doobin

My missus is happy cause I’ve used a few scraps to ‘poshen up’ our kitchen cabinets! With the grapple you wouldn’t have the weight of the winch, so much work well? Mine on a 38hp AC is a good fit. Riko.

Looks a monster alpine, what is it? I use a skidding grapple behind my alpine, it's handy to be able to transfer a lot of the log's weight to the back wheels. If it's milling lengths, they will be short enough that you only drag 'just the tip' (ooeer missus!) along the ground. Works for me. I've got some beech I left spalting to mill later today that I extracted like this. I've not used a logging arch but I'd imagine it take a bit of a while to rig it all up? Probably ace for longer extraction routes or timebr lengths though.

If I had a ticket for everything I do and every machine I own and operate, I’d probably have to do a month worth of refresher courses per year!

You know I’ve got no tickets, right? 🤣

I like the Stihl professional depth gauges, and for the actual stock removal, an m12 Milwaukee ‘power file’. Technically my grinder can be set to lower the rakers, but it’s such a faff involving changing the discs, angles, chain and depth stops that I don’t bother. The power file is magic. I use ceramic belts on it, 60 grit removes depth gauges quickly at a nice gentle ramp and you soon get the hang of how much pressure and how long. Check every few teeth with the stihl gauge. I’d say it’s just as controllable as a file, if not more so as we all know how easily the file can skip on hard rakers or the opposite ones. It’s got two speed ranges, both variable. You can even set the belt to go the other way to push the sparks away from you. A really well designed tool. A 120 grit ceramic belt is ideal for dressing the bar. Brilliant tool for this kind of thing, it’s much quicker, easier and cheaper on consumables than a file. If you want to get finicky, a surface conditioning belt will make the bar rails factory smooth to finish off. https://www.powertoolworld.co.uk/milwaukee-m12-fbfl13-0-12v-13mm-brushless-belt-sander-file-body-only

I’d deffo burn rather than feed a chipper if your site and location allows for this. Much quicker overall. but as far as cheap pto driven chippers go, the Rock machinery is ok. Similar but better than the woodland mills (can’t remember how, maybe more feed rollers?). Not sure about leylandii but can’t see it being a problem, it’s nice and straight. It’s passable run at 540rpm,but behaves much more like a proper chipper at 1000rpm. On this 38hp tractor we were feeding some fairly gnarly 4” bits of oak through and it didn’t seem to struggle. Feed speed is set with a hydraulic adjuster on the side. This is 5” capacity, and the next model up would be too much for my tractors to lift.

Here you go: 6x6m = 36m2 36x0.2m deep = 7.2m3 of stone 7.2 x 1.8 (that's tonnes per cubic metre for granite scalpings) = 13 tonnes. Worth getting a price for it delivered in bulk from an 8 wheeler. Round here it's £35/tonne, which compares favourably with £50 for 800kg in bulk bags from a builders merchant. If you are close to a quarry then it will be a lot cheaper.

Fit the largest Honda copy you can squeeze into the space. As stated the gx160 is a waste of time- they are for cement mixers, nothing more.

Clamshell grab looks good on her.

With 1800 hours and over four years hard graft under her belt, I’m still going to keep running this old girl to allow me to finance other kit- a new alpine tractor. I’ve decided that if you have the work for it, a new machine is a no brainer, and I’ve the whole of January booked on nature reserve cut and collect works. Here she is hard at work on yesterdays job- I’m especially amazed at the lumps she managed to lift over that hedge at full reach! A few 3.8s to feed the mill. Wind stopped play yesterday so back to the yard today to fit a new clamshell grab I bought for her- have a lot of cut and collect waste to handle in the spring.

Running a mixed fleet I hear you. But there’s limits, and grab and flail work is some of the hardest work you can put a machine through. You’ll blow a pipe every day on a thirty year old machine once you get the oil hot with a flail. I don’t regret any of my finance purchases but I’m in a rich area, so at the rates around here and when interest rates were on the floor, it was a no brainer.

I wouldn’t fancy beating that vintage about with a grab and flail personally.

