Stereo

I decided to move on my MS180 and get a shorter bar and a few chains for the 345e as in the other thread. Hopefully now on the way from Clark Forest, thanks for the link. Decided to get the old 136 out to see if i could use it as emergency backup. It started on the button and I went through a few pallets with it but it started to perform it's old habits which reminded me why I decided to upgrade. It ticks over OK but will tick over for 5 seconds, then the idle will rise for 10 seconds, causing the chain to run, then it ticks down again. Pretty dangerous. Plus, when it's flat out and cutting, it will occasionally seem to drown or flood until the throttle is backed off, then it picks up. Any pointers as to how I can sort this or am I better to bung it onto eBay for someone with a bit of knowledge to sort out?

I'd fell it in one for £40 and keep the truck running in case it went the wrong way. But then, I'm not a tree surgeon so probably not the best person to ask.

Very valid points but many firewood users will not have the space to store a years worth of wood to season. It's a difficult one isn't it? I'm currently burning some ash and elm which was dead standing for at least 4 years and it's bone dry. We stock up the Esse in the evenings which takes the chill off the house and boosts the heat store for tomorrow's hot water. It must be 10% or less and it's a joy to burn. I open the door and get a blast of heat. The stove is in it's element and working brilliantly. Compare this to when we get short and are putting in 25% stuff with pallet planks to keep the heat up and it's night and day. My ambition of course is for it to be the former situation all the time but with a business to run and 3 boys under 6 I struggle, even with 2 acres of garden and 60 acres of land including a 20 acre wood at my disposal. What hope has your average 2 up, 2 down semi dweller? I can't imagine how I could have stored and burnt wood when I lived in a modern semi in the village.

I have a Nexus 1 as well as an old iphone 3G which is way out of date. I use the iPhone and the Nexus is going on eBay. Android is all very well but even on google's own phone it bloody crashes half the time, the apps are dodgy and it never really comes together. I want my phone to work. iPhone just works, every time. No hangs, no crashes, no incompatible apps and no suprises. It does what I want when I want and it does it very well (if a little slow these days). I will deffo be going for a later iPhone next time around. I'm hoping I can hold out for the iPhone 5 later in the year but a 4 will bring me up to date if I can't hold out. I recently went back to my Nexus for a week as Android 2.3 had come out for it (gingerbread). Yes, it looks great and yes it has some great ideas but what's the point when you get to the end of the day and realise you have missed 5 calls as the phone crashed at 11am?

My mate down in Plymouth went up a tree with a borrowed saw in his garden to take the top off so he could watch the F1 powerboats from his patio. The top twisted and caught the saw, he fell 15ft and landed on his back followed by the saw which removed the bicep on his right arm. He's made a remarkable recovery but it took 2 years of therapy and hospital visits which must have cost him thousands in lost earnings and transport etc. Few quid to a surgeon seems like a good idea after all. I'm no surgeon and am very careful what I take on. I have invested in good saws and good protection and use it as well as reading up on safety and using common sense and plenty of caution. Accidents can happen to anyone on an off day but with a chainsaw they can be life changing.

I heard 3 are the best for iphones at the mo. I'm thinking of switching to them later in the year when the iphone 5 comes out.

Not sure how you guys store saws etc. But have you considered some kind of strong room idea? Maybe with a combination or key lock on a steel door. Or a hidden locker somewhere to put the really nickable kit. Something that will at least hold them up for half an hour while the alarm blasts away.

I let him know my thoughts on the subject in no uncertain terms. Last time I lend a saw. I'm glad I'm not the only one who takes this seriously. Thought I was being a bit nerdy about my fuel.

I guess one thing to look at is making sure all your kit is well insured at cost to replace and also that it is stored in compliance with the policy terms as they love to wriggle out of paying if they can (padlocks weren't up to spec etc.). Also be more aware of how you might be traced back from things you say on the net (eg.I have a new £7000 processor and it's great). Can your identity be traced back through things you have said or your profile details on forums etc? Deeply sad but something to think about. Personally I think this kind of crime needs to be taken much more seriously. The effects of wiping out a hard working honest person's ability to earn on them and their family can be devastating in the short and long term. Many will never fully recover.

Interesting article from Madsens, thanks for that.

I only use Stihl oil and have a gallon can marked up at 50:1 with a marker which gets mixed when filled from a bigger jerry. I still use the pot which came free with my 345e as one of those full in a gallon is 50:1. I can't get on with those fancy bottles they give you which are supposed to measure it out. A bit too krypton factor for my cider addled brain. I've heard that motorbike oil can do serious damage to a saw engine.

I think the thing is that most people have never a seen or heard a tree like this come down close up. They have no idea of the destructive power it has.

I run all my saws on 50/1 as instructed but my dad swears by 25/1 and claims they 'won't run properly' on anything else. Is he going to screw up his saws / strimmers this way? they do smoke a bit when he uses them and don't sound right to me. Silly old b*$%r that he is. I made the mistake of lending my 345e to a 'tree surgeon' the other day as he needed an 18" bar to fell and awkward Ash I didn't fell confident enough to tackle. I caught him mixing the fuel in the saw (bit of petrol, capful of oil etc. ). It seems OK but I binned his evil mix and re-filled with the right stuff ASAP. Am I being silly about this? Trashing a £300 saw seems a but silly to me just out of laziness / idiocy.

