AHPP

Question open to anyone.

Assuming the operation was performed before the TPO was on it, what’s the crime?

The ones with induction hardened tips may be too hard to sharpen with a file but will still sharpen with diamond. I’ve sharpened the sides and not the tops before and felt modest improvement but I think that’s the wrong method.

Straight out the back for me. I could justify it by reckoning that pulling cambium fibre is better timber practise than pulling heartwood fibre but the reality is just that the saw’s already there and I’ve never had a problem with it.

Putting tops down a channel in conifers is good for protection but of course increases the likelihood of hanging stuff up. Also more work if the top is leaning away from the channel and you have to pull it over or change the balance. Good food for thought in terms of mass damping lower down as well as up top though.

It was a line of conifers that made me think about the topic. On spready hardwood, I’m more inclined to build tie in and rigging points around Y shapes and get rid of brash at the ends of the Ys as early as convenient. I place more importance on good geometry than mass damping (cheers, Paddy) there.

Does it though? Perhaps it would let the anchor point take greater loads when applied slowly but wouldn’t hold up as well to shock loads? That’s my gut feeling. Largely theoretical I hasten to add. If you’re banging big loads onto a pole and think you need a top to cope with it, you’re probably rigging too roughly.

Exposure certainly a factor. Any number of other things too. Chip runs etc. Annoying having a little bit of brash saved until the end of the day.

Unless it’s really windy, I generally like to leave the top where my tie in point and rigging probably is while I’m doing the rest of the tree. The dead weight of flexible branches makes it feel like it’s a better anchor, less prone to twanging about like a bare pole does. But theorising, if you cut the top off first, that’s less pole strength being wasted on keeping the top up there so more strength for climber and rigging. But it feels worse. Example: I recently negative rigged a top from a neighbouring tree onto my tie in and rigging tree and was hugely grateful to have left the top on the rigging tree. A bare pole would have twanged horribly. I suppose the question comes down to balancing intuition against physics. Top on or top off? I remember @RobRainford posting a while ago about trees coping with wind by spreading load about the network of branches, the inertia of branches letting unions etc work as nature intended. Sounds a similar area of discussion to the above. Would be interested in input on this too.

And I suspect the answer.

The question I was about to ask.

All you need to add to DRT gear is a rope wrench, a stiff tether and a foot ascender. That alone will be a huge improvement on DRT. The wrench and tether can quite realistically be home made if you can be bothered. I climb 95% SRT on a 35m rope and never needed longer, including redirects in big crowns and into different trees. Buy more stuff as you discover you want it but you don't need it to get going.

I'm primarily in it for the smooth Arabian blues.

That’s not comparing apples with apples. The wheels are specialist and expensive so will have been very carefully assembled, care taken to avoid water holding and rot etc, proper treatment used. Fence softwood is usually whatever crap is to hand, put through a sheep dip to lock the moisture in so you have to buy more in ten years.

The law on this probably begins at Oscar Chess and then gets more complicated. Paddy will fill you in. Sharp practice in any event.

Waterworld was mint.

Nice.

Semi permanent being the operative phrase. Tart rock climbers do the same thing as tart tree climbers when they leave their belay device on their front loop giving it perfect opportunity to flap and hit them in the balls.

I did that to the scabbard for my 661 before I’d even fired it up.

The price of scabbards always amuses me. They’re so cheap and you still see saws rattling around tool lockers, going blunt on hard things and cutting up soft things.

Forsts could be the best chippers in the world (which they aren’t) but they still won’t work when the wrong fuel gets put in.

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I take it you’ve noticed no great difference in use?

Does the AP300S give the same, more or less runtime at that full power?

Do you run them flat? I have two batteries for my 120 and swap them as often as possible so I always have as much charge on tap as possible. Read somewhere that it may be better for lithium ion batteries to be fully discharged though.