doobin

Get a Mac. £150 will get you a serviceable 2005 model PowerBook G4 which will do all you want. Newer Intel based models are nice but not necessary for general office duties, though you may be able to get a MacBook Pro for £450. Plug your laser printer in and it will just work- many drivers are preinstalled and if not you can just download it. No viruses, no constant security updates, no crashes. If you don't like it, and I guarantee you will, then you can sell it for what you paid for it. Think of it as buying a second hand Stihl compared to a new Chinky special. If you were closer I'd lend you one to try.

Quality is OK, not amazing but good enough. Chinese built, distributed by about ten different companies in ten different colours. Cheapest I've seen it is at Screwfix, believe it or not, and returning stuff to them under warranty is usually easy should things go wrong. Woodstar IV60 104cm Log Splitter 3kW 230V | Screwfix.com HTH

Thought you were getting a Fastrak?

Personally I find it knackers you out, buggers up your joints and causes Random Capitalization.

You can't go wrong with a mac. Buy second hand. I'm typing this on a 2003 PowerBook G4- it's ten years old, runs perfectly, looks the part and is still worth £120. For what you're doing you don't need the latest system. If you're happy with a non Intel machine, you could get a G4 tower for £40, or stretch to a quad core G5 for £200. Plenty of software available for the older Macs, often free. Office 2008 etc. A Mac is a Stihl or Husky. Anything else from the likes of PC world on special is a throw away chinky saw.

Worth sending this link to the press?

Post of the day :lol:

Wish I saw posts like this more often. Well, even better than that would be no posts like this because nothing got stolen. But it's better than the usual.

Exactly what I was going to say.

Could that possibly be because Amazon would tell them where to go?

And how many of us shop around and buy the cheapest chain oil we can? Not to mention the cheapest insurance.

Stihl f*cked up big time with these. It was a complicated design attempt to meet the new emmisions standards. They now claim that if you use their super duper fully synthetic two stroke oil then it's not an issue. Personally I think that's bollocks and the damage to their reputation is done anyway. Two mix engines are much better than four mix and have been proven for the last two years in the larger clearing saws and small blowers. Superb engines all round really. As soon as they sell all their stock of 4-mix, I'd imagine they'll bring out a 2-mix combi unit. Until then, I'd sell yours on eBay with a 'possible carb fault' and buy an old school two stroke to tide you over. Or possibly an FS70- it's a new 2-mix strimmer- flexi shaft only but I think the shaft size and profile is the same as those used on earlier machines. It's certainly an inch tube. I've currently got one on order and will report back. Possibly the engine will drop straight on a solid shaft FS85. Having said that, flexi drive is OK for strimming and hedgecutting. HTH

Or maybe, just maybe, it's a nice easy day with a stump grinder, access is perfect with pavement all the way and the guy has a CAT scanner. He also happens to think £450 is a reasonable price for a days stump grinding. Just saying, like.

All you need to do is weld up a rotisserie frame and make sure you have plenty of good dry wood to hand.

Very good points.

McCulloch Double Eagle 50. Aged 16 as a young greenhorn about eight years ago, the local dealer offered me and my mate a pair of 'new old stock' of the above. McCulloch we thought. Good, we thought! Little did we realise that by 'new old stock' he actually meant 'My old man bought a container load after the '87 storm, and I still haven't shifted them!' Boy, did we suffer. The air filters never sealed properly, meaning the carb needed stripping every other day. The oilers were manual pump type. The mixture was a constant battle to get right. We were too timid back then to take them back and tell him to stick them up his arse! To top it off, the local farmer let us clear a fallen tree and cut it up. Using a Honda trike and trailer on wheelbarrow tyres, we battled through mud and cut huge rings 3 feet in diameter. Got it back to the yard, and the axes just bounced off it. Hornbeam! Those were the days. I remember the first day not long after that we made our first £100 each on a job cutting some coppice in a big back garden. Sold the posts for an extra £50. That evening in the pub we were kings, flicking through our wedge of cash. The buxom cousin of my mate was obviously turned on by such a large amount of money- she was rubbing my leg under the table all night, and I managed to take her back to my lodgings on the local farm Maybe it wasn't such a bad saw after all!

You don't need a scythe, what you need is a pro strimmer :lol: I can see how it might be quicker where there are no obstacles, and compared to a brushcutter rather than a clearing saw. But it's hard work, and I've got a tractor and topper.

It's the less than a month bit which concerns me. What the place you bought it from A*, scrupulously above board? Or a bit of a ***** yard used car place?

Looking at your bent tines, it's not that robust. It may be safer, but moving timber especially on rough ground is a recipe for bent tines.

What's harsh about that? He's not slating them, he's just stating the truth- that they are not the be all and end all. In fact, I reckon you two are singing from the same hymn sheet! As an aside, I'm willing to bet a fair few members on here making good money running their own business have no formal qualifications.

If you're capable enough to make those stillages, I'd have thought you'd have been capable enough to stick an M12 bolt into the tubes to act as a grubscrew!

You'll make more selling it as logs.

Looking at your avatar, the best bet with the rings (if you can't just stove into them with the bucket) would be to load them with your digger grab into the bucket. For the cord, I'd be tempted to do the same, but onto the pallet forks. You can get pallet forks with a log clamp on top, but these only work if the cord is stacked nice and neat on hard ground.

Is it possible that the clippings are being sold to make that cancer drug, possibly subsidising the job?

That's the last bit of the machine that would bend- basic physics. It's pure compression, no bending force at all.