AHPP

I rigged for years on hairy three strand. Still comes out on most jobs for a tagline, driftline, buttline etc, if not principal rigs. I often use it to flop something down and then pass it onto the main system (usually Hobbs). There are tricks to make friction quick and relatively repeatable up in the tree. I like it. Portawraps are mint (begging the question why I still don't own one - someone sell me a small one please). Mainly like them for pulling/lifting stuff with a truck and being able to let it off. I used one to do a poplar the other day, the base of which was so tightly crammed between sheds that the Hobbs would have been a pain to use. Bollard wouldn't have been any better but would have been heavier to carry from the van and harder to strap. I'd rather have a portawrap than a fixed bollard used by a less skilled rigger. A bloke nearly killed me twice because he couldn't strap a bollard tightly enough and the wraps tipped onto themselves and held a piece that needed to run, twice. You can't balls up a portawrap as easily.

Not sure if it's the reason but butter bubbles and burns at a lower temperature than oil, I've only ever used oil. Next batch I do I'm going to pop it in oil and then melt butter and toss in the pan off the heat.

Fixed with higher heat. Popping in seconds, way better results.

Yep. That’s civil servants for you.

They’re brilliant. I’ve just used my 120 in the living room. I do walloping takedowns with the 220 with 16”.

Took ages to start popping too. I used quite a lot of oil and butter. Might have slowed it down with that as well.

Any experienced popcorn men here? I've just ruined a batch. Burned, majority unpopped. Did I use too low a heat?

I bought a set of narrow ones but they were shit quality so went back. Got a drill as well. And forks and bucket.

I once rolled a diesel Sherpa about twenty feet from the river Thames. It ran completely upside down for a good minute before I could get to the off switch. Stood it up with four men and a lever and left it for an hour. Worked fine for the rest of the week. Lessons were learned.

I'd have had the narrow Sherpa but I didn't have the money at the time. This will do for now. It's still a million times better than carrying things.

Mine in action in Cambridge earlier in the year. Two skinny kids just about keeping the back down. Sopping wet poplar. The grab is big and heavy, I suspect homebrewed. Probably slightly too big for the machine but a wide pinch is nice for big diameter rounds.

Probably. It was one of the relatively pivotal moments of deciding to offer a proper service rather than be just another worker. Comms sets was another. Buying my spikes from you in my early days was even a reasonable commitment at the time.

I used to only take small saws to climbing jobs and rely on those hiring me to provide big saws. I was up a pine in Liverpool and called for a 660. I'd used it several weeks before. It was a bad starter and bad runner then and I'd remarked on it. It came up running, cut out when I blipped the throttle and wouldn't restart. I was getting annoyed. I adjusted my position to get a really hard pull on the cord, pulled really hard on the cord and full-force twatted my elbow on a stub. I properly saw red. Honestly some of the the most intense rage I can remember. Bought two big (ish) saws on the way home. Never looked back. People are now hiring me because they know I come with reliable, big saws, sharp chains, and spare chains.

Well done. You’re cutting better than 80% of tree surgeons.

You get it. Let the saw sing and feed itself. Depth gauges very important for that. The biggest difference most people can make to their sharpening.

Any other experience or thoughts?

I flip the bar every time a chain comes off. If I forget to, it makes less of a difference than if I forget to at chain replacement time. Inspecting and dressing rails more important than flipping on the numbers I’d say.

Looks rougher and more mature from the bark than the OP one. Good inside?

Aye. That’s basically what I’d use it for, tensioning zips and reeves, maybe the actual reeving on light/static picks. I’ve got a petrol capstan for heavy pulls but it’s loud and the unfamiliar struggle with it. I can rig with it and get it to start under load etc but I wouldn’t trust many others to.

It's mainly the base I'm worried about. It's aluminium. I'm used to a steel Hobbs that you can be strong with.

Maybe pay something like half way between firewood price and low end softwood sawlog price?

https://www.harkenindustrial.com/gallery/b5b6aaf5-c587-416a-a917-d28b0b8272b1.pdf https://www.harkenindustrial.com/en/harkenindustrialcom/riggers-winches/riggers-winch-500/ Is anyone using one of these? I've got a Hobbs (which I'm going to keep using because it's indestructible and fairly foolproof) but I want a sailing winch device for quick, light stuff, gunning lifts with a drill and making groundsmen's lives easier (juggling ropes to lift with a Hobbs takes practice). Trying to stay away from the bigger ones like the GRCS etc but worried the Harken 500 will be too dainty. Especially worried about mounting it firmly enough for cranking and the back plate not snapping with ratchets or under load (though would probably base choke, strap lightly and expect the designers to have made it so it sits nicely under load). Interested to hear direct experience and general musings.

My lunchtime view of a beech yesterday. I thought I was making excellent progress. Turned out my watch had stopped working at 10:46. Caught on when schoolchildren were returning home while I was chogging.

Partridge kebabs. Boiled a partridge, pulled the meat off, fried it with chilli, garlic, coarse black pepper (use a coffee grinder), turmeric and cumin. The cumin was ready ground but I’d love to try it with toasted seeds. I like a gritty kebab, like the ones I basically lived on in Germany in 2007 when the decade-old-meat scandal was raging. That laid on some breadstuff. Next layer is red cabbage and red onion, steeped in white vinegar for the tang, balsamic vinegar for the sweetness and sea salt because I needed to empty a mug of it somewhere. Last layer lettuce then top with siracha and yogurt+mint from the squeezy bottle you get at a takeaway (middle aisle of Aldi).

I think I follow him. He's OK. Learned the daisy chain knot from him. That's mega handy. Probably picked up other bits and pieces. Wasn't impressed with how he did a tree on a lake shore the other week but I wasn't there was I. I'm relatively closely aligned with him politically (though not religiously) but that's not why I follow people on instagram. I use it to learn to kill trees better and make money from doing so. I have arbtalk to be a bit more sociable.