agg221

I've got a non-genuine pot and piston on my 066M from gardenhirespares. I told them when I bought it that it was for milling, so if it wasn't up to it they would be losing out on their one year guarantee. They said they were confident it would hold up well. No problems so far. Same applies on the 044 which has been worked hard in the last year - must have put over 70l of fuel through it milling and had no problems. Alec

I use a 47" Duromatic for milling (yours may well actually be 47", the modern ones are). Mine is on an 076 and I don't have any problems with it getting hot, even when I don't use the manual oiler. You have to keep the chain tension absolutely right, but it behaves itself and I've gone up to 16ft cuts so far. I reckon it's on the limit for a mill without a secondary oiler though. You could add the aux. oiler kit to your current Duromatic, which just requires a hole. Since there's no sprocket it doesn't make any difference to any other use you may have for it. Alec

I'd find a nut that just fitted on the rounded over corners and plug weld it on. Fitting over the corners will hold it in place to tack weld, and it will be big enough not to be too likely to round off once it's been annealed by the welding. The heat will also help to free off the bolt, although wait until it's cold again before trying as the bolt will expand when hot, making it a tighter fit, and then become slightly more free once cold. If it shears off you can do it again - if you go down the drilling route and it goes wrong you're really stuffed. Alec

I've just spoken to Chris as I had a potential use for the boards, as longer lengths. Just to add that he's tried planing them up and they're not stable - they twist and warp, so they really are only suitable for cutting down into short lengths e.g. for turning. Alec

Greasing the needle bearing on the clutch is a good idea. It doesn't need it that often as the bearing is only running when the saw is idling, so as long as you're setting up a batch to cut, then starting the saw, cutting it and switching off it will see very little work. I'm also in the 'don't bother greasing the bar tip' camp, and have had no problems so far, even on very long bars (3ft). Alec

I wear old army shirts. They're cheap so it doesn't matter if they get torn, but actually they're such close weave that not much gets through. German ones seem to be the best. Alec

As it stands, I'd say around £700-900 (basically, £350 for the landy, £200-250 for the overdrive and the same for the winch), assuming the chassis doesn't show up any nasty surprises. Do the work or get it done, with an MOT, and more like £2k. Does depend a bit on how original and pretty it is. Alec

I can't quite decide whether the logical conclusion to this thread is an MS880, an 090G Super or a Teles SW7 (2man saw with a 350cc engine)..... Alec

My younger daughter (14mnths) looked up from the sofa when I came in from work and said "Daddy" for the first time. Alec

Sounds dodgy, but on the other hand it would be very convenient. You could open a savings account in your own name, then issue an invoice with money payable to it, in advance of shipping. Being a savings account it couldn't go overdrawn so you'd soon find out for certain with little effort? Alec

How much you looking for (knowing how much you paid for it?) Alec

Most people on here won't buy secondhand, with good reason, but my thinking goes like this: The saw has a warranty period, say a year. If you are running it in the course of your daily work you'll probably notch up a few hours a day, say 15hrs a week on average (very much depends on what you're doing with it and how much you swap between saws). This equates to 60hrs a month, so for argument's sake 600hrs a year. If there are any early part failures, you'll know about them and can get it repaired under warranty. You're talking about cutting up firewood, say 4 loads a year, actual saw running time maybe 2hrs a load? This gives a total running time of 8hrs a year, which isn't enough to even run it in! My 066M was professionally repaired (new crankshaft) by a local dealer. They got the main bearing seal wrong, which isn't very visible but caused an air leak inside 15hrs running. Trouble is, that equated to milling two trees and then I didn't do any for a couple of years due to moving house, so when I started it up it died, needing a new barrel and piston (genuine parts ~£280, pattern parts ~£60) and I had no comeback to the original repairer (Spudulike diagnosed and fixed it for me). Even if you play around with the above figures a bit to suit your circumstances, the odds are that you won't find a fault inside the warranty period. Generally speaking, a saw which starts and idles well, hot and cold, is very unlikely to give you a problem, even with milling which is much much harder on them than what you're talking about. If it's been gone over by someone with a good reputation, who is happy to ensure that it is 'right' when they hand it over and will remedy it if not, you don't have much at risk. Regarding bars, longer bars sap power. You don't notice so much on a really big saw but the smaller ones really suffer. Don't forget, with a 15" bar you can still cut through something just over 2ft (allow for the spikes). Alec

Sadly not. It's just that the tax rises won't be any higher than originally planned. That's 2% above inflation, so about 5p a pint. One point that may help some on Arbtalk though, if it comes to anything, is the planned simplification of taxes for companies turning over less than £77k. Alec

Just thought I'd stick mine on here. Hasn't made much progress lately but hopefully I'll at least get the axles under the new chassis this year. This one has got a capstan winch, and overdrive! Alec [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7U5Mze86z8]Starting USK - YouTube[/ame]

Yep, definitely the best option when you want to do test runs in the kitchen isn't it.....

