doobin

Definitely buy machinery, you only get one body. Not sure about the large kit though- huge finance, lots of people doing it. Grapple saws etc are all very well, but when the ash dieback glut has finished? don’t forget that a lot of the big chippers you are will be grant funded too. Hard to compete with that! If you don’t have an existing customer base I suppose it’s very hard to know what machines would be best to buy. Diggers, loaders and compact tractors work for me along with a bandsaw mill and coming soon a log bullet. Which was 75% grant funded…

Considering one of these for hedges and property maintenance work. Quite old at 2003. Best avoided, or OK if cheap and gone through with a fine tooth comb?

The ferry is cheap in comparison to the fleet of £300k plus boats that sit in the marina at the Hamble and do nothing (and I mean nothing) other than cross the Solent for people to get lunch on the island. It's insane. It's like the M25 on a sunny Sunday.

The 130 max has really impressed me as an entry level machine. Combined with decent blades, a concrete yard and a forklift the output is pretty good, and so far I seem to have gotten away with spending 5k rather than 20k for a premium brand with hydraulic assistance. It's obviously a different story for the OP who is doing this as a full time commercial venture. But I can't say I'd have got 10% more output from a Logosoll never mind the 100% extra cost. I'm aware that I wll probably have to spend more time maintaining it however. But it's simple enough, and if bearings fail I'll replace them with top quality. Most of the complaints I see about Woodland Mills are from hobby sawyers who have so little mechanical know how that they shouldn't be allowed a power drill never mind the mill. The amount of posts on the FB group about the importance of the mill being dead level. Idiots thinking that they can tell dead level with a tiny magnetic bubble level stuck on the blade. Long posts about how they made their cinder block base just right. Fk that. Decent subframe, weld the nuts to it and string line it to setup. It'll never move, if it did you'd just adjust a lock nut. You can chuck it down literally anywhere and the only thing level matters for is to stop the mill rolling when you don't want it to.

It sounds like your accountant may also be providing book keeping services too, so £100 a month pretty fair. I can't stand QuickBooks. I've got no issues with sticking all my stuff into a spreadsheet each month- I quite like doing my own book keeping so happy to do that as it generally takes an hour on a wet day each month to photograph paper receipts and collate/input everything else from various sources (email, ebay, check the bank statement for finance going out, email compoanies who haven't sent a vat ticket with a materials delivery!) If you don't service and repair your own work truck you're basically wasting your money.... maybe. Maybe not if you don't have the skills and knowledge to not f it up! QuickBooks is only as good as the data in. VAT is something you really don't want to get wrong. When you start dealing with things on finance, grant funding, bounce back loans, zero rating on newbuild works and the like, things need to be done correctly. 'I put it in the wrong column on QuickBooks' is not a valid excuse, and HMRC are tedious to deal with to say the least. £50 saved on an accountant is nothing compared to the time out of your business that a HMRC investigation would take, even if you escaped without fines. If you're taken to time to learn enough about accounting to do your own to the standard of an accountant, then fair play. I do that with vehicle and machinery repairs, and do repairs for other people. But knowing your limits is a valuable business skill. I'm often asked 'wouldn't you make more by working and get someone else to repair your machinery?' The answer is a hard no- but that's because I've tens of thousands invested in tools and skills and can do it easily to above the standard of a professional repair shop. Not so with accounting! 'You're basically wasting money then' is a bit flippant. It sounds top me that Chris knows the value of his time, and knows saving £100 a month is chicken feed in comparison to the hassle it would incur particularly if it went wrong. Think about that customer we've all had, who decides a tree surgeon is too expensive, so heads down to the power tool section at B&Q for a chainsaw 😉

I wouldn't feel comfortable letting the average NT volunteer CS30 candidate loose on anything more than an MS181, even after training. Mind you, my tickets are non existant so what do I know? Just off to fit an 18" to the 881!😂

That's one way. You can also pull out with grabs etc. Not to shit on Steven's new machine, but usage of a flailbot for this sort of work in the name of 'safety' (although hardly a steep site) really gets on my tits. The powers that be claim to be all about preserving heathland and then go and shit all over it by mulching everything and enriching the soil rather than take a surgical approach and remove the offending isolated vegetation. An alpine with crane trailer or LogBullet with a grapple with pinch bars would be quicker, neater and remove the waste to a dump site. As well as pulling out the roots for a bit of bare ground for young heather plus no chance of regen (especially a problem with birch). But no, it's 'safety first- remote controlled flail' 🙄 The other major problem is that the people writing the specs for the grants have no clue. And the landowner wants to meet the spec in it's most basic form (ie, no more trees) as quickly and cheaply as possible in order to pocket the rest of the grant. Which no doubt is why Stephen was demoing to land agents.

That's dirt cheap, you can't be making any profit?

I'd recommend the plain, the bacon flavour and particularly cider vinegar and salt. I'm not keen on the cheese ones, they taste just like quavers. But if thats your thing then go for it.

I lvoe pork scratchings as much as the next guy, but these are to delicious. Plus, I don't always feel like the full fat experience!

What are they trying to achieve there? Removal of pine regen?

The ones who are put off by it are the ones you need to shed in order to grow your business.

No cooking as she’s away and I can’t be bothered (note the dead flowers). Smoked oysters- food of the Gods. Plus Curators Pork Puffs- really worth trying if you like dead pig. Pork crackling, but light and fluffy!

How did you get on?

Really? Why on earth not?

The reason for a license to trap crayfish is simple. It’s so people don’t trap the native species in areas where they are just about holding on.

No, I tried that around a pond in soft clay with the p180 and it wasn’t really having it. It worked but I ended up cutting off more than I thought I would. Didn’t cut a spike though, I reasoned that the surface area of the profile wouldn’t be much reduced by doing that, unlike a solid round wooden post.

What kind? I’ve done clipex strainers with them but on hard chalk ground they start to mash over the top of the post! Scaff poles no bother, I made up an insert to replace the spike also. This was with a 150kg weight.

Or just being able to take it to site and knock in fifty metres after clearing with the grab. That’s where I find the most profit. Used it Friday to bash this lot in.

Strong post content to username correlation...

Can't reccomend puffballs. Slimey and tastless. Give me chicken of the woods and parasol mushrooms instead any day.

The fabrication work looks good 👍🏻Now that you’ve developed your skills, how about welding a pin grabber screw hitch to replace the half hitch under your powertilt? BMC will do you a plate with their excellent screw hitch on, then you will always have tight buckets with no play. It’s excellent for things like the post knocker in particular. I will try to find a picture of my powertilt with the screw hitch added. The plate they supply as standard is pretty much the perfect size so it’s a half hour job to cut the old hitch off and weld the screw hitch on.

Sage advice from here years ago- “yes madam. ‘Can you just?’ starts at £150 plus VAT”

It’s all a faff compared to just having a machine in the yard to pick up the logs and hold it at waist height! Especially for that volume of timber. we don’t do anything like that amount but we make it easy. Pick up log, slew and hang it over area next to splitter, then cut with a guide rod held to the saw handle with jubilee clips. Obviously this only works going one way, but guess what- you go and cut the rest of the log from the other side! And once you’ve done that, you have an odd random short bit in the grab which gets dropped in another pile to be cut in half and make a ‘random length ’ crate up. You’re never struggling or bending over. You’re never falling over existing cut rounds. You also don’t have to move the rounds far to the splitter as you cut them right next to it. Life is easy. The hardest work is climbing back into the digger but if @JDons boss doesn’t want him to be as profitable as he could be, that’s his prerogative. Running a timber yard that size without a crane is just daft.

Know that feeling, I’ve ordered a ro ro for the yard!