doobin

Ah, I see. To be fair I’m happy enough buying the chains singly. And .404 seems to clear the chips better in softwood (not often you’ll use one in softwood normally but it’s very handy round the mill).

What area and length of grass do you want to cut with it? I tried a new g1600 and found it very lacking in power.

Yes, gotta get max surface area to help it burn.

I had no idea the elevator side was different! I’m pretty sure it’s a jappa 355+, whatever that is. Al I know it it was £4500 plus vat and five miles away, we got there first! Its great. Will run on just 26hp. Fast splitter action. With the .325 bar and Oregon low profile chain it’s quick to cut also. It’s taken a while to iron out some niggles, but now we have the sawdust extraction working it’s right how we need it. It’s worst habit is the slide blocking up with dust and crap, so the ram never properly returns and starts heating up the oil- hopefully the extractor will sort the worst of it.

Jesus you’re keen! Gonna need to fit heated handles soon.

I took the last lot back to the yard and wished I hadn’t bothered. manky, wiggly, useless. I’ve got the cypress in the mill stack, if that’s what you meant?

No idea! Sorry.

Luckily we had one cypress left to get it going with- wind stopped play before Christmas. you can just see it standing at the edge of this pic.

404, I didn’t think you could run it on 3/8? Or at least, the bar mount is different than my other stihl bars!

Playing ‘fire jenga’. Getting some manky old poplar to burn. I don’t regret going with the 881 rather than a 661. When you are handling things mechanically there’s very little bending down to be done, so the extra weight is more than offset by raw power, even in smaller timber like this. There was a squirrel in the tree when weset the rope- I saw him bolting upwards. No sign of him on the deck, he either got impaled and buried or he scampered down before we set the gob cut!

Branch logger and sell the logs for fire pits on site. Win win.

Let’s see anything from 2023 still going in seventy years time!!!!

Good to see dealers getting hungry. The same goes for estate agents!

To be fair I’d expect a lot more than £200 a day for £100k worth of kit 👍🏻 However I’m under no illusion that I can earn more then £200 a day leaving the kit in the shed!!! What are you classing as £100k worth of kit? Cause to my mind that’s a 3t Arb digger, a loader, a chipper, stump grinder and small compact tractor too…. Are you trying to say a freelance climbers saws and rigging kit are 100k? 🤪

I'd imagine you just brake a wheel to steer.

So run your own jobs if you're that good at it! Or become a brickie.... FFS.

Pumps and motors will usually be from a pump and motor manufacturer. The rebuild or replacement cost is the big gamble. On my DitchWitch, a scored track motor cost me £1400 plus vat, which was right at the top end of what I'd budgeted when negotiating a sale.

Cheap sawdust extractor works a treat. Husky blower, 5” suction hose, ducting brackets and some sealant and self tappers.

They are shit. At least you’re staying close to the workshop!

Not neccesarily. That 'alison' online training looks utter junk. No visible oversight or regulatory body, offering links to 'earn on alison by becoming a course creator' in the same breath as promising a diploma. Any information they would give you on a an arborcultural course I'd say would be very suspect. Probably an AI harvested scrape of the internet, culminating in a 'test' whereby you have to specify which grade of concrete to use to fill pruning wounds...

Did someone say 'captive market'? 😂

If it’s the one on eBay then I’d have a very good look at it and satisfy yourself as to the track motor issues. I’ve never heard of a lazy track motor that could be fixed by tightening a few bolts 🙄 I’m not sure how a thomas 35 works but if it’s an independent track motor and pump system for each side like most tracked skids then I would be suspecting either a pump or motor rebuild or replacement. I’ve had a look at the manual online and it’s suggesting it’s a single pump and multiple motor system, much like a mini digger. Again, never known a lazy digger track motor that didn’t have major problems internally. I think there are better carriers for a small chain trencher- really you need Avant/Multione flow rates. 8.5 gallons per minute 38 litres a minute. reasonable but from experience a small Digga chain trencher is slow on an e19 at 30 lpm and a totally different animal on an e27 or Multione 8.4 at 55-65lpm. You can spec a Digga trencher with a smaller motor apparently, but that just means it will stall a lot more often. For all I know my secondhand unit has this smaller motor fitted, and if that’s the case then 38 lpm would be very limiting. What width and depth are you hoping to trench and and on what kind of ground?

You don't worry about planting, sizing and selling the timber as a woodland owner. Or if you do, you do it for a laugh, a business plan doesn't come into it unless you are managing thousands of acres. It's all contracted out on a per ton basis. Especially as you have zero experience. You need to buy at the right price. The UK is full of idiots trying to sell an acre they bought from woodlands.co.uk for £50k, where you have a million covenants and no vehicle access rights. Other idiots with 6 acres think it's worth £150k when the reality is it would take a thousand years to harvest that value from it. There is a price floor for commercial woodland at which point the rich buy in order to avoid inheritance tax. Commercial woodland is usually sold in large blocks and you will need to spend at least a million. And these folk couldn't give a flying **************** where it's located if the price is right. Otherwise Woodlands.co.uk will buy it and partition it. Basically you either pay a substantial premium for an unemcumbered block near you, or you spend an awful lot to purchase a large block as an inheritance tax dodge. If you are extremely lucky you may hear of a block coming up for sale locally at a reasonable price. Speak to land agents, farmers etc.

Depends entirely on the work you do. A large tractor would be no use to me- 40hp is ample. Agility and hydrostatic transmission compensate a lot for less hp when it comes to nature reserve type jobs. I prefer a to use a smaller tractor for a ‘surgical’ job rather than making a mess.

Interesting, how long ago was this? I remember the Honda 4-stroke strimmers, nice enough machines to use. Wasn't aware that they ever had an agreement with Stihl.