My first saw was a 90cc Stihl 064. I'm not a pro and I'm not dead. The main differences are in power to weight and design for durability and to an extent repairability. The assumption is that a pro will work a saw to death while the home user won't. The steps up are small in price, but the cycle is endless until you reach monster saws. Have you considered getting a demo on the two and picking the one that suits you best? Alec

How big was the tree, what pruning technique did you use? What size were the biggest cuts you made and what % of the leaf cover did you take off? When exactly did you do it? This will help narrow down between shock/stress, bacterial canker, silverleaf or something else, although it probably won't be possible to confirm unless you can access the dead tree. Alec

I run my 076 on Aspen for milling with no problems. I also run a 1940s Allen Scythe on it, which originally specified 16:1 with SAE30. As has been said, better oils, better lubrication and actually a bit more power as the mix is less lean. You may need to tweak the carb a bit. Alec

They are good, very good for the money. Makita tools in general tend to be higher end. I have a Makita 4-stroke brushcutter as it happens, which I find to be very good. Makita chainsaws are less commonly used as they're less well established and people are conservative so go for Husky or Stihl because they have an excellent reputation, although it remains to be seen whether this is still currently deserved in all cases. This means there are fewer Makitas around, so it's harder to establish how reliable they are, and how they stand up to regular hard work - i.e. meet the expectations of the professional user. There have been a few comments about them on here which I think have mostly been positive - try searching under the term Makita. Alec

I know nothing about them, but the maximum dimensions look pretty decent so long as you're not into beam sawing. There aren't many things in reality that need a plank over 12" or a section bigger than 8"x12". Only limitations appear to be the common ones to all circular saws (cf. bandmills) - wider kerf and can't make big wide slabs or big beams. The former can be more of a disadvantage than is often assumed as with manual sawing you can pick your lines when ripping down a slab to cut out any defects. If you cut the section directly you get what you get! This trades off against accuracy, potentially portability (how light are the parts to carry in through narrow access?) and the ability to handle a log of almost unlimited diameter. Alec

Potentially very much so - PM sent. Alec

Having just looked it up, vehicle kerb weight, which I presume is unladen, is actually 1528kg. Maximum total weight is 2150kg (presumably GVW), even though maximum load is specified at 500kg. Although in principle plates can't be swapped regularly, if you have the two plates and pop-rivet them on as required, it would appear to be pretty untraceable and you would always be legal on the road? Alec

Entirely agree on the Aspen. I would go for the Stihl or Husky, rather than the Makita. There's nothing wrong with the Makita, and if you were using it more heavily it would be a very good option to consider. Ironically it's the fact that you're not using it so much which suggests the Stihl or Husky would be a better choice. This is because you're unlikely to work it hard enough to start needing parts for a very long time. If you're the kind of person who, once something breaks you throw it away, it doesn't matter. However the fact that you indicated you want to look after it suggests you might want parts, and I would reckon on being able to get parts for a current model Stihl or Husky for at least 10yrs, and with pattern parts up to 30 (you can still get most parts to keep a 1980s saw running!). I wouldn't count on this with a Makita as although I rate them highly, and you can buy parts for most of their power tools, I suspect the volume will be smaller and hence they won't enter the pattern part market. Alec

ROG, given that you clearly have a thorough knowledge of the trailer towing regulations, please could you clarify for my situation, where I hold pre-'97 driving licence and my wife's is post '97 (I can imagine it would also apply where, say, the boss has a pre-'97 licence and the lad doesn't). I tow a 2.3ton plated plant trailer which weighs 0.3tons, using a vehicle with a 2.0ton unladen weight and a towing rating of 1.8tons. My understanding is that, with my pre-'97 licence, I can load the trailer to 1.5tons, thus towing the allowable 1.8tons, the limit imposed by the towing vehicle rather than the trailer. This gives a train weight of 3.8tons. Am I correct in thinking that my wife's post-'97 licence does not allow her to tow the trailer, even empty and weighing only 0.3tons, because it fails on both counts, i.e. is plated at 2.3tons and she is limited to a plated 1.5tons and has an allowable train weight of 3.8tons, exceeding the allowable 3.5tons? However, if the trailer was down-rated on the plate to 1.5tons she could tow it, empty or loaded with up to 1.2tons as this would then comply on both plated weight and maximum possible train weight? If this is correct, it suggests that sending the lad to fetch the empty trailer, weighing well under his allowable 750kg (or more depending on towing vehicle), is still illegal if the trailer is plated to higher than his licence allows? If this is the case, are you allowed to have multiple, interchangeable plates for a trailer, from its maximum safe design limit down to a lower rating to comply with a restricted licence? Alec

The structure of wood is like a big bundle of tiny drinking straws, with little holes in the sides of the straws. This means that virtually all the water goes out of the ends, but it can very slowly go out sideways. If you make the section thinner, more goes out sideways, but realistically unless you were to totally de-bark, the bit opposite a split face would still take just as long to dry. One complication is that the little holes in the sides of the drinking straws actually have little flaps over them. These are open while they're wet, but once they're pulled shut, the stay shut. They get pulled shut if there's a big pressure difference from one side to the other, which is caused if one side is very wet and the other very dry. This is called 'case hardening' which can be a real problem with seasoning milled timber. With firewood however the transport of water is so much faster through the ends than through the section that it makes no odds. Alec