I’ve been amazed what my auger mounted cone splitter on my e27 will split. id forget feeding it through a processor afterwards though. Just doesn’t work. You have very little control over how it splits. Look at a big horizontal splitter instead.

Restricted access is common in forestry- plenty run rigid trucks but ten tons is still a part load.

If buying new, this firm build them to all budgets and specs. I’ve two of their units. A petrol pressure washer is nothing more than an engine, pump, hose and nozzles. If you use a firm who build them (at very reasonable prices too) then you will get a good setup that works well together from the get go. Avoid any brands who use ‘max pressure’ as their main/only selling point. Jetmac JETMAC.CO.UK Honda Pressure washers and much more

Prices for what you refer to (cordwood or round wood) have shot up recently. So have haulage costs. ten tons is only half a wagon. I’d up your order to a full load and someone might be interested then. I’d also call around local forestry contractors and ask if they could deliver a tractor and trailer load. lastly, if you are less fussy about what you burn then you might be able to get a cheaper load. A tractor trailer load of mixed softwood left over once a block has been felled for example- if you’ll take whatever’s left in the loading bay once the lorries have been then it might work for you both.

Every time this comes up Eggs and I give the same advice. Minimum 13hp engine. Honda or Chonda. Either Interpump (best) or Antonio Reverbi (close second) for the pump. Using a generator to run an electric pressure washer is utterly pointless- you’d need double the engine power than if you just used a petrol pressure washer. If you are going to be storing water in an IBC (buffer tank) then go for a pump that does 21l/min (at around 200bar). This is much better for cleaning kit than 15l/min at 300bar.

Lou Reed.

I have gone through three noco GB140s. still haven’t found anything better on the market but not impressed with longevity.

An insurance broker. They will find you the cheapest insurance for the cover you need. There's nothing that you legally need to do to be a tree surgeon. Just price a few small tree jobs and work up (pun intended).

On this pissing wet day I'm in the workshop catching up on sharpening. There's a good few interesting setups scattered around the forum, from clever truck mounted vices to computer controlled, ten chains a minute setups to drool over 🤣, and I thought it would be good to have them all in one place for others to learn from. Here's mine. For the chainsaws, the Orgeon hydraulic clamping jobby with Baltic Abrasives CBN wheels. A little addition is the cooling setup- just a basic Chinese mist cooling nozzle fed by an compressor airline. It draws from the bottle mounted in a cut down aerosol can screwed to the base board, and sprays a mist of plain water directly at the cutter whilst sharpening. This is giving me simply fantastic results, and I'd say the water cooling and CBN wheels will solve any issues people have with burnt cutters when setup correctly. Setting depth gauges I find easier to do with the Stihl professional gauge and a 120 grit ceramic belt on a little Milwaukee powerfile- you have a bit more nuance. For the bandsaws, it's the cheapest Oregon grinder with a Baltic Abrasives CBN wheel manufactured in the profile of the Ripper 37s that I use. My mods to this are removing the disc cover, reversing the indexing tab (and adding a cable tie) and a trampoline spring on the back to bring it back up on it's own. Oh, and as the depth stop is critical the silly plastic knob was replaced with an M8 bolt and locknut. With a couple of blocks to keep the band in a neutral position as it goes around, you can set the clamp 'just so' and easily index it by gloved hand, using the indexing tab as a fairly accurate guide and allowing the wheel for 'float' the band into the exact loaction as you sharpen. You can also see the flue of the massive sawdust burner that keeps me warm whilst standing still...

Just call a broker and answer their questions. How many m high you will be working, what tickets you have etc.

For sure. It's not just the old boys either. I went to an Engcon demo day a couple of years back (full of a few famous Instagram personalities with their tricked out machines). There was one guy there who was quite open and honest, he went out with a 13t for £400 a day. In Kent. Including diesel. Would anyone on here go out with a 2.7t and grab (a quarter of the purchase cost and diesel bill) for less than that?? No transport cost either.

Don’t have time for videos! Plenty on YouTube.

Either you want to sell or you don’t?