doobin

That's for red. White has historically always been the same or a penny more than the pumps round me- but worth it for the convenience factor. Since COVID however, it's been considerably cheaper, which just shows how the garages round here are milking it.

Yet more of this utter shite excuse for an engine I see..

And the easiest way to start with is less immigration.

What self respecting man would be seen dead in a split screen or on a scooter anyway?

Although the video looks dramatic I’d say that’s not an alarming amount of side movement for a slow speed taper bearing application and I shouldn’t think any damage has been done. It only ever sits in one position when loaded. I think you could use a couple of thick washers or a custom made spacer to allow the nut to close it up a bit more, but whatever you do don’t ‘nip it tight’ else bearing destruction will follow very quickly. If the rear bearings are not seating against the back of the stub axle then yes I would put the spacer here.

The amount of problems with this shitty engine is beyond a joke.

Been a few with issues with that engine on here.

Briggs EFI engine by any chance?

Better off with a hydrostatic Scag or Ferris. Otherwise the BCS are a pain to shunt about. Not live drive so you have to pull the clutch and wait for the flail to run down before you can change direction. I’m in Sussex and have a 36” Scag flail I’d part with relatively cheap if you’re not too far. I have to say though, for grass you are always better off with a rotary than a flail.

In theory harder to load badly. I’d say only on the longer trailers. I’ve a ten foot triaxle tipper and it’s almost impossible to load it so it tows well! Three axles also allows you to have smaller tyres and wheels for the same weight capacity overall, and therefore a lower trailer. My Bateson 18’ tri axle does tow well.

Unless you're earning at least £1k a day I think you're mad. You could commute to London in that time and earn more with much less physical effort than chainsaw work!

I have a choice of 16' double axle or 18' tri axle. Guess I'll take the tri axle, it's a long way to Hull from here!

Is that a 16' or and 18' Ifor?

Hey! I represent that comment! 😝 😂😂

I have the ms462 on a 20”, it’s great. But now I want an ms400 too! What is it about saws, guns and motorbikes that leads us men to collect models with only a slight difference to the ones we already have? It’s baffling. I mean, I don’t do it with women. Always try something a bit different from the last there!

An Avant can be used for everything from tree works to building to installing a hot tub. You can tow it around easily and build up your customer base via making existing jobs easier. If you buy a larger bit of kit such as a biomass chipper, then you need to be 100% committed and do whatever it takes to get the work coming in to pay the finance. Personally I think multiple smaller machines are better than one big one. £1500 a day for a big chipper sounds great mouthing off down the pub but how much of that is diesel and finance? Half? Two thirds even? I’ve got a mate in forestry and he says depreciation is a killer too. £350 for two hours including travelling moving some materials is much more my style. Two jobs like that a month and the finance is paid, you can take it a little easier.

Love my migs. Spray and pray and it all holds together fine 😂

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?