oldwoodcutter

Cutting greenheart with a handsaw? Well let us know how you get on, in a year or two .

They crazed me to send my t/wolf blades in to resharpen, like a prat I did that, then nothing for weeks. After the umpteenth call they sort of admitted loosing them , but not in so many words. They then did ‘an investigation ‘ whatever that entailed, and finally admitted they had them then lost them. They did send me some replacements eventually, but their pattern ones, not genuine ones like I sent in. So that was that.

Yes it’s often said ‘oh that didn’t take your mob long’ in a begrudging sort of way. I look them straight in the eye, smile and say ‘ well you did call in the A Team’ which usually ends on good terms when they cough up , while I’m waiting on their kitchen doorstep. For all domestic it’s pay up before we go, of course for commercial you have to wait a bit, as unfortunately you have to work to their terms, if you don’t like it they’ll jolly soon find someone else who will accept it. When I’m asked to dismantle rotten firs over greenhouses, swimming pool changing rooms, Victorian pergolas etc, ‘for the wood ‘ I think what a cretin, and don’t even look at it.

If you’re cutting that greenheart you will need a very sharp and powerful saw, and will have to resharpen it much more frequently than normal. I’ve seldom cut harder wood than greenheart.

Happy birthday Stubby, Mrs oldwoodcutter tells me she’s out of logs so I’ve got to go up the yard and process a small load, but I will have a sit down half way through cutting it up [emoji846]

My transit tipper (with canbus) doesn’t like led lights on towed stuff one little bit. I tried 2 resistors in tandem on my tw230 to no avail, to avoid being pulled over all the time by pc plod i resorted to go back in time by strapping a conventional trailer light board on the back. Have done the same trick on my grinder trailer. Result no more lectures from traffic police.

“Multi Skilled Operative preferred “ Able to foot ladder for long periods. Dab hand at raking tarmac. Ditto. Working in the dark. Driving license preferred, to run householder quickly to cash point. Sure footed enough to nip out of moving truck to grab someone else’s traffic signs and/or cones.

And a joke that some of the over-sexed arbtalkers in the group may find amusing - Did you hear about the grumpy prostitute who had no hands? She couldn’t give a toss.

Good package offered for the right applicant. Max wage £8:50 an hour, Saturdays and Sundays same, £8:50, 10 minutes for midday break. No formal training offered. All breakages and lost tools taken out of wage at source, Paid from time when actually start to work, not waiting in yard smoking or sitting on fat arse travelling to job. Some weeks wage will not be paid until after a further 2 weeks due to ‘cash flow problems ‘ ie boss lost the business float on the horses at the weekend.

Somehow, few weeks ago, even with safety specs and my visor down a bit of something went in. You know how it is , it’ll be out in a minute, but not this time. I went to truck and got through several phials of sterilised and by then my guys where trying to look at it and helping me with the cotton buds. They could see it but it refused to budge. After 20 minutes, and things getting worse my foreman drives me to the next village which has a surgery, they’re shut for lunch, I’m first in the queue and wait , go in to be told by receptionist “we don’t do eyes, go to a&e”. Now this means stopping the whole job, loading truck back up, and everybody on the team that day coming along as we only had the one vehicle and a&e is halfway home from the coast. Don’t ask me how, but as they are halfway through packing up to take me, it comes out, a small innocent looking piece of barbed woodchip , but enough to incapacitate me for a while.

One for the intellectuals on here, what have Attila the Hun and Henry the 8th got in common? They both have The as a middle name .

This threads gone bonkers.

A local dyke dweller recently put his heap of a car on a village centre layby, the only information scrawled on his ripped up cardboard box in the window was the price, and “radio works”.

Due to continued growth we require additional workers. Due to the boss constantly balling and shouting nobody stays longer than 3 weeks anyway, and even the sub contract climber steers clear unless he’s really desperate for a handful of cash.

Need gone tonight . . . before the police come round here and give it back to its rightful owner

As presents very seldom come my way at xmas , I treated myself to a 462 3 weeks ago, very nice .

As tree workers we work day in day out close to stuff that’s bad for us. Even with aspen (which I am) using a saw you’re breathing in fine dust which is well known to be nasty, using a chipper there’s still dust so we wear good quality masks if it is bad eg filthy conifer hedging. Even swinging an hs45 along a connie hedge all day is putting those spores and pollen in your lungs. My coughing and bedtime wheezing comes and goes, I’ve been checked out with x rays and they say my “lungs are clear and my heart is strong “ although they did add I’ve built up a protective membrane around my lungs due to long term exposure to something, they used a lot of long words but that’s the gist of it, but you know when you’re not right, and often I’m not 100% . All a question of moderation I suppose, of course it’s impractical to wear a mask most of the time, but absolutely necessary at other times, but when my deathbed comes, I don’t want to lay there gasping for breath thinking ‘if only’

The bolt and nyloc nut on the opposite side of the chute to the wrench and washer is critical. The adjustment is not done just by tightening the nyloc nut as you’d think, it is adjusted by the bolt which has only half a revolution of travel. Once that bolt has set the torque if you like, then tighten the nyloc to that. My lads take the spout off every night and we have no probs at all in it moving whilst at work my friend.

Just last week I was asked to price removing some limbs off a Robinia. These were from his neighbours tree overhanging my clients lawn. The tree was leaning towards the owners house and both property’s had small back gardens as is the norm nowadays. The builders had kind of built round it. The tree owner wouldn’t touch it and wouldn’t pay for overhanging branches to be pruned. Now I knew if I had them off to the fence line the tree would be seriously unbalanced and was already leaning towards owners house, and I would be liable if it crashed on his roof in the future, so for once I declined to do it, and offered a price to reduce it all round or take it down, which obviously my client was loath to pay for, even if the owner had said yes. I left with my client assuring me he’d get me back after he’d had advice from his solicitor who he jovially referred to as ‘the Rottweiler ‘

I guess that most of us if you’ve been in the job long enough lose our mo-jo now and again,however motivated we are. It helps if you price your jobs high enough so even if it’s a kind of boring mundane kind of workday,at least you’re going home with a wad of the large variety. It’s the money that has always kept me going, and continues to do so,even though most of the boys I grew up with retired years ago to sit on their sofa watching homes under the hammer or walk their dog down the street 4 times a day. But most of the time it’s a joy to be out in the fresh air with the sun shining, and woodchip flying, and still getting paid for it.

Spud opened up the piston on my 660 , reshaped the inlet and exhaust ports, and did a big muffler mod , 20mm or so. Apart from using it myself , I only allow one or two trusted and very experienced employees to stand behind it. And I doubt I will ever sell it, it’s my favourite saw of all time, and I’ve owned most of them at one time or another.

You missed out Mick Don’t get under the feet of your guys when they are busy, if it’s all straightforward clear up time, go and sit in your truck and study your diary, do a bit of forward planning, make some calls.

Well most of us get asked to quote in CA’s, and I dare say a fair few have knocked an odd branch off in 10 minutes from that tree tucked away in Mrs Miggins secluded back garden . And of course most of us know who our competitors/colleagues are in our own area and you never know what the future holds. So to use a relatively modern term, I’d say suck it up and try to make a living for yourself without pissing on any one elses strawberries.

What a lovely saw the 2018 version is, so very handy and usable for felling small stuff and snedding up. I’ve obviously been keeping an eye on the clutch bearing, and in 9 months have only had to regrease it occasionally.

I change the solid to pneumatic on my chippers from new, TrailerTek do the full range