daltontrees

I remember noticing in my Hyusky manual that you should use Husky 2stroke oil at 1:50 or any other 2stroke oil at 1:25. I thought this was just a marketing ploy to get you to buy their oil. Then I met a guy who said he had burned out a Stihl chainsaw by using cheapo 2stroke oil, apparently the usual garden machinery oil can't cope with the high revs. So I still only use chainsaw 2stroke oil at about 45:1. I wouldn't dream of using used engine oil on a bar, as well as being absolutely minging and horrendous for your cleint's garden, there's a reason it was being thrown out, namely it is full of tiny bits of metal from inside an engine, which can't be good if it gets inside your chain links.

Basically, as long as your arm and keep it on your right hand gear loop. I think the bungees are a great idea and we always have one end on the saw and an aluminium screwgate krab on teh other end. It is a good idea to pass the strop under the handle twice to take upo the slack anbd clip it back to itself so that when you are warming up the saw there is zero chance of the strop getting caught up. The elastic in the bungee guarantees this because it scrunches up.

200 comes with fancy wee plastic pop-up flaps for opening up the fuel tank and oil tank without using a tool. Specially designed to break off the first time you dunt the saw whike hauling it up a tree or twisting the flap when the cap is on a bit tight. A stupid and unnecessary backward step by Stihl. The 020 has big chunky caps with a slot in that you can open with the tip of a Silky. There's nothing there to break. I wouldn't swop my old 020 for a new 200, it just seems better made and mre reliable and keeps going and going (touch wood).

The new Oregon bar and chain arrived and I used it yesterday, what a joy it was and it was whistling through 0.8m dia discs of Cedar in about 1 minute. And much as an odd number of drive links may not damage a bar, I could feel the difference right away having an even number, it is much smooter cutting. The old chain needs sharpenign but I will be storing it away for only the most desparate emergencies. The bar was pretty poor when I bought it second-hand and although I dressed it about every hour of cutting I suspect it may have been overheated in a chainsaw mill by aprevious owner. The soaking in oil before fitting the new chain was recommended by the tutor on my CS30 course, and I've done it ever since. I suppose it means that the oil can get into the links before the chain is run, it could take a few minutes of running on the saw before the oil would infuse the links otherwise, saving on any metal-on-metal damage. I may as well use up my enormous supply of Arborol, and I can monitor its effect on my new bar and chain. The cost of it is so low that I don't even think about it when costing jobs, even ones like this week's where we were cutting dozens of discs. I have also noticed that Arborol's claim that the stuff helps cool the bar may be true. I use a Husq 357XP and my partner uses a 455 Rancher, I use Arborol and he uses Oregon mineral based chain oil and after 10 minutes of both of us cross-cutting his bar is noticeably hotter than mine. Ther may be other reasons for this but it is often me that is setting the chain tension the same on both saws, sharpenign them both a tthe same time, greasing the sprockets at the same time so there may be something in the cooling effect of the water in the Arborol. The downside is that the water seems to evaporate when you stop cutting, resulting in the chain being encrusted with the oil residue as shown in the original pictures. Anyway, I am back in love with the 181SE, long may it run.

Fair nuff Mesterh the chisel points are a bit rough although the edges are very sharp. I will need to improve my sharpening technique. The Arborol worries me a bit, especially as I have bought a huge load of it. I had been thinking of diliuting it a little less (it says on the label that if you are cutting wet trees like poplar or working in rivers you should reduce the dilution) but right enough in hot weather that might not be so smart. But next week I have some enormous Larch to cut into dozens of discs and the 'milk' seems good for that sort of thing as it is very very cheap and I am working on the ground and can check the temperature of the bar all the time. I will probably get through about 5 litres of diluted Arborol (cost about £1) instead of real oil at about £10. If i was doing it every day it would add up. My new Oregon bar and chain should arrive tomorrow, so I have to decide whether to switch to real oil. I will soak the new chain in it anyway before using.

Thanks everyone, the verdict is to tidy up the bar but put it and the chain aside for emergencies, and get myself a new Oregon 28" combo. May splash out on a new sprocket too. Thanks for the part numbers. I know it looks as if I have been ploughing fields with it but that's what chains look like when you use Arborol, when it dries it leaves a film on everything that invariably looks dirty. That chain is f***ing sharp, it was pulling off chips about 100mm long during yesterday's test. I am interested to hear that the odd number of drive links doesn't make any difference. Like would be the case with semi-skip chains I suppose. And I will turn up the oil feed rate, especially if I go for a longer bar.

Cheers, I have checked and it is an Oregon chain type 73 so it's a 1.5. The bar is Husky and says 3/8 on it (the pitch, I guess, for the nose sprocket) and there is a part number so I will see if I can find out what gauge it is. I have only been cutting Ash/Beech/conifers with it, I just took it out for a test 10 minutes ago and it flew through a 300mm diameter log of cypress in about 8 seconds. The inside of teh rails is intact it's just the outside that's chattered. Replacement Husky bar is about £70 and chain about £40 so I may get a 28" Oregon bar/chain combo next time which costs about £50 + £30. Oregon stuff's great on my other saws.

