chris23a

This is my 3rd year doing firewood and its been the worst yet, im really not selling anything right now. I think its a combination of the mild weather and the fact that oil prices have dropped so much. The only wood I seem to be selling is my unprocessed wood/cordwood/arb waste/whatever you want to call it, so at least im getting rid of the timber somehow.

Crown reduction on a mature Hornbeam (and the smaller one to the left)

What he should have done is felled the trees, cut them to length, stacked them up neatly, took some photos then advertised it as Poplar cord for £x per tonne, would look more professional and customers know exactly what they are getting.

I do occasionally but only if its out of sight and in a decent neighbourhood, havnt had any problems yet.

I know it will grow back to that size in no time but personally I hate pollarding and only do it as a last resort.

Spent the last 3 days pruning some big Limes, a Sycamore and a Horse chestnut. I did a crown reduction and lift on this multi stemmed Lime, also removed the conifer growing beside it.

Hi Philip, I have been using a Navaho for the past few years but have just recently switched to a Sequoia. Its a decent harness, quite comfortable although not as much as my new one, one thing I don't like about it however, and im not sure if its just mine or all of them, is that it tends to keep loosening up over time so I have to keep adjusting the straps. There is no bridge to connect to just a ring. Overall I would say its a decent harness.

RL Series Line Launcher - Accessories - Climbing

That bloke at the top right corner looks like he'd make a good climber

Hard to say wether or not it can be straight felled judging by that pic, it could be right beside a road for all we know.

I got 3 heavy duty tarpaulins from this company Tarpaulin Cover Manufacturers | Canvas Tarpaulins by Cunningham Covers I think they were about 600gsm, they weren't cheap but they are very thick and should last for years. They can make tarpaulins to your exact measurements too.

This is how I would price it assuming its within 10 miles of the yard and all chip and timber is to be removed. Day 1: 3 man team, strip the tree, section down to a suitable felling height, chip all branches and take away any timber (shouldn't be much). Day 2: 3 man team, straight fell the trunk, leave groundworkers to ring it up while I take the wood back to the yard, clean up, blow all the sawdust into the river Should get finished early enough £900 and I would get a few hundred quids worth of hardwood timber too

2.5 tons? Are you sure? The unladen weight of a transit single cab tipper is 2.4 tons, yours is a crewcab and you have full aluminium sides, roof, etc. I would be surprised if its any lighter than 3200kg, you should get to a weigh bridge some time just to be sure. I have an Iveco Daily crewcab with a similar set up to you and mine is well over 3 ton empty.

Very nice but that must weigh over 3000kg empty?

Brand new top spec Unimog with PTO chipper for big jobs, Iveco Daily 4x4 tipper with Greenmech 19-28 for smaller ones, Big John Deere tractor and 15 ton dump trailer for transporting large amounts of timber/chip, and one of those massive tracked stump grinders!

Im based in NI and as far as I know there is only one place that sells stump grinders, M Large Ltd. And the only make they do is Carlton so I don't have any other choices. Up until now I have just been hiring out the Rayco RG13 which im happy enough with, the Carlton seems very similar?

So rather than just straight felling the trees they cut into the roots with the saw and attempt to pull the trees over with a small winch? And all this to avoid leaving a stump!? What about the huge rootplate they've left and the dull chains that need resharpened every 5 minutes! Idiots....

Who owns one of these? What do you think about it?

I would agree with most of the views expressed here, docking his wages is unfair and probably illegal. If he really is as bad as you say then either terminating his employment or cancelling his service as a sub contractor is the only real solution here.

Good ole popular, the customers love it.

I have had a Hakki Pilke Eagle PTO version for nearly 2 years now and im very pleased with it. We always use it with 2 men on it and it works fine, occasionally if the saw is cutting a very thick piece of wood the man on the splitter will need to hold off for a few seconds until the machine picks up speed again but generally it works well. We can fill a wheelbarrow of logs about every 3 minutes this way. The TCT blade should last for 40+ hours before needing resharpened providing you don't go through too many nails, barb wire, etc (which is inevitable) and the belts should last about the same length of time, although you will need to tighten them every 5-10 hours ive found. We now keep the top cover of the machine OFF so we can keep an eye on the belts. You can get the belts off ebay for about £6 each. There are a few problems with the machine though, at the bottom of the blade compartment there is a very small thin steel grill which is meant to allow sawdust to escape but frankly its useless, we had to cut it off with the angle grinder as it kept filling up with sawdust/shavings and slowed down the blade. If you are buying the machine this is the first thing you should do in my opinion. Another let down is the brake pedal, when the blades/splitter gets jammed, and it will do quite often, you push this down with your foot and it disengages the belts. In theory this is a great idea but we've found that once the belts are disengaged the shaft is still spinning and creating friction with them, and after a few seconds you can smell them burning, we get around this by disengaging the tractors PTO as soon as there is a jam but no matter how quick we are there is still some damage caused to the belts. However despite these small issues I would still highly recommend the Hakki Pilke Eagle, its a very productive machine for the price and the PTO version is very cheap to run on a small tractor drinking red diesel. I got mine from M Large for around the £1700 mark if I remember. Let me know if you need any other info.

Ok hes probably a couple hundred kg overweight but who isn't? He is just trying to earn a living so give him a break.

That truck is already overweight empty!

Small cedar dismantle today.

Any photos?