agg221

Hi Abigail, I don't run an arb business, so feel free to discount these comments, but they might help. Firstly, you need to get your terminology right. Arboriculture isn't just tree felling. Tree felling could mean commercial forestry, or it could mean work in a mostly domestic or utility setting. These have very different drivers. Commercial forestry is a version of long-cycle farming, where all input/output is measured on sale of a tangible product (timber, chippings, bark etc). Productivity is heavily influenced by equipment as you're trying to extract high tonnages of material efficiently. Arboriculture, or the care and maintenance of trees, is more of an hourly based service industry. It carries a higher capital cost than many equivalent industries, e.g. plumber/electrician, and is higher risk as you're working with an unpredictable environment, so whereas a good electrician won't electrocute himself, a good arboriculturist can't necessarily predict whether a particular tree is sound or not, and is working at height, with sharp tools. Given the above, a time-based pricing method is normal, with allowance for covering consumables and capital outlay. Unlike many other businesses however, there is an inherent generation of material which is waste in its original setting. This can be considered as a supplementary income stream, with varying levels of additional conversion cost, based again on capital outlay, time and skill level. At the lowest end, taking your arisings to a tip site and paying for disposal, passing the cost on to the customer is the simplest. Selling biomass chip requires little extra investment (assuming that you chip your waste anyway) but you need enough volume. Converting to firewood can in theory be done with minimal outlay, but in practice if you don't have reasonable equipment and a regular supply of suitable species, in suitable form, and make a significant capital investment, you are unlikely to make more out of it than out of disposing of the arisings and spending your time earning more money doing the 'day job'. Selling to high value end uses, such as milling, carving etc. is possible, but intermittent and frustrating. It also requires either a regular outlet or a large storage facility (=more cost). It's notable that quite a few businesses progress from arboriculture (lowest outlay) to supply of wood-based product, often firewood, buying in raw material, i.e. they stop 'tree felling' altogether. Not sure if this is useful, but it might be worth thinking about what specific questions would help with your research and posting them individually. Alec

Parts appear to be reasonably obtainable. A lot are interchangeable with the 090G, some with the 090 and even a reasonable number with the Contra (the naming was originally just a rebranding exercise). It's worth downloading .pdf's of all the above manuals and cross-referencing part numbers. Also worth checking ebay.com (rather than .co.uk) as a couple of the American sellers will happily ship to the UK, but don't list here. Alec

I've tried three different ones within a 25mile radius of me. The two I know to have a good reputation 'locally' to me are Jonesie's and one in Ipswich - either of these are a 3hr round trip! Alec

3ft dia where? If that's an average then I make it about 4.5tons - if it's a base dia, probably around 2.5ft average which would make it around 2.7tons. Alec

My principal annoyance is that the local dealers (to me) -don't- provide any service or support. I get comments like "it's old, buy a new one" or "we don't know why it broke, buy a new one". As above, if I order parts from them it takes over a week as they're not really interested, compared with genuine parts from somewhere like Garden Hire Spares which usually arrive within three days and sometimes next day. I also get surly treatment and am seen as an irritation as I'm not there to buy a new saw. One of the dealers is also responsible for failing to install the crank seal properly when replacing the crankshaft on my 066, resulting in another wrecked pot and piston (unprovable, but true). Another dealer clearly isn't used to working on saws of the type I use - I took the 044 in for a tach tune once only to be told "wow, that's really big, we've never seen one that big in here before" which hardly inspires confidence in taking them the 066 or 076. None of the above leaves me any the wiser or better off from having visited the dealer - the only thing they seem to want is to sell me a new saw. If that's the only service they're offering then mail order at lower cost would seem to have no down sides for the customer. Also bear in mind that secondhand saws of any make or model can be had on ebay. OK, so it's very much buyer beware, but there is nothing to stop a novice buying an 088 (or an 090G with no chain brake!) without any PPE, instruction or anything. As such, I can only conclude that it's profit driven, and we'd be better off with the decent saw technicians going independent rather than dealer based, which would also cut their overhead (and hence cost). Looks like the best protest vote would be if we all buy secondhand saws and pay Spudulike to fix them! Alec

Elm would be a surprising choice, given their tendency to shed limbs without warning: Elm hateth Man and waiteth.... Alec

As above re. species. If it is a suitable species, you really need to remove the sapwood. The sapwood on young oak may well be quite thick - a couple of inches or so, so reckon on reducing the section by 4in overall, which once you've squared it up may make it too thin to be of much use (by contrast, the sapwood on sweet chestnut would be only a couple of millimetres). Given the above, I wouldn't look to mill it - if it's still big enough to use then I would do any squaring up with an axe/adze/drawknife and only try to make sides straight that really need to be. It will look quite rustic, but if you look at timbers in old buildings then this is often how they were prepared, for the same reason. In old buildings you used what you could get, carried it as short a distance as possible and used thinner sections rather than thicker sections as rounding up a small tree was a lot less effort than sawing up a big one by hand. Alec

