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Dont know if this is any help to you, they do list flails for logic mowers flailsdirect.co.uk

Yep, pity I've not seen him again since

Yep got plenty of those Mind havent been able to get in the workshop since march as Me dad had a tidy up due to sisters wedding reception being at the farm and dumped everything in the workshop, on the plus side means I'm now having a big sort out, which is probably long overdue looking at some of the stuff I'm uncovering

some one oonce told me that ss a rule of thumb - from 5 quotes if you get four or five your too cheep, if you get 2 or less your too expensive.

So does that mean its the recession or I'm to expensive? as I've been flat out since January but have now only had 1 price accepted out of the last 5

Hmm probably a toss up between clearing drains/septic tanks and newt fencing

Been a while since I bought any binders for hedgelaying so cant really help much, but I do remember a guy who made walking sticks, came up the farm once to cut sticks, think he gave me something like 40p for short shanks, 80p for long shanks and anything interesting i.e ash knob sticks were negotiable on size and quality, anyway up shot of it was I ended up £40 better off for spending an hour wandering round showing him where to look for the best ones

got plenty of oil drums thanks ed keep emptying the bloomin things:sneaky2:, just have to gas or cut off the lids

Must leak faster than my old ford then

My brothers old boss (well known for being a tight aris) had bought a roll of woven coil land drain and cut it into metre lengths and used it as tree guards, but he never took them off so 10-12 years later I spent 2 days cutting them off for him, not a pleasant job as most of them were full of water and rotten leaves, mind surprisingly most of the trees hadnt taken too much harm

No probs Just had a quick squizz on ebay, you can get the lidded drums on there for between, £4.50 and £9.50 each, only downside is the closest ones are 45 miles away Used to get mine of my brother when he worked for a local engineering firm

you guessed it charlie - the lads are into "project use those drums" we'll have a steel band before long! - could you tell when you popped in that their in one of their "lets start a project moods":lol: - too much sun, too hot to do any proper work! lets muck about:thumbup:

- as always charlie - tony has overengineered the bbq setup so that we could spit roast an ostrich!

I've got am oil drum charcoal burner if your passing this way and want a look any time, much simpler if you can get the drums with lids that they use for holding powders or briquettes

I don't see owt wrong with it as an add on to a tree surgery business, personally I pulled out of domestic fencing and landscaping as a main source of work a couple of years back, as it was getting flooded with people pricing well below any chance of making a living from it, still do an odd one, mostly for regular customers, although this week I will mostly be out on the tractor flail mowing

i had a customer who insisted his firewood was clean, almost to planed finish, i told him this would cost more as more care and effort was involved

 

to do this the wood needed to almost instant dry on the outside and needed to stay this way so it was stored in smaller tham M3 batches and was constantly moved into the sun and in shelted from rain

 

it is easier to store in big pile, but wood goes mouldy, more effort and expense to store in crates, so pass extra on to client and add on the FUSSY TAX

 

therefore premium product=premium price

 

but i would rather do less work for a product recieved buy the ungrateful to just be burnt without a thought to the effort involved

 

all of my wood is now stored in vented crates and undercover and some still goes mouldy

 

fussy customer is now gone, but not to anyone local and my life is easier

Customers like that you can do without, once had one who wanted all his logs cut exactly 12 inches long because his log store was 2ft deep and it made it easier for him to stack them

common sense seems to be a gift nowadays!

 

There are always jobs going in any career, but a fresh student isnt going to have a chance, i myself do look around and see jobs going but they are always for tree officers and head climbers, i have enough sense to know that ill not be able to fulfill that job at my current stage, but it would be nice to be able to some day.

 

I seem to fall into a stereotype, a student with fresh qualifications and no skills, most ofmy other peers will likely have little work over the summer, whereas i am managing fairly regular work, im still training as i have a lot to learn, but doing that i am putting myself out of that sterortype, which can only be seen. I can phone companies up and ask for any basic work and they ask what i have but they never get back to me, it makes it a bit unfair.

 

People say if it aint broke dont fix it, but if you want to learn, break it!

