monkeybusiness

I bought an ex military Rotzler hydraulic winch to run off my tractor’s hydraulics (180 bar). It wouldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding - when I finally got the specs from Rotzler it needed 300 bar (excavator pressure). New pump and it runs great - I wouldn’t be surprised if your military DAF pump is delivering too much pressure for the MEWP though.

Doesn’t look as heavy as a TMK either, but obviously that might not be the case! Do the blades ever bend on this style of shear in your experience?

How does that T-Cut 25 compare to the TMK Eddie? For both cutting and holding onto what it’s cut?

Lol - not quite the same but I do get where you are coming from!

I’d love to see it work as a concept, but personally think it’s a bit too compromised in terms of capacity to be worth building. Chasing twigs around with a forestry crane would soon get tiresome. There is a reason you don’t often see this sized chipper fitted with a crane! If Big J has an old suitable chipper kicking about in the nettles then yes, it would make sense to do a bit of fabrication and give it a try. To go out and buy a suitable machine to test the concept wouldn’t be how I’d personally spend my own money though - I reckon you could soon end up with a load of money tied up in a niche machine with limited/no market.

Feeding a chipper with an excavator is a different proposal to feeding a small mounted chipper with a small mounted crane. And this isn’t a site clearance job - the main role is harvesting any timber of value. All that will be left is small brash, not hulking great lengths of heavy timber. I stand by my thoughts that it would be quicker fed by hand on this scale. There would be a lot of repositioning with that sized crane just to reach the brash for a start - I can’t see it being viable unfortunately.

Exac-1 had one at Hillhead that looked decent and didn’t require crazy flow.

And don’t forget that feeding a chipper (by hand or mechanically) is much much harder if you can’t see the feed rollers clearly - guessing what’s going on down there is a real pain, more so on smaller machines. Mounting any sort of chipping or branch logging machine on your unit for crane feeding needs careful consideration in terms of how/where you position the indeed so the operator can monitor it.

You’d feed that Jensen faster by hand than with a crane - this is only going to be brash and that chipper won’t take massive gob-fulls. I love the general idea and there may well be a nice little gold mine niche out there but you could very quickly have a good chunk of money in a machine that isn’t really any better at doing what off the shelf chippers are already doing IMO.

Bandit 105 would be awesome, but that’s some lump (I don’t think you’d get one much under 2.5 tonnes). What weight can the forwarder carry?

From a reuse/cross-contamination point of view I wouldn’t personally worry - 25 litres of petrol will happily dilute a few teaspoons of kerosene dregs without issue. However, if you are talking about a run-of-the-mill 25 litre disposable plastic oil/diesel drum, they aren’t the best for storing or carrying petrol. They swell up and leak through the cap at the slightest rise in temperature, and I don’t think are in any way safe for that particular use. Get a steel Jerry can from Screwfix for about £20 and don’t die in a great ball of fire!!!

You will have problems with a crane that can breach the vicinity zone working around network operator’s apparatus from a compliance perspective unfortunately. A tracked 8’’ chipper is under 2 tonnes and is also low impact, and crane feeding this size machine isn’t really economically viable. It won’t speed up production unfortunately (manpower will feed this sized machine faster than a crane) - you should aim at removing manual handling and the risk of slips/trips/falls if you are trying to find a market for such a device IMO.

I think you’d probably be quicker hand-feeding any chipper that only has 44hp tbh - crane feeding only really works efficiently on big machines IME.

Did you sell the bags on or use yourself?

Would that not just move the issue a bit further downstream, to the edge of the concrete pad? Not trying to be a smartarse, genuine question.

Bought 2 of these earlier - just had an email from Amazon saying the transaction has been cancelled and I haven’t been charged. It’s obviously a phoney listing to get people interested (it’s worked to be fair - there must have been a lot of views of this thread alone, some from people who wouldn’t previously consider looking on Amazon for a chainsaw).

Have you weighed it with the Engcon fitted by any chance? What size hitch, and is the tilty direct mounted? Have you got a price in mind?

It’s great stuff, but not sure if it would work in tubes.

Do you need the tubes? Have you ever tried OKO?

Just use the string with glue, or is it tubed?

If you are looking at going down the tilt rotator route you could do a lot worse than reading through this huge thread of Eddie's from the now largely defunct CEForum - there is an incredible amount of info in there that may help inform decisions. http://ceforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=357&highlight=Wideboy He has been massively pioneering with his various set ups and done a lot of research (and invested heavily in his ideas) along the way, and really is the person to listen to with regards different specs and future-proofing your investment. It is very difficult to get your head around the multitude of setup options available at the beginning, but one thing I would definitely recommend if buying a new machine is to spec it with s-type buckets and hitch (even though UK machinery dealers might look at you with a glazed look of incomprehension when you mention these). They are a much better design than the traditional UK quickhitches, and make a future transition to a tilty much more straightforward.

Decide what spec you want/might want in the future before getting prices, and speak to a few manufacturers (but be careful that you are comparing apples with apples!). Do you want to operate a grab/hydraulic hitch/anything that requires oil under the unit? I would recommend that you spec any unit you go for with that functionality (however it is controlled) as you greatly limit the benefits a tilty can bring if you omit that option (and that isn’t really an economical retrofit later).

We are just back from a 2 week driving holiday across France, for my cousin’s wedding in the Alps. I love Britain and I love my little piece of it, and have always missed it wherever in the world I’ve found myself. However, this time France blew me away to the point where I had regrets about returning home (and I’ve been a bit of a Francophobe in the past if I’m honest). I totally understand your nostalgia with regards our fair isle, and I would definitely miss everything you described in such a colourful way. I’m not sure I would be rushing to swap an outdoor French life for a British equivalent nowadays though!

Get an electric Winchmax - really good, great value for money. Keep your engine running when using and for a while afterwards as they will quickly drain a battery.

Why wouldn’t you tell them (unless you love loud bangs!)?