shutting down and opening up the engine is going to waste fuel to some extent. Your figures assume also that we are putting white diesel in at £1 / litre, not red diesel at £0.60 / litre. My chipper uses less than 2 litres / engine hour. A large company with a lot of machines may make a significant saving, Joe Average with one machine isn't.

I think an automatic system is adding expense to solve a negligable problem. It won't save much diesel in reality. Dirty sensors will soon be a PITA and add annoyance working when they shouldn't and vice versa and get bypassed to manual control by the ground crew. Training the groundies to knock the revs off in quiet spells is a lot cheaper. My old Kwik Chip had an electric throttle, just a rocker switch on the control panel idle/fast. Its been mentioned earlier to mount this at the hopper end of the machine for convenience. All that said, If you have got a long drag and a tight gap with no where to stack a bit of brash up, a remote system might be of use. Surely its not hard to wire up the electronic throttle switch circuit to a remote button like a car door lock fob or better still a garage door opener (which works further away). Groundy keeps the button in his pocket, five strides away from the hopper he presses the button, by the time hes put the brash in, its up to full speed. Knock the revs off from anywhere on the site from 60 feet away. Give the climber a button too, so he can shout down for stuff/clear the drop zone etc. Thats got to be a good safety feature with a few possibilities. Would'nt be expensive to make and fit. You saw it here first folks, don't forget to send me the royalties when you've made one!

Nice job!

Beaver Plant at York 01759 372552

Thanks to Dean, Pete, Bob etc for putting on a good day. Great fun and a good crack, with BBQ. Good to meet up again and also meet some new people and put faces to names. Nice to try out a few other peoples climbing systems. The death slide was a jolly! Apart from Penfold's brand new gloves the only low point for me was that I couldn't even give away a surplus brand new Power Match bar to fit a Husqy amongst a bevy of die-hard Stihl men! Think I bailed out just in time before it rained! and drove back 1.5 hours in torrential rain and was obliged to attend another BBQ at the seaside in a caravan park with the in-laws. Thanks again to the organisers and all who attended. Nige.