spuddog0507

Not for much longer tho ???

You will have to get on with milling that up quick !!! Weather forcast not good for next week, going very cold the log fairy,s and Gypos will be in logging it up for firewood !!!!

I take it that its a paper element ? if so take it out let it drain and see what numbers it has on, have a ring round and some diesel/HGV places will cross refference the numbers and supply you with a new filter, when if ever was it last changed ? how long has the oil been in it ? if you dont know i would addvise change the oil as well as filter,,

As dumper says metal !!! any fence line or hedgerow trees forget the bottom 5 foot as it will for sure contain years of fencing wire, nails and staples, the tree in the photo looks Ok but if there are some that have been down years have a go at milling one before you part with any money, as it may be rock hard and take ages to cut !!, if they are all short squat trees like the one in photo the value is not great and i would be valuing it at £50/60 a tonne as firewood/chipwood, it wont be of much interest to any sawmill, if it was all good clean straight logs up to 7mtrs they could be up at £250 a tonne but thats at roadside ready for loading so you need machinery to get it there,,, milling in situ would be ok but dont let anyone try and tell you its worth 1000s cos it aint,

A little younger !! only a week or two,,, The only place i have been in recent times and seen what we used to see back i the 80s/90s where most people are of a normal slim build was in the Scotish border town of Hawick, i went to Coldstream about 3 yrs ago to collect a old plough, as we was passing through Hawick on the return leg the sixth form collage was coming out and as we where sat there waiting the young lad sat at side of me said, there is some smart lass,s here and he was not wrong, there was, his next comment was, not many if any fatties here is there, But when you look at the landscape round there it dont supprise me at all as there is nothing flat at all,

Hi dont be put off by the tech there is on the newer saws from Stihl and Husky, it does work and it works very well, First thing i will say is to most people a saw is a saw but when its your go to bread and butter maker every day there is several things to look at, first of all what doe your nearest dealer sell ? whats your relationship like with them ? for me i have 4 Stihl dealers, 2 Husky dealers and 2 Echo dealers with in 15 mile of me, my nearest one is a mile down the road and he is both Stihl and Echo dealer, never struggled to get spares of him for my kit and bought a few saws of him now all being Stihl equipment, The 70cc range of pro saws Stihl seem to be years ahead of the competion at the moment with the 462 and the 500i, they are both light and very responsive and i find both of them a dream to use, i have run 460s and 461s in commercial forestry and now i have used both the 500i and 462 the weight difference is very noticable, both the 462 and 500i have more power than the older 461s, so for me it would be one of these 2 saws for the reason that stihl have a very good parts and back up system here in the UK, In a recent post on Arbtalk someone said that Echo had a very poor parts supply to the uk and parts could take up to 6 wks to come to the uk, Husky i dont know a lot about after being put of them many years ago with a lad who worked with us and he seemed to spend about 20% of the day trying to start it after refueling,

Well i dont know what to say ? but what a legend and inspiration this man has been to us all when he started his fundraising for the NHS in the biggest panademic for a 100 yrs, I just hope but i am sure his name will go down in the history books as he fully deserves to be there, RIP Sir Tom Moore your legacy will live on for a long time yet,

There has been some big changes in the last 30yrs that i have seen, when i was back in high school there was not that many people who where over weight and as far as i can remember in our year there was 3 lasses and 2 lads, then when i got to driving about i used to do a fair bit o delivery work for a landscaping co in the early/mid 80s and i used to pass 3 or 4 collages on my rounds and again not many over weight people about then. Then back in 2007-2010 i did a bit of relief driving for a kitchen co and the things i noticed then was that there was near on as many over weight students as there was normal ones ?? , when i look back at what we did in our early teens and what todays kids do there is a massive difference in the activitys that we did, if we wanted to go somewhere we just got on our push bikes and went, no asking mummy to take us in the car, we went rabbiting with ferrets,air riffel,s and snares, we went fishing for 2 days at a time and only came home when the food had run out, even in the winter we where out and one favourite place was up the hill at the back of Mrs Thompsons ( Thompsons who own the pleasure beech at Blackpool) this was a steep hill and if we got a bit of snow like today we would go armed with 2 yellow top yield till bags each and create our own bob sliegh run, and if there wernt any snow we still went up there during the winter riding the ponies from Blackpool beach which got wintered up there, I dont see or here of todays teenagers doing any thing like we did it all seems to be armchair related these days, even my own grand kids seem to be bone idol, i tried to get the 2 oldest lads in to fishing and shooting ,but fishing is boring and i dont like the bang that gun makes, but they will sit and play computer games all day where they are killing people in the war games they play, I dont understand how things have got the way they are, but today you can just make a phone call and you only have to go and answer the door when the bell rings to get your tea, Things have changed a lot for sure there are 13/14 yrs olds smoking weed and sharing a bottle of Vodka. back in my day it was 10 No10 and a can of Topdeck shandy and that only happened if we could find enough empty pop bottles in the hedge bottom to take back to the shop, One thing i have read recently is that the NHS will be spending millions on replacement thumb and finger joints by 2035 this is due to excessive use texting on mobile phones and playing on game consoles,

