Albedo

Just to point out Mr SBTC that we posted at the same time so I wasn't debating whether to carry a sling all the time or not when my post came straight after yours. the more uses and ways of doing things the merrier!

haven't done that Rupe, another use for my trusty sling. I wouldn't go in a tree without it myself. Very good thread this Peter,.

I always carry a webbing sling on a crab, so when I get a bit thats too heavy to handheld, or too dangerous to hold near the saw, you strap it to a branch or to itself (above and below cut) lop it off, get the saw out the way and deal with it with 2 hands. Also, one time I practiced outboard step cuts where they were not necessary just to try to make the limb jump out a bit. The best I managed was getting it to fall fairly flat so less chance of but end going thru a fence or something. Recomend newbies do this - practice cuts where there is no target, therefore doesn't matter if it doesn't have desired result.

Interesting and educational as always M'D The tomograph set up looks like your'e about to take it out with semtex.

Very nice job indeed, no wonder your'e building up the good rep you mentioned in some other thread, you clearly know what your'e doing. I've criticised a couple of things before (not yours) so nice to get the chance to say something positive. This may be my first time, best not develop the habit, whats that warm glowing feeling? dunno!

I am just making a post to see if I get get the amcide issue on to page 8. Thus making this thread longer and therefore officially more interesting than Mr Ed's thread about his new firewood chipper/processor, which currently also rests on page 7. damn not quite!

Dave G. When I said Quote: 'Gets me posting away like crazy when people make strong statements, stated as fact and often unreferenced, especially if they are poorly researched or debatable'. I nearly added, that I wasn't accusing you of all of the above, but didn't in the interest of shortening things. Just the strong statement one would have done, and perhaps the debatable one as someone pointed out, these forums are for a bit of debate. Not surprised it annoyed you a bit to feel accused of all of those things all at once. You are saying quote:'....rather to highlight the requirements placed upon us, as professionals, to work within legal constraints. The Pesticides Safety Directorate states that all pesticides must be approved for use'. My whole point is that government approval is not the be all and end all. If someone reads on this forum that I am using salt as a stumpicide without DEFRA approval, I don't believe that they should find that unprofessional. What is organic farming all about if not questioning standard practice. Does this make organic farmers unprofessional. I have assumed throughout that salt is relatively harmless. Some points have been raised debating this, so it may turn out that I'm wrong. One point to bear in mind is that a lot of stuff ends up in the sea thru the hydrologic cycle, All the DEFRA stuff does harm when it gets there, I don't think anyone is going to argue that salt does the same. Your'e right about pesticides being used as a coverall term. I'll check out the references for information you have given as you do have some stuff I didn't know and I'm sure we do have lots of common ground as you say. I'd be interested to know why salt had its approval revoked.

Hi Phenom, I've seen you in the fungus threads, in tree health care so I know you have an interest. I'll have a trawl around and see what I can come up with re - mychoryzae / glyphosate. I did read something the other day on relationships between trees and fungae. As always in science, it was questioning everything that we currently believe to be true. The reference is Dr Elaine Ingham. She's an american authority on composting and soil science. If you google her name you'll get a site called something like 'soil food web' or something like that. You can trawl around and find all sorts of interesting articles for free, although she is a commercial business as well. I have her CD's about thermophilic bacteria in composting. When you add a nitrogen source like manure to a compost pile, they feed of the nitrogen and produce the heat through respiration and other bits of their lifecycles. they are also the culprits in our chip piles. wood is high in carbon and green stuff high in nitrogen, so the green bits help to kick off the compost process. anyway I digress.

Appology accepted, I'll get off mine as well then. Gets me posting away like crazy when people make strong statements, stated as fact and often unreferenced, especially if they are poorly researched or debatable. Why did you mean pesticide when the thread is about herbicides? The book I quoted is about the damage done in the states by the use of legal pesticides and herbicides. Some of those subsequently banned in the states remained in use here for a long time, and possibly to this day. Lindane was one such case but don't know if still in use. Salt is used on the roads in winter. If it works as a stumpicide my guess is that there won't be any legislation covering its use as its not a controlled substance. So hopefully nobody will be prosecuted. Glyphosate/ Roundup does have one adverse effect which is to kill off mychorhyzall root fungi (Don't have references for this but am prepared to have a look and see what I can dig up). I have seen evidence of it as you can see it in the growth rings, ie less growth. So caution when applying to stumps, not to hit rootzones of other trees. I also read somewhere that amcide is toxic to birds etc, as you stated. Surely this is an argument for using a relatively harmless substance such as salt, and not blindly following the rules. p.s I did my thesis on organo phosphate pesticide residues in marine mammals (dolphins) found dead on the Portugese coast. So I've done some science on this using a gas chromatographer to find out levels of said residues. One of the harmful effects is believed to be damage to the immune system. These (lipophilic) chemicals bioacumulate in the fat. Mothers use the fat to make milk for babies which in turn receive a concentrated dose (of pesticide residue). We are also mammals and thats one of the reasons why there is cautious gov't advice not to eat too much fatty fish when pregnant. Cautious advice, in order to protect the fishing industry The dolphin story told here, to make the point that all that is legal is not necessarily good. So I posted to encourage the use of a less harmfull substance.

I think you mean herbicide, not pesticide. I'd recomend that you read 'Silent Spring' by Rachel Carson (from memory) published in about 1960. You might decide to get of your high horse with regard to whats approved or not, and the commendable, IMO use of salt as a stumpicide by members of this forum.