Been there done that mate, I started out as a keeper, but coming straight out of college nobody would give you a job as you had no experience, but as you couldnt get a job to get experience I was stuck in a vicous circle, so thats how I ended up setting up on my own at 17, works changed direction a few times but if I didnt know how to do something I found out rather than turning work down

On first look I thought it looked ok to, but I can see it now lol, they concrete the copers on round here too as its not unusual for them to go walk about if thier left loose

If you don't like finding nails in trees, don't go hedgelaying, your lucky to get 100 yards of hedge out of chain on average on older hedges

When the eldest goes to uni and you talk to him about it, i can guarantee that there will be a lot of conversation about socialising. Theres nothing wrong with going out and ejoying yourself but people choose to go to uni for that one reason.

 

Its quite shocking that he turned down a salary of 25k as a starting wage, going form the media course he would probably be expecting to get right up into somewhere on at least 30k? That seems to be the mentality of most i think!

 

My parents divorced in the last 6 months, they split up a year and a half before that, being at the age where i understand things more like this it hit me hard and it took me a long time to be able to cope with it. I had to do something to keep my mind off things, i started cooking for myself and my girlfriend, now i live with my dad and he is out a lot, so im independant and will fix things myself.

 

My mind likes to work problems out logically, so trying to fix something is always a good thing to do for me if i have enough time, but as soon as it doesnt go my way, i do something else out of fustration sometimes.

Good on you mate best way to learn, if you don't try you don't find out, trouble with our 3 is they listen to anybody except them that knows, we pointed out to eldest recently about chances of getting straight into a job in media and his response was well in such and such magazine there were 2 jobs for camera men, one in london and one in manchester, funily enough he didnt have an answer when we asked if on the off chance you could walk into a job like that, how exactly are you going to pay to live where the work is til your first pay cheque comes through don't get me wrong thier none of them stupid, just completely blind to common sense and the ways of the world

I've been trying to work this out recently, when I was last doing logs a few years back I was charging £45 for a landy hi cap load which is about 1.6 cube, but that was when timber was perks of the job on hedgelaying and fencing jobs, now with buying it in I reckon its got to be in the £75-80 a cube area

i can agree with people saying that this generation, which is my generation, is growing up educated but not skilled. People have to choose a skill now, years ago on farms it was pre-determined almost

 

i have two friends who are learning a trade, 6 others who are doing science and math degrees, another one is doing game keeping and im doing arb. the view seems to be 'ill get a degree that needs loads of work and study time and is expensive and ill be earning big money straight away' but thats the ideal, the reality is most people fresh out of uni at 20/21/22 with pieces of paper with qualifications written on them is all they have to show for those 3, 4 or more years of studying. Whereas i can stand now with NPTC and CSCS cards and get earn money in more places than they would be able to. They will tend to manage to get bar work or something thats pretty run-of-the-mill, im happy to be where i am right now. We all make our own choices to do what we want to in life. I just hope im making all the right ones for the next year or two to get me set properly.

I've got three stepsons, 18,17 and 15, two want to go into media and the youngest into catering and the number of times I've come back home and found them in the dark because they didnt know how to change a light bulb or flick the trip back on is unreal, even when I've showed them it goes in one ear and out the other, we've tried to persuade the eldest to learn a trade first before going to uni to do media so he's got a fall back but he wont listen to us or any of grandparents he even got offered a guaranteed place on an engineering apprenticeship on the railways by his physics teacher at school, starting at salary of £25k and he turned it down:001_cool: Theres no helping some folk, when it comes the day that thiers nobody to do the practical manual jobs then it might start to sink in

The pointless threads have been brought in under HSE legislation to avoid you having to wear PPE in the home/office as required when reading pointed/pointy threads, so far sharp wit and sarcasm are exempt from the current legislation

I've found the pole saw comes in very handy for untangling big hedges, saves alot of mauling and means you end up with more usable tree left :thumbup1:As for species I lay whatevers there except for elder, as it grows to fast smothers the other trees then dies and leaves a gap, so that gets cut out and roundupped Think in the pics I posted both hedges were mostly blackthorn, the big hedge in the first few pics also had a bit of hawthorn, holly, hazel, elm and dog rose in it, had 3 bonfires worth of brash out of it all 3 higher than the tractor out of 180 yards of hedge

Nice job Not quite sure what style mines classed as, think its a cross between midlands and welsh

The first one I've been putting off for a few years as it was mostly blackthorn, all greened up nicely now just got to gap up acouple of places and back fence it

I did suggest to my mate that we knock on the door and see if they wanted it sorting, but we decided looking at the state of the place they wouldnt want to pay for it

My mate had a tractor mounted one like that when he first started, fookin lethal, chuck and duck