Thanks for the comments. I've been toying with the idea of chopping them both in for 346XP which would obviously be a great saw but it would mean putting a few quid to it and I do like the 345 a lot. It's very user friendly (apart from the annoying filler caps). I also like the 12" bar on the MS180 as it's joy to use on the smaller stuff and I think much safer. It just keeps running out of fuel every 5 minutes. Maybe 15" is the way to go but it seems like a bit of a compromise. I might try the 13" and see how it goes. My 136 is yonks old but still runs OK. It would only be for absolute emergencies which is really why I have kept it. I did manage to melt half the body on it as the manifold guard fell off (along with half the other screws holding it together) so it's not really saleable as it is.

I have the above saw and it came with the choice of 15" or 18" of which I chose the latter as it's really just for the big stuff. I have an MS180 with a 12" bar which does 90% of the work but I find the fuel tank annoyingly small. I have been trying to find out if I can fit a 13" bar to the 345 and sell on the MS180 as I also have an old Husky 136 which would do for emergency back up. Is this possible? They don't seem to list it as an option but surely the fittings are similar?

Most of us strive to produce a good log every morning, with varying degrees of success. Windfall, the problem with those £30 jobbies is that they often won't take much more than 4x2 size logs if they don't slide. We had one and it wouldn't even take 6x2. I had a load of stud walls to build so I got the biggest GMC (we sell them) chop saw I could get and it's superb for firewood which only occured to me as I was chopping up leftover 4x2 for the stove. Even goes through pallet ends as well. To be honest, I'm not sure how long it's going to last putting through tons of firewood but it's still working well and feeling tight after at least 15 hilux loads of billets. You really want a 305mm with a slider on it, not a fixed 210mm saw.

SWWChris, a solution may be to invest in a compound mitre saw or some such. Make sure it will handle the sort of log sizes you get get but this will chop them in half in seconds. I use a big GMC one to chop up billets into logs and it's no effort and very quick.

Treequip, I have toyed with the idea of dusting off the mig and having a go at one of these but these days most of the stuff I get through is 12" and bigger. What's the biggest stuff it will handle? I guess the limitation is on loading it in the first place?

That does look like a useful tool I must say. Might grab one of those ebay ones.

We got the reduced VAT as well. There's quite a lot of stuff on the net about the output figures being 'ambitious'. Still it's nice to have glowing away on a winter's day and will cook a leg of venison better than anything I have ever tried.

Alycidon, I accept that moisture content is absolutely critical to these machines. I would question though how many people in reality have a year's worth of firewood at 20% or less to hand? The reality is that most people will be buying 'seasoned' wood as they need it which will probably be closer to 25-30%. I'm sure the logs you used at your show were perfect for the job (20% ash is about as good as it gets). I do plan next winter to try kiln drying batches of wood using a mud oven type thing to see if it makes a worthwhile difference. I would also guess that your show machine was perfectly clean inside and this can make a big difference to performance. Again, very dry hard-wood will keep the machine clean but if you are using softwood, even very dry you can get a significant soot build up quite quickly. Don't get me wrong. I do love our machine and I like the thought that has gone into the design of it. I have some issues with build quality but it's not too bad overall. I just wonder how realistic a concept it is to build a machine which requires such dry timber. I always get the feeling that we could get a lot more out of ours if we had better fuel. I kind of wish we had gone for a simpler machine such as an old second hand Rayburn for cooking and ambient heat only and got an eco angus boiler or similar for the water. I sometimes think that the effort of heating the water takes a lot out of the cooking performance of the machine.

NFU are comedians. We tried to insure our stock (not wood) with them and they took us through the whole thing and then told us that they wouldn't insure it as it was a 'target for thieves'. Uhhhh. That's kind of why we wanted to insure it.

Xlatu, for 99% of customers on the mainland (south of the highlands), Parcelforce will surcharge to the highlands and anywhere offshore. Usually it's something like £4-5 up to 30kg for mainland, £15 for highlands, islands NI etc. Royal Mail do have a universal service obligation and are unable to surcharge and they will usually pass any large items to Parcel Force. So, of you walk into a PO and send something Standard Parcels to Shetland, you will be charged the same as to Bristol but it will end up with Parcel Force. If you had a Parcel Force account, you would be charged £5 to Bristol, £15 to Shetland as an example. So, it's a tricky one and it varies from courier to courier. DHL charge us £4.60 to anywhere in the UK but they will destroy 50% of orders and also hit us with multiple £8 re-delivery fees outside of the mainland which we cannot quantify until the parcel is sent. City Link charge a whack for anywhere tricky but IOW is the same as Mainland. Interlink have a cheap NI rate but every where else is pricey. So, don't be too hard on the seller. They don't want this any more than you and would love something as simple as Royal Mail's flat pricing but it's not like that and with internet pricing being so competetive, they cannot absorb the surcharges. Hope this helps in some way.

Looks like those photo's were taken after a Blizzard. See, I got the Ozzy thing.

Winterbourne (Guy?), how do these machines do on pallet wood? We are looking at installations for our home (3 bed barn conversion with 1000l Heat Store currently heated by gas combi and Esse W23) and also a full install in our business unit. We get a whole load of pallets every year. I'm guessing this could be mixed in with seasoned stuff? PS: well done on the videos. They are a great help and very informative. Would certainly tip my purchasing descision.