Fair enough Marc. I can see that it was a very 'busy' tree to do. I'm glad you took my criticism as positive feedback, and not as anything else. I've decided that I'm not gonna comment on other peoples work untill I've had the courage to post some of my own. I don't take before and after photos so I'll have to get into the habit.

Cheers Dave

War of the roses going on in the background of a couple of threads now, most entertaining. I think (with my vast computer expertise) that you are right Dean and that must be whats happening. I found a way round it by accident (last night couldn't get into arbtalk at all after 4 attempts gave up to do something else). If I go to my yahoo email and find an auto notification of a reply to a thread from arbtalk. Click on the link in the email and go to that thread, then you click on forum and get to that page without the paypal problem. For proof of the pudding we could do with another user or two who are having the same problem, who subscribe to Symantec/Norton security.

Mr Monkeyd I've been reading all your coro cut stuff over in tree health care.(I see you have a big fan across the pond) Just wondered why you elected not to do some kind of natural fracture thing on the tree in this thread? This one is for my own education, no ulterior motive or criticism, this time.

Very usefull post red squirell. As MrT said its people who lie about ability that started the post. It does beg the question, why do they feel the need? like getting your first bar job and saying youv'e pulled pints before in order to get the job I started by phoneing around for a groundie job, did chainsaw cert after a while. One day the climber/boss had a bad knee and let me take over up the tree. Another day he left me on a little reduction job for a while on my own, so no peer pressure or time pressure. also ended up at myerscough after a couple of years in the job. So your'e not a 'rubbsih' climber, just a new one. You'll get a start somewhere and work your way up thru experience.

Looks a bit haircut pruned to me. Pic 2 looks like youv'e followed the dotted line, where there are better places to prune to within and without the line, without extra climbing. The thrifty bits mentioned by Lanstree are a bit small in proportion to the nodes youv'e cut back to leaving stubby bits all over the place. Sorry but I think its almost there but not quite. I know everyone does an individual tree differently but I'm not so happy with that one as everyone else.

Got this from 'Norton help' "Phishing Protection adds a toolbar to your Internet Explorer and Firefox browser which provides you with information about each Web page that you visit. The information about the page includes: If it is safe to visit If it is safe to enter confidential information on If it is possibly fraudulent If it is known to be fraudulent You can click the message bar to view more details about the status of the Web page. In addition, Phishing Protection includes information about Norton Authenticated Web pages. Norton Authenticated Web pages belong to companies whose Web sites have been frequently mimicked by fraudulent Web sites. These sites usually belong to large financial institutions or are popular shopping sites, with pages requesting personal information. Symantec analyzes the pages of these sites and verifies that they belong to the company that is represented. You can be confident that the information you provide goes to the company with which you want to do business. The drop-down arrow on the message bar provides quick links to the tasks that you can perform." As you have to pay every year for all this protection, it seems a shame to turn bits of it off. I was rather hoping the problem would be at the arbtalk end so that I won't have to do anything.

cheers Dean. Don't computers just work by magic. Normally I'm a great believer in the 'if it ain't fixed don't break it' school of thought. Especially where puters are concerned. I find that if I try to alter something, little blue windows pop up with very threatening and scary messages. The more you soldier on , the deeper into blue box/scary message world you get. Also don't know what phishing is but somehow feel it may be hugely important, and perhaps holding a whole new world of blue boxes with scary messages. Yours Reluctantly...

As Dean described. stops with line at bottom on paypal and int exp - blue line at top saying not responding. happens a lot and usually works on second go, just happened now and I remembered there was a thread about it somewhere. This one is just to give you the feedback Steve. I also thought it was my computer or my old dial up connection. It doesn't happen on other sites though.

Cheers andy, thats 2 cyberpints I owe

Cheers Tony I owe you a cyberpint, unless your'e anywhere near the Red Lion in my tiny little cheshire village, for a real one with froth on

Re the BS thing. I got as far as hitting the buy it button on the BSI website, then couldn't find my credit card so thought I'd do it in a minute after finishing my reply in the thread. So it looks like its available for £20 or £10 for members (of BSI). It says theres a hard back as well. Haven't been back yet to see if you can actually buy it or not yet, my plastic is around here somewhere. So when I said it's in the post I was jumping the gun a bit. Mr masterblaster 'why the hooks?' . Do you call climbing spikes, gaffs etc - hooks. Not sure what you mean.

I wondered as I was writing about the habitat thing. After all in a woodland, things do fall over etc all the time. Perhaps I'm being pedantic. I don't see Shigo as the be all and end all, and I've spiked on trees that weren't coming down myself under certain circumstances. Yep. this is a location specific thing, I can live with it. Although I still find it a bit ugly to look at. I do see that something had to be done and that to take it down completely would lose the habitat value.

Monkeyed, I've seen lots of your posts and find your professionalism and attitude inspiring. Having said that I'm intrigued to know what set of cicumstances makes it ok to do that to a tree. As you say 'topard' - its not a proper pollard so wouldn't it have been better to just take it out completely. What about Shigo's 'tree dignity'. Also this spikes and bats thing. I followed the sugested link for the draft, but it seems you now have to buy the finished standard. While its in the post, you couldn't quote the relevant bit could you. Again it goes against everything we know, to use spikes on a tree that is not being removed. Bats or not its making lots of invitations for decay and pathogens at the same time as leaving the massive topping wounds. Has someone at BSI, lost the plot

Whilst were on the subject of sewing up chainsaw trousers. Just thought it worth pointing out, for the newbies. Don't sew the outer material to the inner kevlar stuff or they won't work in the event of an accident. As contact with the saw should drag all the inner material towards the point of contact. Sewing the 2 together will potentially stop this from happening.