Big J

Haven't had a single response for that either. Madness!

I shall certainly look into that! I'm mainly planning to use it for winching rather than skidding or forwarding, so hoping that I won't need ultimate grip for the time being.

The little tractor is doing very well in this stand, having pulled some fairly large hung trees out when required. I will however sell it at the end of the job as I've got quite a lot of winching ahead of me and it's a bit much for a little tractor like this. So if anyone wants an extremely tidy little tractor for a very reasonable price, get in touch. I just need something larger for my work and with a spare 1000kg of capacity on the trailer, it's silly not to use it.

I've never had driving large screws with my drill. I've found impact drivers to be slow and hideously noisy too.

I have an 18v 5 amp hour Milwaukee M18 drill. It's awesome, and absolutely bullet proof. When the pump on our diesel tank at the sawmill failed, it drove a manual pump for months without any issues, pumping over a thousand litres of diesel. It'll drive 160mm coach head bolts straight into hardwood without a pilot hole, and the battery life is immense (clad an entire 8x8x8ft office on one battery charge). It's about £240, but I don't think you'd every buy another drill. Steer clear of Makita. Had repeated gearbox issues with their drills.

I tend to work by the hour rather than by the day, and it's been £40 an hour up to now but I've only done one hourly rate job so far (National Trust) and it's going up to £45/h in the New Year. That being said, I don't think that I really have more than the odd day spare until about April! I much prefer to work on tonnage where possible, and ideally on my own jobs as you've control over how the timber is presented and other factors that greatly affect the speed of forwarding.

My old business near South Queensferry sell logs. Find them on Facebook as Central Scotland Sawmill. They can supply fully seasoned and split or fresh.

Not exactly sure what the crane if rated for as the plate on it seems to be for a 5.7m Farmi rather than 4.2m crane that is on it. It will straight lift just under 750kg close in, and will one end load (and then the other) a slightly bigger log. Probably tops out at about a tonne under favourable conditions. Nice that you chatted with Dick. Lovely chap. If you see him again, please say that I'm much less crap than I was when he did my assessment. Have about 160 hours on the machine since then

Maybe. But the day to day running costs are peanuts. It uses about 14-16 litres of red diesel a day and a tube of grease a week. That's it really.

A couple of pictures of my dinky forwarder shifting some rather oversized (for the machine) ash logs and the tractor too. We're on a nice hardwood site in Somerset doing a thin on a mostly ash woodland. Quite large trees really, with some topping 100ft and 55cm DBH. It's a perfect site for the forwarder as there are no traction issues at all and the nimbleness and diminutive size of the machine means that it's really quick. Just a touch under 200 tonnes out in 5 days, which I'm very pleased with. This consists of about 150 tonnes of firewood and 40-45t of saw logs. The forwarder is managing 3m lengths at up to about 800kg and will drive over just about any brash, meaning I can take quite direct routes through the stand. Being able to extract as soon as trees hit the deck means the cutters are always felling onto clean ground and don't run the risk of burying product lengths under brash. The little winch tractor has been incredibly useful this week too and has pulled out quite a few hung trees.

Monster tree indeed! Well felled sir

Not sure if it's of any use to anyone, but we're working on a site at the moment which needs to be left very, very clean once completed. I'm going to go through with a branch logger once we're done felling and extracting and I'm currently debating chipper versus mulcher. Anyway, there will be loads and loads of top lengths of trees, too bendy or too short to go into the firewood stacks and I'd rather someone come and take them than them get wasted being mulched or put through a chipper. So, free in unlimited quantity is ash firewood. You have to come and collect it yourself and you'll need a 4x4 though the site is extremely solid and level. I have a little timber trailer (ATV type thing, carried just over a tonne) you can borrow whist on site to save dragging your trailer in. All I ask is that you have full PPE and know what you're doing with a saw. A full day in the stand would see you with 6-8 tonnes of ash extracted for you. Obviously, this can only take place once we've finished felling, which will be in a couple of weeks. Please get in touch if you are interested. The site is easily accessed and not far from Taunton.

