Spruce Pirate

That site's a fair mix TCD, steep and rocky with flat and boggy in between. The 1st picture I posted is one of the flatter bits, but not as flat as it looks. There'll be a bit of winching to do there as well, but amazing where a harvester can get to these days. These might show it a bit better, last one to prove the sun does sometimes shine around here!

Cheers, hardly wedged any. It's a nice spot I when the weather's good, covered in snow the last couple of days and the road like glass this morning though.

Felling to the head, much better than processing hairy beggars.

Too dry J? I always found oak held an ember really well. Trouble with burning Sitka is you never get to sit and warm your feet by the fire - every time you sit down you need to get back up to put another log on. Good for kindling though.

That'll work, hit them in as far as you can, then every time you're trying to wedge over some back-weighted, back-leaning horror-show of a tree it'll go in tighter. Often to the point where burning them out is the only option! +1 for the two rings as well.

+1 here. I'd be willing to travel if needs be.

Yeah, from memory they're 4 to 5 times more expensive, but easily last 4 to 5 times longer - worth it for not having to change the bloody things all the time if nothing else!

How big was it? I like working with Dougals.

Would a far more effective solution not be to simply ban all chainsaws? We could hand our existing kit in under some sort of amnesty. Chainsaws are, after all, so dangerous that anyone using one without certification and a hi-vis is almost certain to kill or maim themselves, and professional users face almost the same level of risk unless clad in armour suits and clutching bundles of risk assessments! On a serious note, to the OP's question: no, I don't think brining in a mandatory chainsaw license is a good idea, its over-kill and un-necessary government interference.

Done - not sure I got the right order for Q2. Same thoughts of source of wood being important.

We used one last week to tidy up two wind damaged trees. A poplar and a willow, first just over 15m tall, about 12" dbh, growing at the edge of a nature reserve over a road, a split from ground level to about 5' that you could put your arm through. Other trees behind it, so couldn't just winch it back in. No other trees about suitable to anchor into and then work it. The whole thing was very wobbly and had the boundary fence underneath it. The second tree was just along the road with a long limb with a split in it over a bus stop. It had dropped following the split and the end of the limb had been fowling the busses before the reserve staff cut it off with a pole saw, branch was probably 10m out over the road, same fence in the way again as well. The tree could easily have been climbed and the branch cut, but work position would have been awkward and it was much easier to work with the MEWP taking smaller pieces. There were several reasons for using the MEWP: 1) access was good, 2) it felt safer than climbing the first tree (and I hate MEWPs and normally feel much safer in a tree), 3) it was quicker and easier to work the second tree with the platform and 4) the client was willing to pay for it. I think MEWPs are more common and more affordable these days, hence we'll see more of them. In general though I try and avoid them, I think it is normally far easier to work a tree if you're climbing it. Of course, there is a H&S element to their increased use as well which I'll not comment on as it's been discussed at length in many other threads.

Round this way it's normally the Mountain Rescue they send to forestry accidents rather than simply an ambulance. They're a bit better at finding things without a post code.

I'd always recommend saw boots, I hate seeing people cut without them. Saw gloves are rubbish. Get a good pair of well fitting gloves which keep your hands warm, protect you from scratches and let you keep a good grip. Then get another pair so you can put them on in the afternoon once the morning's pair are soaked. Like said, you'll need proper saw gloves if you're doing any training.

Looks like Dougals to me, yup.

I agree with you 100% Tom, but there are a few important and sinister points I think you're missing: 1 - Refresher is already unit specific. Basic refresher only covers small trees (CS 31 as was) and seems to only be suitable for scrub cutting and felling to waste. There are separate refreshers for harvesting sites and windblown trees (CS 32&33 and CS 34/35 as was respectively) - as far as I'm aware if you do refresher on the harvesting site you automatically refresh the small trees, but windblow is separate - and it wouldn't surprise me if someone decided that refresher in all three units is required at some stage. 2 - By joining you do get a sticker (), but that's about all you get. As a member you don't get the chance to put your, very valid in this case, opinions on refresher training to the board. They will still continue to railroad on ahead regardless of your opinion, because they will not ask for it and there is no voting system within the membership on which way the organisation should go. In my opinion FISA exists solely to protect forest managers from litigation and potential charges of corporate manslaughter. Since its inception it has done very little to actually improve safety in the forest industry, it has done a lot of blustering and a lot of posturing, but if you look at what it has actually achieved it is very little. I think there is a long way to go before we are in a position to bring down the system from the inside, but I'm delighted to see people like yourself thinking this way. We need something to happen to stop the industry becoming lead by clip-board toting imbeciles with no real world knowledge carrying out hazard assessments rather than risk assessments. Already a member of FISA by the way, and the sticker is the best bit!

We gave bird cherries as wedding favours. Got them as plugs from Alba trees (other nurseries are available) from the cold store (it was the end of June we were married). Some took, some didn't, depending on green-fingered skills of the recipient.

Cutting rowans is considered bad luck, if you believe in such things. I must have cut hundreds of them! I consider it worse luck if the client is complaining that I haven't done the job right having left all the rowans. I've never actually noticed any correlation between cutting a rowan and an increase in breakdowns or cock-ups.

I normally do about a can a day on a harvesting site. Always have a jerry can about, so the fuel can gets brimmed from that in the morning. Some days you'll use all of it, some days you'll use a bit less. I don't know what an "average" day is on a harvesting site. Some days I spend all day brashing, some days all day knocking over over-size insiders and taking a log off, some days all day felling and processing outsiders, some days felling stuff off steep slopes to the head, some days off-rooting blow for the machine to pull out and process while it fights its way in, some days can be a mix of things. Brashing is probably the most fuel intensive as its flat out. Regards to rates, anyone capable of doing all these things productively, supplying own kit, PPE and fuel with the appropriate tickets and asking for less than £120 a day doesn't know their own worth. I'd laugh at anyone offering me £100 a day. Softwood harvesting sites I'm referring to.

Same here, but I'm going to do it better and for more profit! ..... at least that's the plan......, mind you, I had the same plan last year too.

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The old tickets used to have units for maintenance of the saw and cross-cutting (10 & 14 when I first did saw tickets, I think these got amalgamated into CS 30?). I assume you can still do this under the new system, should keep things relevant for you and reduce the cost slightly. When you say the Inn is at the top of Scotland where are we talking? Caithness? Sutherland? Ross-shire? Some folk think north of Perth is the top of Scotland!

Very droll Big J. Both good videos in their own way!

Thanks for all the advice, looking into the Echo 280.

Yeah, I know what you mean, but they've got to do that every couple of years, especially as sycamore grow quite fast. Might be easier to suggest to them that they just take it out. Unless of course that's taking the job from you, which I wouldn't want if I were in your shoes, in which case get the shutdown for it.

Old school cutters used to take the rakers right down before using a chain, sometimes, like Big J says with an angle grinder. I borrowed a 262 off someone for a day once with a chain like that when I was new to cutting wood, it just about threw me round the tree on the first cut, but once you get used to it you learn to adapt. These days most cutters I know give the rakers three rubs or so every third sharpen or so. Not very scientific, but it seems to work for most.