Taupotreeman

Gents and Ladies; anyone have any pictures of tree guards they use? Please? looking more for big showy surrounds and guards for public spaces etc.

Sure was and the myth was well and truly busted. Fantastic show too.

There's an up side to all the woe in Europe and the US. All my kit is cheap as chips these days as the kiwi dollar is almost level pegging with the green back and about half of the pound. Gone are the days when it stood at a third of the dollar and less than a quarter of the pound. Personally; I'm glad that the UK kept the pound and I think it will hold it in good stead long term. I wish we'd never got wrapped up with Brussels and I think it's done more harm than good but then I've been out of it all for 13 years and am somewhat isolated from the world's financial troubles..

Well, I never got around to making the press but my old man moves over from blighty next week so I might see if I can swindle him into making me one up while he's busy enjoying his retirement. As for the fruit; we have heaps of apple and pear trees all growing wild around the area and I recently did a pruning job in an orchard for part cash and part fruit payment. The owners said they'd dump me a few buckets off when the season kicks in as most of it they can't manage and it goes for pig food. Not sure if I'll be making anymore haw jam though. Gets a bit painful after a while. No sloes around these parts either which is unfortunate for the old fella who's a dab hand at making sloe gin.

Sitting around doing didlysquat and getting paid for it. Sounds good in theory but I'm bored, bored, BORED and also feeling guilty.

I hate single ply and 2 ply toilet paper. Too easy to poke through a finger

Extremely talented would be an understatment. Bit like that chap Steven Wiltshire ( I think) who does everything from memory.

in the "some branch walks can be difficult" catagory you can add big ass smooth bark Eucs with no branches for most of the stem and nothing above to crotch in to. Gives me the shivers thinking about it.

Sweet. If you find any decent feedback let us know. I think they actually look quite sharp and I'd soon scuff that dayglo colour out of them but like I say, for the price they'd have to be something special to beat the Meindles.

You want to expand any Timber?

So c'mon Steve, have we got any feedback from people who have tried them? How do they measure up to the Meindles as it's going to take a pretty spectacular boot to sway me away from them, especially at the price. What makes them so much better?

I'm sure I've seen something like it before somewhere. Showed it to some of the guys at work and they are somewhat disbelieving. I'm in two minds myself but if they are real they are very very good. Believe nothing of what you hear and half of what you see.

Rob, on your takedowns try just dropping one ear phone out. I can still hear what I need to hear without putting my backside on the line. As for the singing Nick; who cares what you sound like, you can't hear yourself. I sing at the top of my lungs and don't giver a monkeys what anyone else thinks. This job is all about having fun and enjoying yourself as far as I'm concerned so I'll continue to warble at the cost of everyone elses ear drums.

I find my only issues are going through both MP3 players and earphones like a dose of salts. I've been buying my players from Amazon direct from the states as it's cheaper. I have a good one I use for in the car and then a cheaper one for on the job. Smahed a few up by swinging into branches and crushing the LCD face. Dropped a brand new one out of my pocket in a Forest and never found that either. Had a couple nearly go through the chipper and my current Zen is full of dust but still keeps going. Even hit one with a saw when I forgot to put the chain brake on and had chain creep. Stopped the saw hitting my leg and the thing still worked. I've even been known to cancel a job because I forgot my MP3. Granted it was hosing it down with freezing rain and I didn't need much encouragment. Just had a hearing test and my hearing is still excellent. I'm able to hear stuff that apparently, if you are over the age of 26 you shouldn't be able to hear, so I must have the volume levels set about right.

Been doing it for about 4 years now. I make sure I don't have it turned up to loud but can still hear it. Either have the radio on when I need to hear voices or some good music. Best way to keep one's self motivated on a particularly ugly job I find.

Samee thing here Steve. Nive fancy camera but don't use half of its bag of tricks BUT I'm getting there slowly. As Rob said, turn the auto focus off and just use the manual focus instead is the cheapest solution to start with. Then start playing around with aperture settings. I found my local library had some good, easy to understand books on how to use SLR cameras and there's a heap of downloadable info on the net.

I'm wondering, after just putting some of my guys through a half assed chainsaw course here, how much these so called training courses are now about revenue gathering rather than actually teaching people how to use a saw/equipment properly. Surely they should be taught everything from the ground up. My guys were thrown straight in to cross cutting before they'd even learned how to maintain a saw, even the very basics. Reckon the industry would be better served a lot of the time having trainees taught by experienced users on the job for a few months and then have an assessor come out to site to check that indiviuals are up to standard. As for this chainsaw beginner; although to us it may seem that he/she has comitted a very simple and basic error (almost laughable) it's like anything, if they haven't been shown properly in the first place maybe we should be looking a little more closely at these so called training courses and extracting a little less of the urine.

When did this thread change from a "one handed chainsaw use" thread to a " do you prefer a silky or chainsaw for those hard to reach places"?

I think you might need to break down exactly what you did right from the start, step by step so we can all understand what you mixed with the fuel. If you've mixed mainly chain oil topped up with two stroke oil in the petrol you might be in trouble. It depends on how much two stroke oil was in that petrol mix. To me it sounds like you've added nearly all chain oil with a little 2 stroke for good measure. Even if you used 2 stroke, if you've only guessed at how much you've added to the petrol, you could still be in trouble. Try starting again and explaining exactly what you did clearly, which oil you used, approximately how much etc.

I've not seen this cut before either so my curiosity has been nudged. Can you explain the whys whatfors etc David? or anyone else that uses this cut for that matter. Is it just a case of stopping the log rolling?

Gotta love the Yanks ability to do everything BIG. Wish we had something like this in NZ.

:thumbup:

Now to be serious for a minute; yep, I would, and have, used a saw one handed in that situation. Reckon I've done sillier things at the wheel of a car before getting old and slowing down.

Just spike out to the end of the limb or cut the whole branch off. Failing that fell the tree

It's a pity some of the mentioned insurers aren't reading this. Maybe NFU might figure out how much business they are losing and pull finger and those with good reports would realise they are providing what their customers want and stay doing just that.