I had quotes from them back in early 2015, and only for the 800 and 1000. The 1000 was around £40k with the few options, not including delivery.

Champion Stove Company - they have a range of small and efficient stoves at very good prices. Myself and friends have had about 7 over the years. Highly recommended!

I had the first Trak Met sawmill in the UK and they are good mills. Not amazing, but then very cheap. I visited the factory twice too. What they lack in engineering precision they make up for in steel. I only had one major issue with mine (bearing collapse at the top of the spindle with the head goes up and down on) but they've since changed that set up completely and now the head runs up and down on chains like many other mills. Go for the widest blade. The 55mm blades (especially the ones supplied) aren't great and on a full width cut they can deviate unless your blade set up is absolutely spot on. It's a 1.15m unsupported length of steel about 1.1mm thick, which is worth remembering. If your budget allows, I'd recommend Mebor instead. If it doesn't, go for the TTS800 Premium.

Hi there - could you please message me with contact details and location for the log? Much obliged.

That could work. Can you message me with prices please?

Patchy frost here this morning, but a bright sunny start soon descended into grim blustery "if it was 2 degrees colder it'd be snowing" kinda weather. Glad tomorrow is supposed to be better. I didn't sign up for this kind of thing with our big move south! ?

My example being the Mr John P above watching me when I severed a heavily leaning ash that turned out to be a heavily leaning tree with a strategically placed branch locking it to a chestnut that I just couldn't drop. Didn't have the right winching machinery on site and it took nearly two hours and a lot of swearing and buggering around until it went down. Lesson learned though. Wait until the correct machinery is on site before tackling anything at all that might give you an issue! ? That was actually the worst hanger I've ever had. In something like 25-30,000 trees felled!

I'm a man short on a forestry site next Wednesday cutting medium sized ash. Lovely site (flat and hard ground) 5 miles north of Taunton. Trees are very tall, but not especially big at base. Average is probably 26-28m and 350mm DBH, though many are a bit taller and a bit girthier. Cutter needs to be very experienced and someone who isn't going to constantly need to use a winch to get trees down. Pay will be hourly and dependent on experience, and to some extent performance. Could well lead to more work. I pay well but demand high standards Please message me through Arbtalk if you can help.

Sounds pretty damning. What year / model was it? D22? D40, 2011. Faults I had included (but not limited to): * Repeated engine management faults causing limp home mode to be engaged, effectively stranding me as each time I was with a trailer. * Fuel pump, fuel rail and injectors replaced, with the rail being replaced at least three times. * Wheel bearing replaced, transfer box bearings replaced, front prop shaft replaced. * Master window control failed twice * Heater matrix failure. 4 day job to replace There were other things before but it was years ago and I can't remember. The other chaps had issues with flywheels and general poor quality of construction and materials.

Don't even think about a Navara. Steve is one of the few people who've not had serious issues, but I had one some years back from brand new to 5 years old. It went into the garage 29 times in it's 3 year warranty period, and I couldn't get shot of the vehicle, as hard as I tried. Loads and loads of different issues. The issue is that they aren't built for hard work. If you regularly go offroad or tow, they will let you down spectacularly. I knew three other chaps in Scotland (two farm managers and a farm/forestry contractor) who all had Navaras and all had major issues and got rid of them for that reason.

Good point there. I would have done both at the same time, but fair point on matching them.

I spoke to the chap at JAS P Wilson where the winch is coming from and he said that he sold Iseki tractors for 17 years and the TF321 (which I'm getting) will be fine with the winch. It's quite a small winch. Thanks for the heads up though. This will be my first tractor. Amusing really as we've been in the West Country for less than 3 months and have already ended up with a tractor!

Some types of elm are virtually unsplittable when dry. London plane is also very unpleasant.