We had rain till about midnight then it changed to frozen rain then about 2-3" of snow on top of that over night but a 7am this morning it looked like today was going to be a sofa day as it was snowing very heavy but all stopped about 8ish and back to rain, Had a 5 month old Lab pup stood at back door this morn not quit knowing what to make of all this white stuff ? but it then discovered it was fun to be out in it,

The 4600 on the farm where i went was on a S plate as well and we used to nearly get to fighting over it as it was fitted with a radio and the other 2 wernt, the radio helped in the spring when we was arrowing and rolling as it seemed a very boring job going up n down round n round all day, the 4000 was a good robust tractor but what else would you expect with its background being the fordson major, the 4000 always started no matter how cold it was ok some times it took a bit of winding but it allways started, the 5000 was a power house in its day with being 4WD and fitted with a 6 pot engine and being about 95-100 hp it made very light work of pulling a trailer with 4 or 5 tonne of grass in it, best thing about the 5000 (bearing in mind i was 17 ish at the time) was the exhaust pipe which was just a piece of 2" scafolding pipe and you could hear howling when it was opened up from about a mile away, fantastic sound, Reg of the 4600 was PHG 409S i think ? dont know where any of these tractors went when they sold up but the 5000 i would very much love to own that one,,

Nice tidy tractor that one, look after it as it will not loose any value if you do, i spent many hours on 4000,4600 & 5000 back in the early 80s carting grass till daft,oclock in the morning, then used to get up and go to work, could not do it today thou, mind you there would be some HSE limitation today for what we did back then,

Dont touch it the 462 is a good choice of saw for what you need it for, the heated carb is there for a reason,,

Hi what is the going rate these days for green timber ???

There is a lot to be said about this subject, there is lads who i have worked with over the years that have claimed they are fully qualified but to be honest they know jack shit, some of these lads have strung jobs out that could of been done in a quarter of the time, Now thats down to expierance, they go get there NPTC tickets and that makes them qualified but its only very basic ? its like passing your driving test, once you have past your driving test you then start to learn how to drive, what i have found over the years is most lads go to either collage for a year or two or just do the chainsaw and climbing tickets and thats it, they then think they are a fully qualified tree surgeon/arborist ? I know quite a lot of tree surgeons and most just seem to have minimal certification, ground saw up to 380mm climbing and use of saw from a rope and harness, there is very few that will have trees over 380mm and a windblown ticket but they still take these tasks on, One very sound lad i work with now and then asked me to go with him and his other 2 lads to sort some storm damage trees out, not massive trees but big enough at 30" diameter, his answer to me when i asked him what do you want a old fart like me there for was because if your there we will get em done in the day, if we do it we will F--k up and will there about 3 days, well we went, set a hand winch up cut one tree pulled it back and down on the deck, next was a uprooted beech that was still stood on its own so just dropped that one and the last one a syc that was snapped off and hung up in another beech, put pully up on another tree and winched back and down, one of his lads went up and sorted a few hangers out and trimmed some broken ends off, we where done for just gone 3 all log left on site and chip just spread on the ground, this lad employed me and paid me very well for what i would of said was a steady days work, but its like he said i have 30 yrs more experianc than him and it shows as he addmited he was a bit out of his depth, another lad with who has a big scar across his forehead which he recieved while doing a windbown scotts pine in a back garden, now if he had known how to deal with that tree he would not have the said scar across his fore head, so what does actually make us qualified ???? its a 65 millon doller question that one and i dont think any one can say they are fully qualified ?? as it dont mater how old you are or how much expierance we have we will all ways, either learn something new or find a slightly better /faster way to some thing, so in m view i dont think any one can say they are fully qualified, i may be wrong on that but i think that is a very fair way to put it,