You mentioned in your first post that the tree is old and that the restaurant is known for it - does that mean they planted it some years ago (already as an old tree)? If so, has it been in steady decline since they planted it, or is it more recent? If it's been steady, I'd agree it just doesn't like it there. If however it's been happy for a number of years, has anything obvious changed (building knocked down, trees felled etc.) to make it more exposed? If not, then there's every chance of getting it back to its former happy state. Last winter was really bad for them - ours lost all its leaves and didn't leaf out again until July (only beaten by the fig which didn't leaf out until August!). As such, I would agree that fairly hard cutting back to promote rejuvenation is likely to work. Alec

For speed, a circular saw. Without one, it's easy enough to do this with a mallet and chisel, just takes a little longer - mark out a cardboard template, mark the two straight lines on the top first, line up the template on the ends and start chiselling away - a couple of hours' work that way. Alec

If the softwood is up to a good standard, have you considered milling it and selling to trade? There's definitely demand in some niche areas - high quality painted exterior joinery would ideally use Douglas, but it's normally more expensive than sapele so there's a market there. There's also demand for beams etc. from some of the timber frame suppliers, as the big mills don't like handling anything outsize - doesn't fit the normal handling equipment. The former requires kilning (which you can already do), the latter doesn't. Alec

I've been dragging 2ft dia x 20ft length oak butts out with a 5ton dumper - no mods, just using the tow hitch, couple of shackles and a chain. The site is fairly level, but given how easily it does it I would think it would cope on a reasonable slope. Alec

Horse chestnut is, in general, useless as timber. It's not durable, has no colour or figure to speak of, is too soft and spongy to take regular use and the grain is too coarse and stringy to get a good finish. As such, burning it is about the best use I'm afraid. Sorry! Alec

I would think you'll be OK with the 36" bar on the mill. Stihl recommend a max. bar length of 30" but that's buried in the wood. The mill will use about 5" of bar at the tip, and unless you take the dogs off another 3" of bar at the saw end. As such, the maximum cut you can get is about 28" buried in the wood. Although dragging the chain round the bar does use a bit of power, it's not much compared with the power used in cutting, so the above should be fine, just a bit slower than with a bigger saw. In desperation I have put my 044 (72cc) on the 36" bar and it cuts OK on up to about 20" logs - haven't gone bigger but I would imagine it would do it if I took it gently. Alec

It's just about small enough to put agricultural fleece over on frosty evenings - won't make it blossom later but would stop the frost causing damage. There are a couple of old techniques for fooling trees, but they involve keeping them cold which probably isn't practical here (you could put up a tent over it with an aircon unit in I suppose...) There's also an old technique for keeping frost off orchards, called a smudge pot, which was an old barrel filled with things that would smoulder all night as the smoke kept the temperature up a couple of degrees and stopped the frost on the blossom, but I can imagine that one wouldn't be too popular with the neighbours! Alec

Hi Alex, beech is a nice timber, but currently out of fashion so sadly not very saleable. This makes it unlikely to recover much of the cost of milling - great for 'own use' though. You therefore need to work out what you want to do with it before you mill and produce a cutting list. You then work through the tree, seeing how straight and clean it is at each successive cut, and how wide if you're not using a swing mill, so you can get the bits out to make what you want. A swing mill will give good straight boards, limited to about 8in width, and will take quite a lot in kerf, which probably doesn't matter in this case. A band mill would allow wider boards and be more efficient on kerf. There are a few around which will come out to where you are. If you can move the butt whole, or have the time on site, then an Alaskan would be OK - again it will give wide boards, but at the price of a lot of sawdust and time! This would probably be best if you wanted to make a big slab-type table top for example. Now is a good time of year for milling as it's less likely to dry too fast and crack. Get plenty of dry stickers ready for putting between boards - you'll need a lot more than you think, and you can't use offcuts as it will go mouldy where they touch. I use old bits of pallet. Prices - haven't hired a mill for ages, but a band mill would probably be around £350/day. Hope this helps! Alec

When in the drying cycle are you thinking of moving it? If it's going to have seasoned in between then there will be significant shrinkage over the stack height, so fixed straps will go loose, so I would look at ratchet straps. You don't need much strength - you're not trying to pull the wood around with it, so anything strong enough to hold it steady whilst moving really. I have used the cheap ratchet straps that come in packs of 10 before - I would have thought they would do what you want. Alec

Having had a quick look, Carlton will do a bar up to 42", I know Stihl stopped doing long ones when they stopped supplying their mill, so the only option I can think of is GB. RobD stocks some of theirs, so is best placed to advise.

