the crafty weasel

This week's shopping list- Light refreshments Beer Popcorn 1x bank of cinema seats Crate of chickens

If you need spares for the mag, go to Independent Ignition Supplies - Magneto repairers and component suppliers. The J.A.P. engines can be quite tempramental. If you have a good one, it's very good, if you've got a bad one, you may as well get someone to feed the wood through while you crank the handle. As much as I'm a fan of vintage machinery(I own a pile of it myself), If you're using it to try and make some money you might be better off fitting a Honda or Briggs to it. Reliability is key to having a machine you enjoy using

I find if you leave them long enough the build up of chain oil gives a nice waterproof quality

I quite agree. How do you cut the blind mortices in the uprights?

Make it into charcoal, burns so hot you can smelt iron with it

Just had a bash this evening at making a cleft oak gate. This one is in miniature, 19"x28", and was wondering what to charge for cleft oak and ash gates. any suggestions welcome

Doesn't really matter whether you can or not, you shouldn't have to deal with it to start off with. Unfortunately it's people like this that give the rest of us young people a bad name, and make it more difficult for us in general. By the way do you employ just climbers or qualified groundworkers as well? I'm thinking of taking a year out in the near future and travelling and working for a year.

I've got a 1979 Honda C50, and have had a 1970 bantam 175 and a Raleigh RM1 autocycle (predecessor to the moped, bike with an engine on it). Never ridden any of them on the road. The plan was to get the bantam done properly and on the road but she had this tendency to backfire if the back wheel left the floor and run on compression ignition backwards! It was probably easy to fix but I lost my nerve on bikes after that.

Yeah was thinking about cutting the blade off the ram and placing the bush in between the ram and the blade. Either that or just drill a hole through the top of the blade where it's thickest.

My dog used to throw up constantly a few weeks back and I couldn't work out why, until I spotted him scoffing chainsaw dust. Stopped using bio oil now, purely for that reason. Otherwise I think it's well worth the extra cost.

To quote one of your earlier threads- "Hello all, Having just finished an RFS course, I've started to notice work that is been carried out by PROFESSIONAL firms in my areas. No wonder people think that any body can be a tree surgeon, when you see the shocking state of the trees that have been worked on. WHY!!! do so called PROFESSIONAL tree surgeons think it's ok to leave a beautiful tree looking like an arthtic crippled hand, with nothing left on it. ok "thats what the customer wants"......Maybe...... NO!!!!why arn't these tree surgeon / arborists educating there custoners. Yes i know I'm new to the industry and I'm not with a firm yet.... But am i missing something, did i miss that lesson that day at college.... or is it a secret tree surgeons code of practice, to do this to trees. DON'T GET ME STARTED WITH HEALTH AND SAFETY!!!!!" Maybe you shouldn't have posted that on an arb forum until you'd actually secured work?

I was going to suggest the same thing. I use birch twigs for whittling cockerels and other birds. If you did this with every fork on every branch and sold them for £8 each like I do you'd be in the money

I'm after one to put on my Allen mayfield garden tractor. Cheers.

Nah, the crane arm when fitted will use the same ram as the splitter, so it will be taken off while splitting. I have two fence posts knocked into the ground to hold the dumpy open next to the splitter, then when its full I either put it on the trailer or put it in the shed. Thats when I'll attach the crane arm.

As I mentioned in another thread, I'm planning on modifying my logsplitter to lift dumpy bags as well as split. I have a crane that goes on the back of the tractor, but I find it's a pain having to swap over all the time when i just want to move a few bags after I've filled them. I've done a quick sketch plan below of what I'm planning on doing. It's going to attach to the splitter with two pins and lynchpins, so should come off and go on in a few seconds. Any comments/suggestions welcome Splitter as-is Planned mod

Part of the reason I modified mine was to actually make it safer. As is mentioned above, it saves the strain on your back, but the most important mod I made was to the control. Before I cranked the control lever downwards, you used to have to pull down on the control to make the ram go down, and push upwards to make it go up. I was worried that if something were to go wrong somehow and I was to get snagged under the ram, the ram would pull me down and would pull my hand down on the control, in a vicious circle. Now you have to push forward on the control to move the ram down, and pull back to lift up, hopefully now if there was a problem, the instinctive pulling away from danger would make you pull the lever and lift the ram. Maybe a bit safer (If that makes sense, does in my head). If I were employing anyone, I would have a single acting spool on the other side of the ram, which fed the main spool block. That way the control spool would be dead until the single acting spool lever was pulled, making it two handed operation. However this would probably not be covered by insurance unless tested and inspected by BS or the HSE. Seeing as I only use mine for beer money and I don't employ anyone I'm not going to worry too much. That and the fact that I never get to use it because it's the only aspect of firewood that the arthritic old man can manage... I'll post some pics later on of the plans I've got to convert mine into a dual purpose splitter and crane for lifting dumpies.

I agree wholeheartedly- running a DCS4301 and a DCS340

Arbtalk rule #47- no matter what the thread started off as, it will eventually become a Stihl vs. Husky argument.

TRACTOR HYDRAULIC LOG SPLITTER, WITH 3 POINT LINKAGE on eBay (end time 26-Jan-11 08:35:41 GMT) £450 with free delivery, and it hasn't failed on anything I've given it, even seasoned knotty beech and oak

I have that exact same splitter, fantastic things for the price aren't they? I've modified mine slightly by extending the bed off to one side so that I can put a block there while my dad is splitting one, that way there's one waiting for him all the time, and I've lengthened and cranked the handle down, so you dont have to reach up as high to use the control.

I sometimes think that the entire purpose of youtube is to show me how much easier/more fun my life would be if I had the money. I'm off to cry into the feed hopper of my Aldi's special garden shredder now (that is if my tears aren't too big for it...)

May as well do it now while I'm young, before I have a mortgage, kids, too many bills to pay, common sense etc.