sime42

First snow here in Birmingham. Not frosty but feels that "raw" kind of cold.

Yeah, good point. I think resistance to wear is not exactly the same as strength in terms of material properties.

I didn't know that. That's surprising. I knew they made lawn bowls from it but just read that it was also used for other sporting stuff like cricket balls and croquet mallets.

Interesting. So I wasn't quite right, they were using wood for gears at the same time as iron. It was more for quietness and easy of replacement. It shows how hard the wood is anyway if it was rubbing against iron.

Greenheart is also denser than water, ie doesn't float. That's quite interesting to see.

If they've come from a beach then it'll probably be the embedded sand grains doing the blunting as much as the wood.

Hornbeam was used to make the teeth on gear wheels in mill machinery, because of its hardness and strength. Before iron was readily available. Whilst Elm was traditionally used for the hubs on cartwheels, due to its toughness and resistance to splitting. The old craftsmen were certainly far more in touch with the properties of natural materials.

Cheers mate. That's informative but depressing information ..........

Yeah good point. I do this to an extent already;- I give customers the name of a local guy that I've subbed for in this past, if I don't fancy a particular tree job or haven't time or resource. Not sure that I would be able to persuade him to give me a cut of the profit though! I could start doing more subbing work for him on a more frequent basis probably. It's one idea that's crossed my mind, stopping the tree work for myself but instead doing it for others as a subby. Not ideal in terms of freedom to schedule my own jobs but could be the best comprise solution.

Thanks, I'll give them a try.

Ok thanks for that. So if I am breaking the law by not having a second climber present, under what circumstances could or would I be prosecuted? For instance if I did have an accident leading to injury or worse and the HSE found out, would they still come after me even if no-one else was involved?

Fenn Trap, mark 4 model. Effective and supposedly humane, but not very pleasant. Pine Martins are apparently very good predators of grey squirrels. They have them in Scotland I know but I don't think they are as far south as Somerset. It would be great if they could be re-introduced in the south of the UK as well. Grey squirrels are a huge problem all over the country.

I fear that I may be opening a can of worms here, and putting myself up for some abuse;- but I'm stuck anyway so here goes! So I've recently found myself in a sticky situation. I called up my Insurance Brokers, (one of the big, well known Arb insurance specialists), to renew my Public Liability policy. As I've done annually for the last 8 years I think, with no problem. This time they questioned the fact that I don't also have Employers Liability and then proceeded to give me a very hard sell, and I would say actually tried to bully me into taking it. I firmly refused as it's not worth it for me so they eventually said that they could not even give me the original Public Liability insurance. Their argument is that according to the HSE it is against the law to climb without a second climber on site, so the Public Liability would be invalid anyway if I was working alone. And if I am doing it "properly" and using a sub-contractor then I need the Employers Insurance to cover them. Some background. I'm a Sole Trader, doing a mix of tree surgery, general gardening and landscaping work. I occasionally have other people to help me out on bigger jobs but it's only a few times a year and always either my brother doing it for the crack or a mate for some beer money, so all very casual. Also, I only do this over the summer as I have a completely different job during the winter. I was paying about £350 for the P.L., if I was to have the E.L. as well it would be double that per year. It really wouldn't be worth it financially given my circumstances, the amount I earn from the tree surgery work. There's a few issues here, one obviously is the whole lone working thing. I didn't really want to get into a debate on the rights and wrongs of this here, it's been covered quite a lot already on Arbtalk. I recognise that it is a risk of course, but it's one that I am willing to take for now given the relatively small amount of climbing work that I do. As long as I am not endangering others then I believe that it's my risk to take. If I am using anyone else to help me then it can be their choice, I will be open about the fact that I have no E.L. insurance. The other issue is that of being correctly insured for all work that I do. Working without Public Liability is very much NOT what I want to do. I have always tried to "do things properly", in as much as being fully insured and having all my kit up-to-scratch w.r.t. Loler regs. I'd been with that insurance company for a number of years, they'd never asked too many questions and never pushed the E.L. on me. I don't know why they are suddenly insisting, I asked if the law had changed or something but they said no. I've not yet tried any of the other companies around but I'm concerned that they are going to take the same approach and say both policies or nothing at all. If that happens then I'll have a few options, none of them at all attractive. a) Lower myself to the ranks of the cowboys and work with no insurance b) Give up the climbing work altogether, (I could get P.L. but it would be limited to 5mtrs effectively meaning no climbing) c) Bite the bullet and take out the annual E.L. as well but that would mean very little profit from my tree work I'm now in a right quandary about what to do. Has anyone else been faced with a similar situation? Are there any companies that anyone knows of that will provide P.L. without E.L.? Or, if I could get the E.L. on an ad hoc basis that would be ideal. It makes no sense to pay for a whole year of cover if I'm only going to need it for a few occasions. If I could get the cover as needed on a daily basis I could be all "above board" with a clear conscience, without wasting lots of money. I'm sure this is an impossible dream unfortunately. Is it indeed strictly the case that it is against the law to climb without a second climber on site? I get the impression that it's a bit of a grey area. Cheers guys and gals.