I wonder if anyone can explain a problem that has developed with the guide bar on my saw. It is a Husq 181SE that I bought second hand a while ago and despite reservations about its weight I have now grown to like it a lot, normally it whistles through anything you put in front of it. It still has the bar and chain it came with, which I believe is a genuine husq 26(ish) inch bar and a chain that has an odd number of drive links. This chain I know instinctively is a bad idea since the extra .375 inch spacing between two of the chisels has got to be causing vibration. Anyway I have persevered using it to pretty good effect but recently I noticed that the outside edge of the bar has shattered slightly in quite a few places. See the pic. The chain seems a sloppy fit in the groove, maybe the problem is that the chain could be a 1.5 and the bar a 1.6? Or the uneven number of links is setting up a vibration? I am also worried in case the Arborol (Oregon's water based chain oil and a fraction of the cost of oil) is not doing the job. Anyone seen this before or know what's happening? And should I just keep on using it toill it falls apart before putting my new bar/chain combo on?

If so the answer to the original question must be 'yes, more or less'... Regarding clays and the one year/2 year debate, wet clay is plastic and maybe the idea is that slow rehydration will allow expanding clays under foundations to expand sideways around the foundation rather than jacking up the building?

I was a surveyor in a previous life and the taught wisdom on tree removal was that to prevent heave in shrinkable (and therefore expandable) clays the tree should be removed gradually. Any RICS expert standing up in court to try and defend his advice to do otherwise, advice that had resulted in either heave or continued subsidence, would possibly get massacred. If we are to believe the cited paper there is some ideal balance whereby so much crown could be removed in year one as not to stimulate rapid moisture uptake of the regfenerating tree but not so much as would let the clays rehydrate gradually and not cause heave. After all that has been said in this thread I have absolutely no idea now what % should go in year one. %0% seems as good a guess as any. In practice people talk about trees as if they 'think' but it's not like trees have a board meeting every now and again to agree how many roots or shoots are needed. The real answer may lie somewhere in an understanding of the hormonal mechanisms that regulate (stimulate or inhibit growth). Maybe pruning sets loose a bucket of hormones that cause roots (that otherwiswe are woody and fairly passive) to put out a mass of new temporary rootlets to feed the new leaf and shoot and callus growth? This would be compatible with woody roots not dying back. I have read that a small amount of auxins in a growth tip will cause root or stem elongation but a large amount will inhibit it. Complicated. I must lie down now....

The authors of the article that Gimmer posted suggest that pruning has no long term effect on soil moisture depletion because the roots remasin unaffected by pruning. But surely if you reduce the crown repeatedly and over a long period there will be a net depletion of nutrients to the roots and they will not be able to (or need to) maintain themselves at their full extent and there will be dieback just as a crown dies back if it is deprived of water and nutrients? To say otherwise is to say that a root network once in place is indestructible. Fair enough, roots are not tested by weather, insects, mammals, fungi, bacteria (and tree surgeons) the same way as branches are so wastage will be slow but it MUST happen eventually?

Interesting article, Gimmer, thanks for making it available. There is something odd about the logic that I can't quite put my finger on. It may come to me though. Maybe being in the not-so-sunny west of Scotland makes it impossible for me to imagine Soil Moisture Deficiency.

Here's what I think may be a couple of relevant bits from the AFAG guidance a. the guidance 'does not cover exceptional situations where the risk assessemnt shows advanced or alternative felling techniques are required' b. 'It is important to remember that felling is a one-person operation' It seems that if your buddy is not working on another tree but just watching from 2 trees away he isn't really 'working'. Safest place has to be in the other 'escape route' position (3 oclock to 4.30 or 7.30 to 9 oclock). If your risk assessment could show that the risk of fatigue and leaving a tree mid-fell for any lenght of time outweighs the risk of 2 people at the butt in the escape zones surely there's no problem? Isn't that what you're saying anyway? Give the jobsworths a copy of it and they'll retreat with their posteriors covered. Otherwise it looks on paper like a fair cop...

I have aStein on my Treemotion too, the weak belt loop on it was starting to tear (again) so my wife stitched a a bit of cheapo webbing belt and buckle round it and it is pretty much indestructible now. I reckon it will save me the cost of several of these kits in the long run, Would NEVER climb without kit.

Mmmm, I think it's just the vertical vector part of the wire angle i.e. Sin30x2.5T which is 15kN. Worst case scenario, it can never be heavier than just a straight vertical lift of 2.5T. So it got to be a 2T in theory and a 3.2T Tirfor for absolute peace of mind.

Seriously, don't try and make graphite yourself by rubbing pencil on sandpaper, you will get quartz (por worse, corrundum/carborundum) particles into the graphite and if you put abrasives like that in your krab hinges etc. you will gub them verty quickly.

For what it's worth I can't settle on a preference. I have been climbing for 20 years and always fall back (no pun intended) on the prussik. The guy I climb with likes a 2 wrap prussik and I would like to use a Klemheist for general tree work but because we usually swop over mid shift and leave the loops on the ropes I use a 3 wrap prussik, he complains that the 3 is hard to unlock I complain that the 2 doesn't lock properly (and I nearly decked it once as proof). I can't be bothered with minder pulleys or else I would probably be using the VT. I am fairly addicted to my swedish strop for close-up stuff, it's so stiff that it doesn't really matter if it doesn't hug the stem. Climbing buddy uses a prussik on a short strop and can never rein it right in as a result. I ought to experiment with a really short prussik loop. Blake's hitch is an interesting suggestion that would get round the problem of the fixed length of a loop and the bulk of the 'fishermans'.