Rupe

What would you rather have in the shower? Baby oil or WD40?

Baby Oil!!!!! Works the best.

I dont know my kent geography but F R jones do loler, I think.

Yes, we just did EFAW to be covered, but we have all done plenty of first aid courses over the years so this was just a refresher really. Its was ok, but definatly arb specific, but in 18 years of tree work I have done more first aid on the side of the road than I ever have on a work site.

We all just did Emergency first Aid at Work (EFAW), one day course, was quite acceptable for our recent AA assessment.

If you got them through rayco then you probably paid a fortune for them but they shoudl be gauranteed for a while? I know vermeer charge a fortune for theirs. A set of four front end bearing for my 252 was 400+vat from vermeer. I got the lot for 80 inc vat from my local bearing place, not chinese bearings either. But, generally, as said above, chinese does not mean crap. The chinese would make the best bearings in the world if thats whats was asked for and paid for.

Getting out might well be the best thing, only you know that. I was just trying to say that all trades are the same, and if someone can succeed in one then they could do it in others, and on the other hand some people will struggle whatever trade they are in. Tree work though has greater rewards than just money, in fact the money is the worst part of it, and it must be the most expensive trade in terms of the cost of kit and training? If anyone can think of a more expensive semi skilled trade (yeah, I know "semi-skilled" we have this converstaion before) to be in then I would like to know as I cant think of any? And people are drawn to it as a way of making more money, thats the weird thing. In your opening post you said you want to earn more a day, but would you be happy spending so much on kit that after your earnings you will have less than you do now? People should only go into tree work if they want to work outside in all weathers with trees AND have very little to show for it other than pile of very expensive kit that all needs replacing.

If you are self employed then does that mean you get your plastering jobs and charge the customer, or are you stuck working for one person on day rate? Same thing goes on in tree work, so if you spend 1-2K on training and kit you could end up self employed stuck with a tree firm on £70 a day with no hope and wonderign why you bothered. The better money is either in the form of a wage from a decent firm or self employed/freelance workign for various firms and demandign high day rate but you have to the best of the best for that to really work and theres no job security in it. Ultimatly you need to be the kind of person who can go out and get work, either from the public or from other firms, and it should be just as easy/hard to do that in any trade, they are all suffering these days and yet the best folk are still making a living. So, if you cant do it with plastering can you do it with a new trade? I'm not trying to put you off, but I've known some top rate plasterers and they earn good money with a fraction of the cost on kit that we have to have. If I was as good at plastering as I am at tree work (I'm not that great but its my trade) then I reckon I would be making higher profit margins than I am now. Remember its not what you earn a day, its how much of it you have left for yourself that matters. What do you need to provide in order to get £60 a day plastering? Your probably on more money than an £80 a day groundie that has to provide PPE and maybe a saw etc.

If you are the best plasterer in your area then you should never be short of work and you should be able to earn double what you are on now. If, in five to ten years time, you manage to become as good as some of the better arborists in your area then you might be on the same money. I dont know how good you are at plastering but you must be nearer to perfecting that trade than you are in tree work, and the investment for tree work is thousands if you aim to pay for it yourself.

Hi Paul, thanks for making it a good day out! Sorry about the lack of lunch my mind was elsewhere! Now the dust has settled its a really good feeling of achievment, we will see what difference it actually makes over the coming months/years but a definatle platform from which to move on from.

Sorry, I type too fast If its going to take you 2 or more days to do this work then you shouldn't be doing it!

Its wont be your fault, you will be the injured party and the fault would be with your "negligent" employer. Are you worried about having a bad accident or more worried about it being your fault if you did? If you only have one are and are actually dead, does it matter whos fault it is???

yes, sarcasm! There is no right answer, and in my opinion questions like this should be banned. If its going to take you 2 or more days to do this work then you should be doing it! If you dont know ho wmich to estimate then just put in a figure and when you dont get the work you will know you were too high, and if you get it and end up with no profit you will know you were too low, and then you will learn. As long as you learn faster then you go bust you will have a business, but no one can answer these questions for you. Half a days work tops!

Well this is up to you. Are you the climber? If you want to keep your job then I would get on with it. If the HSE guy turns up then you could be in trouble but ultimalty he would only stop the work and then your boss is ultimatly in trouble. You need to decide if your job and your safety is worth the risk. Whatever the "laws" maybe, there is a vast number of companies out there who do not fulfill their duty of care. This will always be the case, but if you are on a big enough contract that an HSE has paid attention (was it actuall HSE or just a site safety supervisor) then IMO it would best if you (the company you are working for) get thrown off site, and they get someone better in. Of course that just means you (again, I mean the company you work for) just go and work elsewhere and the problem is not necessarily solved.

Are you asking as an employee being sent to do work with no AR qualified groundie? If so I would say, yes, write it down and work anyway, or refuse to do the work and accept the fact that you might end up un employed. Not saying that would be right (you becoming unemployed) but it happens. On site risk assessment is something that employees should do, or at least have the facilities to do, I dont think anyone believes they get done for every job. And if the boss is on site all day then its less important to write it down, but you should all be discussing any risks. Also, remember that having a rescue qualified climber on site is not enough, that person has to actually be able to carry out the rescue and not just have passed it on the assessment and never climbed since, AND of course there needs to be kit available for the rescue.

I firmly believe that there is a lot of tree work out there that will only ever get done when someone comes along who is a mate of a mate and doesnt do a written quote and is therefore able to be ripped off. Set fire to something else of theirs as well, I hate them already.

Or go in to fell the ash one day and instead set fire to the entire stash of logs you have done so far and then walk away from the whole lot, leaving the extra ash and a pile of ash.

Thats sort of what I meant. If its (compared to what you have done) 200 or less then maybe do it.

Quick question, how much more out of pocket would you be if you did this other Ash and then got paid 600?? i.e. if you walk away know you lose 600, but ig the other ash is worth say 400, then if you spend all that extra time you end up 400 out of pocket, might just be worth walking away. Of course you will earn yourself 600 quids worth of calling them everything under the sun, to their face for the next few weeks. Another thing, how do you know if you'll get a penny even if you do the other tree?

They were keeping all the wood anyway.

Grass grows from the base, not the tips, so mowing is good. No money in that though says Jim!!

All sounds familiar! No regular breaks here but we tend to get set up first, barriers cones, access lines up trees etc. then have a cuppa and fill in the RA and come up with a plan! Lunch depends on how well that plan is working. It's nice if you can get packed up and still have time for a cuppa and a breather before the journey home.

A friend of mine worked ten days straight without washing or changing his clothes and not even taking his chainsaw trousers off because he was too ill to do any of those things!! He still made it to work though, you can work through a lot of things! I myself was told to take at least 6 months off when I ruptured a disc (I think herniated disc in L3/L4 is the correct term) but I just had two weeks off then all the pain killers in the world for the next 6 months, I worked through it and the disc actually shed itself and repiared much quicker than if left to just time alone. Anyone who saw me in the summer of 2008 will know what state the (prescription) opiates got me into but I got a lot of work done that year!!

The rope should be in a ropeguide or cambium saver at the very least, and so it shouldn't be spread apart by being over a part of the tree? Surely no one uses a LJ without a ropeguide?

My guess is that YES it does matter, and the LJ manufacturer would almost certainly agree as this is not how his device was meant to be used and the RW is relatively new and untested. But I am keen to try it with my SJ so the more testing we all do the better. I want to practice on something small and have not had much opportunity recently.