Dilz

i find 10mm prusik cord to be the better on my poison ivy which is 11.7mm - the 8mm heats up too much so you cant bomb around as much. - One point if you decide on a mechanical grab for your flip line you should really buy a soft link so if the worse happens when your are on your flip line you can be more easily rescued. I use 11.7mm rope 10mm ocean polyester, a wire core flip line and some knot which im not sure about but works well with a single pulley. By pulley cambium thing are you refering to a pulley saver or ART thingytooexpensivetoremeberwhatitscallthingymijig..... i just use a cambium save with a micro pulley installed on the small ring..works fine, a slightly bigger pulley would be better though....

truth.

are there any top handled saws that can have a heated option??? i know it may sound sot but scandinavian winters are a bit nippy.....and 6 months long.......

Ah Utilities...the dark side..... though thats whats lined up giving me 48 hours a week over winter, its a good thing to get into as with Utilities tickets you still can do domestic, if you just have NPTC tickets and do domestic, you cant drop on to Utilities. Diversity is the key - i know a lad who does tree work, scaffolding, building, and works on a trawler and a bit of second hand car dealing, and it aint too bad at any of them. and especially at first, -and its a good philosophy in general- if there is a £1 profit to be made i'll be there, unless some one is offering me £2.

hard to say with out knowing exactly what the job is (i.e visiting my self) is it a nice drag, or have you some narrow alleys to go through, gates, statues, front rooms etc... its a one man gig for sure, but two would speed it up so would be a good add on for a day, but fro,m the info given i'd be tinking £150

i agree having switched from XTC to poision ivy the weight differences is very noticeable, i often cary my rope in a rucksack up the tree when i'm dismantling, the bag is now a lot lighter, i found the blaze a pain when throwing it up to advance, a gnat would fart and blow the rope out of the way, solved with a krab but then you run the risk of it getting stuck.... the XTC is great as the weight means bundles can be chucked high and not so easily deflected by a scraggy water shoot or the like.

indeed the kit and the skills and the right professional attitude

thats one option, and imop the next step up from loops and split tails, i recomend gettting a knot book, there was one just for tree climbers, probably called the the tree climbers knot book, or look on here to see the different ones you can tie, you may find some of the arent as slick as a blakes or even your prusik, but they are great for when you are working around the canopy, you can even use a pulley wheel to tend slack on a prussik loop, there are lots of options out there

also i think geography may have a part to play - if i was around london id want a hell of a lot more, i now dislike getting out of bed for less than £200 a day, but have worked for lower rates when needs must or if i have nothing better to do. Also i think its a sign of how more competative the industry is getting A) form the amount of competing companies and b) the amount of subby types available. driving down the prices for both. agood subby is the same as agood employee - the good ones may cost you more but will earn you more, in both production and quality thus good reputation, the bad ones may cost you less but in the long run..... i think one reason alot of people start subbying to soon is the lack of quality jobs on the books, i worked through complete tree care for a company in Newark, fair hourly rate of 12 odd, the company wanted to put me on their books and pay me..........£6.75 this was in 2007 i said what the hell and they replied thats what the guys at the other branches have agreed to work for....i left. I think some newbies have this image of earning their fortune being self employed and to be fair, it has worked very well for me, but then like i said, i have put in many hours on the tools and in the text books before doing so. As for newbies going at it too soon and bodging their way through stuff.....i think most of us can say we have been their, done that, and still make it up as we go along!

I agree a lot of people jump in to subbying too soon but sometimes it s the only option. i'm of the belief that if your a subby you need to be prepared to do any job that is thrown at you with no prior knowledge of it be 2km of confier hedge to top and trim to dealing with dangerous trees. However this reflects in the prise, i know some guys who charge a lot but only get the really tricky stuff because all the easy stuff goes to those who are cheaper and perhaps not as experienced..... When i first started i was told do 5 years on the tools and working for the best companies you can find, then you should be ready to deal with most things, I did nearly 6 years including two part time whilst i studied, now self employed subbying around scandinavia at the mo,

different systems work for different people,i know plenty for whom the purisk loop is all thye use and want to use, even after trying other things. I know a few climbers who dislike the the technique of climbing up and then having to pull the slack through when using advanced hitches. The best thing is to have a go but remeber low and slow, and if something makes your life a little bit easier then is going to be worth it in the long run if you climb every day and work many years doing so then the small amount of effot it saves you is going to add up - and also is good to add more tricks. e.g leanring about the VT many years ago, brilliant knot for climbing, also use it when setting up fail safes on advantages systems, use it for lifiting, speedlines, the hitch climber i use to think was a gimick, i now own two, so useful not only just for hitch tending, but setting up false anchors, speed lining, great for when you use both ends of your rope... .lck jacks on the other hand......

trimmed the queen of denmarks bush, and a mighty bush it was. also done a bit of work for the king of sweden,

nice one!

You Tight Git! £100 a day for all that? if the climber hasnt much experience, then fine but anyone who is at a production level..... - i wasnt too far off that when i was on the books!

also you will end up with a lot of what a lot of college students dont have, hours on the tools and in the field which counts for a lot, they cant teach half of what you need to know from text books and lectures. (i'm still looking for the bit in the tree climbers companion about frozen pine trees....)

haix protector pros all the way...really like the high boot, being a lanky sod my chainsaw trousers always end up over the top of low cut boots and thus full of saw dust, on my 3 rd pair in 4 years and they are the dogs

saw got jammed, tied saw to rope to truck, the tree snapped and at on it in, you backed the truck up to take the tension off the rope, at which point the saw was spat out run over, and then sat on by the groundy who at this point was pissing himself laughing so you bashed him on the head with, Got home stuck the saw in the vice to sharpen it, then forgot about it and backed the chipper against it and threw it at the wall in disgust. the end

last week i was climbing a big asp by the rail, about 6 meters up was a hole, where hornets lived, i tried to spike past them but they got far too curious for my liking so went down, throwlined up in the canopy and climbed as quick as i could, once i was 3 meters or so above the nest they didnt seem bothered, it was a big nest, usually the hornets nests are quite small, but i could hear them buzzing as i climbed, I didn't get stung and managed to leave a nice high pole for our dave to fell.....they wernt happy with him and more than once he bolted but we got it down unscathed. Hornets are like really f#ing big wasps, i have found some nearly the length of my thumb... My Groundy for some time Christer, more than once i have seen him legging it after i have dropped a top on to a wasps nest when doing line clearance out in the woods, he's also needed airlifting to hospital one time when he didn't run quick enough, then there was the time he came up to me and when i asked why he had stopped working he replied 'i'm being attacked by an angry snake' .... he now carries an eppy pen or what ever you call em - its an adrenalin shot for if he gets stung again - always fancied giving it to him to see if it would make him pick up his pace a little.... glad to here your ok though, they are buggers for sure.

they are almost as annoying as fruit flies...

there the little black specks on said tooth picks

also does any one else get reminded of lemmings when you see pete start climbing down the first pole to be chogged?

Here is Pete and Paul, whom i have to tolerate on a regular basis :001_tt2: taking down a couple of aspen logs. unfortunately i missed them taking the tops, but the tops where taller than the logs they chuck so as you can see they are rather tall, The reason for them doing the work is they were to big and unbalanced to fell so close to the rail over heads, they took the tops and then a chog to bring them down to safe felling size and balance. the music is to mask me chewing gum whilst filming. enjoy! [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMCDhxVY1Qg]Pete and Paul and a couple of chogs - YouTube[/ame]