Thanks for the recommendations for the time serts, I'll bear them in mind in case I ever need to do any thread repair work in future. I did find the helicoils quite a struggle to get in, really fiddly. Obviously worse since they were only M5. But anyway they are holding strong so hopefully they've done the trick. After Spuds work on the saw it now runs like a dream. It's an animal in fact cutting through timber!

Very nice. How long is the handle on that? The simplest solutions are often the best.

Use a big demolition hammer drill to break up the concrete ball before you get it out. That way you should have a smaller hole than if you just dig it all out in one. I've always fancied the idea of pulling them out with a chain hoist on a tripod frame, but never got round to trying it. I've got a feeling that it may still produce a big hole unfortunately if the post was concreted in. Though if it's a vintage hardwood post just stuck in ground bare then it should just pull straight out leaving a nice clean hole. Changing the pitch of the first panel, and hence position of all subsequent holes is the easiest solution, as long as the customer doesn't mind the slight visual discrepancy.

Thanks for the advice you lot. Very useful as it generally is on here. I'm going to pick up an M5 helicoil kit tomorrow. It's a Draper "Expert" one so I hope it'll be ok. I have been concerned about quality. There's loads of kits online but they mostly seem to be the same but in different colours and with different names on. Like most tools these days. It's hard to judge quality from a picture but I have my doubts based on the number of cheap crap tools around now. Anyway I'll strip the saw down a bit as Spud suggests and then decide whether to take it somewhere to be drilled out depending on how the holes look and the state of the kit.

Good day all, I'm after a bit of chainsaw repair advice. I've got a lovely little MS200T that's recently developed a wobbly exhaust. I've noticed in the past couple of years that the bolts occasionally seem to come loose, but they've always tightened up and the exhaust has held firm again for months. I recently took it in to the local dealer for a general service and repair. When I collected it they said they'd also had to put an exhaust bolt in as one had dropped out, (unbeknown to me). The first time I used it when I got it back it ran sweet as a nut for a couple hours and then the bloody exhaust came loose again, by the time I noticed and checked it was missing a bolt already. I ordered a couple of genuine stihl replacements, put the missing one back in and ran it again. This time it only lasted a couple of minutes before they both shook loose. Conclusion is that the threads are obviously stripped in the holes, (didn't feel right when I tried to tighten them so I had an idea of the problem already). I'm somewhat reluctant to take it back to the dealers again as I've spent far too much money in there recently. Also I discovered that the remaining exhaust bolt in there when I got it back last time was nothing like the original stihl type. It was much coarser and looked like some kind of self tapper. So someone must have known there was a problem with the thread but it wasn't mentioned to me. Plus it seems like a crude repair attempt;- re-tapping the hole or using a helicoil would surely be better. (To be fair to the dealer place it may not have been them that put it in as I've had it repaired elsewhere in the past). So my question to you knowledgeable chaps is;- how easy would it be for me to install helicoils myself? From my brief research it appears that is the best repair to this quite common problem. What exact size of helicoil do I need? If I have to drill out the holes how accurate must I be, i.e. can I use a hand-held drill? As I don't own a drill press unfortunately. Thank you. Sorry about the long-winded post again, this was my attempt at being succinct! Simon

Cheers for the input chaps. I'm not completely sure how Biodegradable that Oregon line is either but I think I'll give it a go anyway. I too have been caught out by tea bags in my compost. And was pretty annoyed about having to fish out all those little bits of plastic paper even after a couple of years! I can see the obvious benefits of using metal blades but in the urban work environment there's far too many hard things around like brick walls, paving slabs and tarmac etc! Which is also a reason I see so many little bits of broken line around I suppose. So this issue of plastic fibre pollution from washing clothes is pretty depressing. It's not something I've been aware of before but I'd guess the scale of it is huge. What's the solution apart from trying to fit fine filters to washing machine outlets?

Evening all. I fear this is wishful thinking but has anyone seen or heard of any biodegradable strimmer line? I was dismayed to see so many little bits left all over the place after I'd been doing a bit today.

Teufelberger multiSAVER ------ does it for me.

That last one is stunning. Which was that, elm or beech?

Beautiful.

Medlar Tree?

Mole Valley is also good for a lot of other things;- tools, materials, clothing and even woodburners. Well worth a checking out.