You dont have to read it ? i only read what i want to read on here and if it is not of interest to me i simply dont bother with it, there is lads every day getting there gear nicked but we dont hear about it, a guy i know had a new Quad delivered on 5th Jan but some scum bag decided to help there self to it last thursday night 21st jan, cut lock on building door and a chain that was round quad and the front axel on a tractor, all this happened in about 45 seconds and his new bike was gone, If it happens to you will you be defending them then, i very much dought it !! you will be calling them as well, i have had stuff nicked over the years, ok nothing of real value but when you go to a site and and what you need for the day is not there it hurts, it costs and is very frustrating,

another one bites the dust

I think you will find the answer is in your question !!!

when you say all up to rigging would that include cs32 34 35 ?

Oh thats not good, hope your ok, they where the better tractors as well, very reliable and pretty much bomb proof, it that would of been a newer tractor, it would of been in a much worse state than yours, as Matty said buy it back for a yard tractor and try and get it for as little as you can, i would be ringing Wilsons on monday and asking them what they would give you for it then you will have some leverage with the insurance co, wheel rims i would think will go back to near the shape they should be and will be fine for in the yard, i hope it all works out in your favour for you,,,,

Worth its weight in gold in a situation like that, and you will get a lot done in a day even tho its only a small machine,

Still raining, so we have had 36hrs of it so far with one let up at about 5ish last night for half an hour or so, local river peaked last night at 4,14 mtrs, it has been running over the top of the banks and spilling out on to farm land most of the night and still is, just spoke to a lad on the edge of this flooded area and he has just said there was about 5-6000 pinkfooted geese on his and farm next door yesterday, geese have come back this morning and where looking a bit lost as where they where yesterday is now under 3-4ft of water,

that logosol debarker is not good as being chain drive, compared to this Swedish built bely drive one a bit more user friendly but yet still being very agressive and getting the job done,

Been raining here since about 4pm yesterday being monday and it looks like it is set to continue till thursday morning the EA have put us on a amber warning and last time that happened was storm desmond and we had some severe flooding, we had 3 days of rain last week that resulted in about 4" of rain and now we have another 6" forcast, going in building today got a raft to build ,,,,

Experianc and knollage are two big players in a lot of industries and more so in arb and forestry OK we all have to learn and as the saying go,s every day is a school day no matter how old you are, i lernt a lot of a old guy i worked with back in the late 70s80s and i still do some things he taught me as i havent come across a better way of doing that particular task yet, i now enjoy passing my knollage on to the younger lads and when some one who is at Myerscough collage doing a 3 yr course and they come working with us and at the end they say i have lernt more here on 6 months than i have at collage in 3 yrs it makes me think what are they teaching them in the 3 years at collage ? Machines and attachments have come a long way in the last 30-40 yrs some have been vastly improved and a some are basically the same as they where years ago as they cant really be improved, i have just bought and sold on a Kreman 122 mini loader, machine would be some where late 80s early 90s OK a bit rough n ready but function,l it wont be a lot different from your Avant but your avant will be more of a machine than that one was, so some thing are the same concept but improved over time,

Not for a week or two like 35yr since i last had any thing to do with one and at the time it just seemed to be a waste of time/diesel/machine hrs for us, watched a lad on a Avant moving timber about 12 month ago with a free rotating grab and he made it look a very difficult but there again its like a lot of other things , operator expieriance , what he moved in a afternoon i could of moved in a 1-2hrs tops with our forwarder, But we are in to production and tonnage not just moving a lone tree from a domestic job, I was all ways told to buy the best bit of kit/machienery you could to do the job and that seems to work for us, i have had cheap kit that are supposed to be up to and do the job but it never seems to have worked for me,