doobin

You’d just buy a Menzi surely. Better spec out of the box so to speak. That doesn’t even have an extending boom, and think of the work it took to convert it! And it looks like it’s on street pads 🤦‍♂️

I was thinking around £450 plus band charges. I run a lot of gear as many of you know, and my reckoning is it’s good to be diverse and have a multitude of things that can make you that money as a wage each day in case more lucrative quoted jobs are short on the ground or you just fancy an easy week. Stops me getting bored. Just need to make it the next four years so the finance is paid off 🤣

I'm definitely buying a mill! £600 for a morning's work having fun....

That looks fantastic. Excuse my ignorance, I’m new to bandsaws, but could you please describe the routine for using a chainsaw grinder with that wheel? How does the jig etc work, do you do all the left teeth then adjust for the right etc?

Some people will do anything to keep running red diesel… 😜

Would be very interested in pics of your grinder setup. I’ve got the top end Oregon one, and would be happy to spend more with Baltic abrasives as their stuff is excellent.

Yet container shipping is overall an incredibly efficient way to move vast quantities of goods.

About to order. Just need to decide whther to stock up on their blades plus sharpener/setter. Where do you get the Rippers from and how much? You send them off for sharpening? Was it simple enough to adjust the tracking for the rippers?

So I need to decide whether to use their own blades (and the auto sharpener) or go with Ripper 37s, which I presume I'd need to send off to get sharpened? Opinions welcome.

The leaves will work wonders for hiding that green carpet you have there.

Had ours lit all last night! Why is it that I can keep a fire going all day at the yard, but she working from home just complains about the cold? So light the fire and work downstairs love. But then I can’t see out of the window! Well at least keep it lit! But then I have to go downstairs all the time! You’ve got five mugs by your table! That’s five trips downstairs, and probably another five for the loo! 🤷‍♂️

Finger crossed. Got the doublecab at 70k and it’s been very good to me, on 130k now.

95% as good as stihl for half the price. I buy them by the reel.

I don’t follow. How is a hydrostatic loader not the very essence of separating aux flow and travel speed? cruise control is just a fancy way of keeping the flow to the wheels where you set it. It’s not essential.

??? All the loaders I know are hydrostatic, surely that’s ideal? My multione has a cruise control, you could just set a forward speed with your foot and then press a button for jobs like this. But I’d still use a (hydrostatic) tractor, I think a lot of those loader mounted things are expensive gimmicks.

Anyone got any thoughts upon the Crytec version? Seems a similar spec for quite a bit less money, https://crytec-power.co.uk/products/crytec-sawmill

You could buy a Japanese import tractor with one of those fixed rotavators for less than the cost of an Avant one.

Sure you don’t want a stone burier instead? seems like a waste of an expensive loader personally. Not as good as the tractor version and three times the cost.

I just picked this ranger up- £10k with less than 50k on the clock. Added airbags and some mud tyres. Useful truck.

When you see what people charge for a day's milling, it seems a good return for not a lot of investment. I have a lot of customers who have had me leave stuff to be milled, but they haven't found anyone to mill it yet! I reckon it would work well with the multiOne. Arrive at site, unload loader, load mill from truck onto trailer and tow into field with the multione, carrying your spares and tools in the bucket. Interesting. Pretty much just drop on and go you say?

I've been considering getting a small mill. Is the woodland mills 130 considered the best 'bang for buck'?

Well, to update this. I am done with this Echo. It's just crap. Anti vibe is a joke, a Stihl from the nineties is better. The chain tensioner in the side cover is really starting to bug me. The fuel caps are not locking, I lost an oil cap somehow. The captive bar nuts are useless. Both springs just deformed and popped out when tightening. They'd have been better off just accepting that Stihl had the patent and having loose nuts. It feels nasty to hold. The felling lines are so vague as to be nonexistent. Parts take weeks to get. My dealer carries every single Stihl spare on the shelf. Chainbrake band for the Echo? Four weeks. Even when warm it's taking three or four pulls to start. As it's main job is to sit in the digger and be started when I fell a tree and again once I've dragged the tree to the fire, this was getting annoying. Seems to be down on power from when it was new. Plenty of compression and filter is clean- maybe carb. I know I could probably just adjust the carb, but... The final straw was when the steel plate between the bar and the oiler/saw body just splintered the bottom bit off when running. Blunted the chain and just say there hanging out the bottom the rest of the day waiting to slice me. I was so fed up with it that I ordered a new MS261. No idea when I will see that, but I borrowed my old MS241 back to see me over on this job. It really hit home how much more ergonomic it is. Felling lines you can see. Locking caps. A starter handle that pulls over effortlessly without jerking my hand. INBOARD CHAIN TENSIONER!! (no idea why that's such a bugbear for me but I can't stand outboard clutches or tensioners). Starts first time. Running a little rough (not been used for months) so gave it a thirty second rev up, the MTronic did it's thing and she started to fourstoke nicely at the top end. The handles are so much more comfortable to hold. A single captive bar nut that works perfectly. I really noticed the slightly less weight. Single touch kill switch that auto resets. Sounds silly but it's the little things that really make the difference. So I had a ring around and found what must be the last MS241 in stock at a my local tractor place, they are sending it down from another depot. It's come full circle-like a beaten wife, I'm back to an MS241 and will alternate between this and the coming MS261 depending upon the job in hand. I did appreciate the extra power the Echo had, but it wasn't a good enough trade off and the weight was between a 241 and 261 anyhow. So I shall have both. My updated advice is- don't bother with the Echo CS501SX. It's a throwback to the early 2000s.

Seven years later, I reckon OP might have found one by now

Get your accountant to run payroll and sort pension etc. It's not expensive and it's the sort of thing you don't want to mess up. Within the first two years of employment you can lay them off for no reason- just pay them their notice. If he's young (and it sounds it) then don't be too generous. Otherwise there's a big risk of him just expecting top money and not thinking that he has to graft for it. Reward good work with ad hoc bonuses rather than just paying him the same for three days as he currently gets for six. One course a month is going to cost you a fair wedge too.

Well this thing is magic. Must have cost around £700 with both the Baltic Abrasives CBN wheels but it's worth every penny. It's turned chain sharpening into a pleasure rather than a chore. I was pleasantly surprised to see how accurate my hand sharpening actually is, but with this you just set it and make like a robot. Advance chain, pull back against stop, dip wheel, repeat. The hydraulic clamp is a very clever addition, I wouldn't want to be without it. I didn't even mount the pink stones- straight to CBN. You'll never need to dress them and it's putting on an edge every bit as good as you get with a file- and I know how to hand sharpen properly! What I did notice is that where I was putting a decent hook on them with a file, I wasn't perhaps going deep enough into the gullet. Because of the way this works, this does both. The curve of the disc forms the gullet, and the hook is set by the flat of the disc at the angle you chose. The Orgeon grinder and the CBN wheels combine to make a product that is perfectly capable of taking off as little as you would with a file given a careful operator with some mechanical knowledge. If anyone still thinks that a file 'gets them sharper' or a grinder 'takes too much off', then I'm happy to prove them wrong. There is enough adjustment in every plane for even the most finnicky of mechanics. It also comes with a flat wheel for doing the depth guages, which I found worked very well too.