Yes, it will pull it round and should be OK for a one-off if you let it cut fairly gently. I'd still be inclined to borrow something bigger though - the bar and chain won't be cheap (offhand I can't even think which makes of bar you can get to fit a 660 at that length), and you don't want to be using them regularly. It would be much more comfortable with an 880 or an 076 (unless you hate these too?). Alec

Would another way round it be to make the chipper slideable? If the chipper is mounted at the same height as the chip box floor, and the chip box is made without a fixed front, it would be possible to run a pair of rails (aluminium angle?) over the floor of the chip box, split at the front of the tipping section and out over the front. When you're running empty, run the chipper into the middle of the box. When you're running half full, slide the chipper forward a bit, adjusting position for weight, and slot the front board in front of the chipper. When you're running fully loaded, roll the chipper out to where you've drawn it. For emptying, run the chipper right out the front and you can tip the box. Would add no weight and wouldn't mean messing with the chipper. Would also be possible to lock the chipper down by drilling holes sideways through the rails. Any good? Alec

Interesting - when I ran the 066 on the Ripsaw mill it was seriously overpowered and snapped the bands if I ran on full throttle, so it spent a lot of time at half throttle. This didn't kill it, but I ran a slightly oil-rich mix and it tended to soot up the plug, hence my comment above. A symptom of the excess oil rather than the lean mix? Sadly for the original poster, you appear to be correct - I was posting as I was about to leave for work this morning and just presumed that it would be easier to get bits for than some of the 40yr old ones. On that basis, if it was mine I would be inclined to confine it to the back of the shed until non-OEM parts become available and buy an 026 on Ebay in the meantime, since overall this is likely to be the cheaper solution! Alec

Can't quite tell, but the leaves have a definite Malus look (apple). If you cut the fruit crossways (i.e. not up and down the line of the stem, but halfway round the middle) it should have that star type look if it is, and a good shot of the bark would help as well. Alec

Firstly, bad luck. I would echo the comments of others regarding Stihl - great saws, sadly not great service - it's an automatic defensive situation, justifying why they're not to blame. I have been in a similar position to you over an 064, and an 066 (twice). If you do get this attitude, make sure they send you back -all- the bits, even the barrel as it may be recoverable, which will save you a couple of hundred. Saws don't really like running half throttle, but it's more likely to cause sooting than seizing. You may have an air leak somewhere, or a carb jet blocked. If it was mine, at this point I would be contacting Spudulike of this forum to get it properly diagnosed and fixed (he also reckons he recovers most barrels). The other positive is that the non-OEM barrels and pistons are pretty cheap and work very nicely in my experience, even for milling (my 044 has worked fairly hard this year on one with no problems) so at least you should get a saw back together for a reasonable cost (although less reasonable if you consider the circumstances). Final comment, you could try running on Aspen. It won't solve the problem if fuel isn't an issue, but if you only use a certain saw occasionally it overcomes the risk of the fuel going stale in the tank, which is another cause of seizure, and it only takes a couple of weeks for that to happen. Good luck! Alec

There are some notable exceptions to this - pollarding in royal forests was performed particularly high to allow riders on horseback to pass under the trees. The hornbeams in Epping Forest are pollarded at about 10ft, which makes re-pollarding to maintain them interesting to say the least! Alec

Brian Pearce are on 01474 357675. They're a small independent agents - we always dealt with a Mr Hickmott (may have retired by now) but I've found all of them helpful there. Alec

I find this thread interesting as it's what I end up doing - most of what I take down is woodland grown oak for milling. It's felling single dead trees rather than clear felling so they're full height (no climbing) and the gap between adjacent trees is sometimes narrow. I'm in a similar position to the original poster - they fall where I want but the ends don't look as nice as I'd like, which matters as it's not my wood so I like to leave it looking tidy. Usually trying to get maximum length, so I'm felling amongst the buttresses, up to about 3ft6 with either a 2ft or 3ft bar. These aren't really hints, as I wouldn't claim to have enough experience of this to get it how I'd like it and some of the ones I've felled end up looking shocking (although they land right), so it's more observations for comment in respect to some of the above hints already given. I don't really like working up to the hinge, as if it starts to go when you're still taking the cut from the second side the hinge remains heavy on that side and it throws it off line. I've tried the suggestion of setting the hinge first as if it was a heavy leaner. I like the advantage of having a well formed hinge, but I find that boring with a long bar (particularly the 3ft one) I can't quite tell if it's dead level and there's nothing to support it. If it goes off line there's nothing you can do about it and you can't 'feel' when you meet up the cuts, so I tend to end up boring full depth from both sides, which means making a lot of the cut twice as you fan out from it. If there's a risk of it going off line, I prefer to have the handle definitely high on both sides, rather than risking high one side, low the other - at least then the cuts will definitely intersect (and since this is for timber you get more that way than both low). Big 'Ammer's beech above looks like what I'm trying to achieve, but don't usually manage! Alec