doobin

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?

How much would your average thick as shit builder charge to remove this wall all the way around the perimeter? Including footings? This photo was taken at the halfway point. They’d have a micro digger, a pecker and a tracked barrow. They’d smash it all down with the bucket (animals), peck at the footings and then sit there gouging out buckets half dirt and half concrete, loading a track barrow. Chasing bricks around the grass. Waiting for the tracked barrow. I guarantee the bloke on the tracked barrow would screw it round at the pile every time rather than drive backwards also. Say two men for the day and two machines. £600? And then two grab lorries- £350 a go around here. That’s £1300. I pulled it out in chunks with the grab, span around and placed it at the roadside. Where the bricks were too loose I placed the loader bucket right next to them, knelt down the chucked them in in five seconds flat. Then I pulled the footings, and only the footings, up with the grab and placed them on the pile. Called the grab lorry, nipped home for lunch. Got back, stuck the pecker on and easily broke up the large lumps and footings as he loaded it. Then digger back on trailer and away. Luckily i was already on a job 100 yards down the road, if I hadn’t had the loader there a large bucket on the tiltrotator would have done exactly the same job. Total time on site 4 hours. One (very full) grab of CLEAN concrete at a much reduced rate of £125. Cost to the customer £850. You can see how little a trench was left where the footings came out (between the rubble pile and the concrete path) cheaper for the customer and a decent rake for me.

Priced jobs is where you’ll make your money back on one. Doing things quicker. Round holes for round tanks, less concrete. Etc. people always used to say ‘a good op can do it without’ about anything more than three buckets, but it’s frankly bollocks and outdated thinking. The UK is so backwards in this respect. Same with loaders. I’m working next door to a building site on this job, and all day there’s been a digger sat at a stockpile of stone loading a dumper every five minutes. I just grab my stone from the stockpile and put it exactly where I need it- the second man on my job has been putting a fence up rather than sat on his arse on a dumper. My profit levels per job show the value to me in investing in machinery. I can’t stand working for builders on a day rate, they are 99% thick as shit, messy as pigs and my time is better spent elsewhere where I can make a grand a day for a skilled bloke and a machine by quoting the job right and doing it quickly and accurately.

Not really. Obviously you know it’s on there but it’s not terrible. It’s on a 1.9t with a top hitch. The E19 is already a very wide, stable machine. I knew when I bought it that it would be used on a rotating grab and that I might one day get a tilty, so I specced twin aux, extra counterweight, and most importantly the short dipper option. I have no experience of tiltys previously, but I’d say you’d be hard pressed to find a better 1.9t carrier machine. The joystick rollers flow share perfectly and everything is second nature. It’s stable and precise. I’m waiting for a top hitch for the e27 and then I’ll try it on there also.

Very handy. Years of grab and tilt bucket operation has provided me with the muscle memory for it pretty much straight away.

Got the secondhand unit fitted to the little machine this PM. Hose routings will be improved in due course, it’s the old users hoses and a few fittings to tee into the existing hydraulic hitch line. So far from perfect but working for now.

Domestic tree surgery is now fine to use red. The 5% is the reduced rate of VAT, which makes no difference as most tree surgeons claim the VAT back anyhow. The rate of fuel duty is considerably less than white- I think it’s around 11 pence per litre whereas white is 55 pence per litre.

Why am I not surprised?

That’s basically Nordic socialism as I understand it. We sold our North Sea oil rights. Gone. Norway created a sovereign wealth fund with theirs and reap the benefits to this day.

You mean…like a nationalised company? I thought socialism never works?

Woodturners, but my God what a load of hassle!

16 is processor grade as you know, but it’s shit firewood and I think you’d struggle to sell it to any firewood merchant. I know there’s a guy on here who mills it, but as you suggest, 16” is a bit on the small side. Biomass might be the best option?

Council housing built en mass in the 50s (a lot of it for returning veterans- home fit for here’s etc) set the stage for one of the longest periods of stability this country has known. Like it or not, we live in a society. @AHPPlikes to espouse anarchy as a suitable soloution, but let’s be realistic. The government dissolves- unless you band together with other like minded folk then you are toast. So you team up with others, and agree to their rules. Walking Dead, anyone? Hey presto, you’re in a society again. So that argument is just as utopian bullshit as the idea of socialist utopia. As a nod to this though, I could get on board with the idea of extreme devolution, and free movement for those originally in the union between devolved states to find one that best fits their ideals. I don’t see the United States lasting in its current form, the Southern states are just too different and will secede. Unbridled capitalism doesn’t work either. Vested interest always start to take over and subjugate the weaker- and by weaker, that can just be those who were born a few years too late (see housing crisis. If you are living in a council house now, what chance do you think your children have?) This model of passing down ‘housing wealth’ to help your children buy their first house isn’t good for society as a whole, it leads to a schism between the haves and have nots. That’s not ‘socialist bullshit’- it’s reality. Take it to its logical conclusion and in the absence of alternative governance (most likely, we are at a tipping point now in terms of voters with/without housing), you’re either at French Revolution or more likely a dystopian sci fi scenario. I think the only way this can work is with the whole country pulling in the national interest. Obviously some hard choices have to be made, immigration is the obvious one for me. Cut it totally. You’ll never hear a ‘stereotypical’ socialist say that- in their utopia this country can support everyone. Well, it can’t. We should be looking to maximise quality of life for those already here.