agg221

I can't offer useful comment on a day rate, but I will offer some comment on employment. I am employed, but the way the company is structured, to all intents and purposes I run an SME, which I took on 8yrs ago as a loss-making enterprise of 4 people and have grown to a highly profitable enterprise of 32 people. Within all of this, the most difficult part has been finding people. Not just any people (that's easy) but skilled, motivated and responsible people who do the job the way you want it done. It sounds from your initial post as though you may have found someone who meets these criteria. When I find such people, I want to keep them, and that means keeping them happy and recognising the value they bring. As such, I pay them what they earn me, minus reinvestment costs and overhead (my salary costs are part of the overhead but in the early days when I was still doing the job as well as managing the activity it was about half my salary that needed covering). I also regularly keep them informed as to how the business is doing and what is needed, and let them know that they are valued. I also find out what their long-term plans are - I don't hold them to it, but check once a year (we have a formal appraisal process). That way, I know where they want to head and, where possible, facilitate it. Yes, this makes them more employable elsewhere, but it also means they are getting the most out of the role, which means they are more likely to stay. There is nothing worse than trying to find new, good quality employees while the work is mounting up! You may have given an indication as to a route forward. You reckon this person is conscientious and can be left to work unsupervised? Are there opportunities to take on one-man activities which would fill in the days you can't do? Things like hedge cutting/grass cutting/firewood cutting and splitting, which may not make you a profit but would cover your costs. Are there maintenance tasks which you currently do but could hand over, freeing up your time for quoting, which would increase turnover over all? This is a model of direct (earning) and indirect (non-earning) hours, where if you effectively work out an hourly cost, you can work out how many direct hours per week you need the two of you to be doing to earn the income you need. I would be looking for ways to keep this person, for as long as is reasonable given their long-term aspirations, as it sounds like you should be able to benefit from it if you can. Alec

Hi James, how long is it? Alec

If you keep going with the steam for longer the wood becomes softer - most of the replacement planks in my boat had to be steam-bent in, being 2" thick x up to 10" wide oak, some with simultaneous bend and twist. I found a couple of hours at temperature was enough, using a steamer made from an old coal-fired domestic boiler with the thermocouple lopped off and plumbed into a fridge freezer which had had the CFCs drained off and suitable slots cut in the ends. Sounds crude but it did the whole boat and finally rotted through on the boiler after about 15yrs. I had it easy though - Thames Barge planks are 3" thick! With thicker stuff you get much less loss if you are patient and give it enough steaming time to go like rubber but if you want to do it more quickly, make sure there are no knots or wavy grain on the outer face as it usually starts to go from there. With a long steaming time, I got away with some serious face defects and only cracked one plank (which got caulked in anyway as it split along the grain rather than across it). Alec

Gone crazy in what way? If it's really vigorous and calloused growth it suggests it is just responding to the pollarding. I wouldn't expect much blossom for a few years after pollarding - it kicks the tree into growth rather than fruiting mode. It will need to settle down a bit and develop a new spur system before it flowers well again. Alec

You are quite right that the chain is the key factor, both how sharp and how even. If you haven't got one, I suggest going for one of Rob D's Granberg Precision grinders - it lets you set angle, length and hook and keeps them the same on all teeth which does give you a lot more speed and a improves finish. Oregon chain comes out with a perfectly reasonable finish but you could try a loop of the Granberg chain as well - I prefer the finish I get and it is also a bit faster (you do need the grinder to sharpen it though as it gets hardened). Alec

I wouldn't mill beams - they are more likely to crack and less likely to be useful for anything. I suggest it is big enough to justify quarter sawing if the mill are prepared to do it. I would go for a reasonable amount of 1.5", a bit of 1" (which will finish to around 0.75" for shelves, bookcase sides and smaller furniture), a few bits of 2.5" which will finish to 2" for a serious table if you fancy it, and when it gets near the corners of the log, mill a few bits of 4" square for use as table legs. There will be a lot of timber there - for context, if you took it all down to 1.5" you would have about 400sq.ft, so you might want to thing of a range of projects and make sure you get the timber milled to start. Also don't forget you will need to get a lot of stickers ready in advance. Alec

Yes, once it's down, and assuming it is OK for rot and with not too much sapwood. Walnut is not worth the thousands of pounds which many people assume it to be - there is a lot of work in milling, stacking, seasoning, converting into finished object before it acquires significant value. Alec

What you are showing in the picture doesn't look like a disease - it looks like adventitious roots appearing, which cherries sometimes do. They don't grow any bigger than this and are not a problem. The usual problem with cherries is bacterial canker, which leaves areas of dead bark and oozing resin, plus a very thin canopy if it is near girdling the trunk. 'Shothole' in the leaves is another form. If twigs look like they have been scorched with the blossom on then you have cherry blossom wilt. Otherwise, the fairly self-descriptive silverleaf. Cherries don't like being cut hard, and will generally bleed and develop canker, but they can be pruned when in growth but before August - light cuts being much better. Alec

The value of walnut is heavily dependent on the heartwood/sapwood ratio and the colour. You won't really know about this, or any rot up the middle or from old branch wounds, until the tree is down. Keep the main trunk full length - if it's too heavy to move it is better to chainsaw mill up the middle to make it moveable than to cut it in half lengthways. I wouldn't cut it where you've marked the 2.8m but rather go all the way up to the main fork as it will give more options - maybe longer boards and better figuring. Make the felling cut absolutely as low as possible. Once it's down, pictures of the ends and an assessment of length/rot damage will give a more accurate idea on value. As a rough guide, if you find it is clean and of good colour with only a narrow sapwood band, you might get £6-8/Hoppus foot at the top end, or sell it easily at £4/Hoppus foot. It will be in the region of 50 Hoppus feet, approximately £200-400 range. Your location will count against you a bit as the cost of collection would also include a ferry. Hope this helps. Alec

I like the price for springs When I bought a significant number of bits, I found it cheaper to buy them from Germany - there's a seller on ebay.de who is also a dealer and will obtain and supply parts. Postage is reasonable but you have to need enough at once to make it worthwhile. Alec

Starter is still available as a whole unit. You will need to check whether you have the aluminium or the nylon starter cup though as the starter for the latter is different and nla - you can't just swap them over as they take different flywheels too. Not sure on the clutch springs - let me know if you get anywhere as I haven't sorted one yet for mine. Alec

Not quite sure on the age of that 090 - I vaguely recall it's stamped on somewhere (exhaust?) but I haven't looked. The bar is a 1970s Cannon with a roller nose (not sprocket). Yes it's around 9' overall - the van in the picture is actually Luke Quenby's - I drive a Volvo estate and even with the front seat wound flat it still isn't long enough to take the saw and bar together. Sorry - derailed the thread somewhat. 36" is the longest recommended bar for the 660 but a 42" works fine, especially for milling where it isn't running full length. The oiler runs out before the power. You can run 3/8" or .404" - it really doesn't make much difference to the saw kerf. Chainsawbars used to have them but Oregon stopped supplying so 36" is now the longest available from them. Alec

Are you insulting my bar-hood Jon? I'll have you know that's an 88in bar, not a mere 6ft I was going to take a photo like miker's avatar, but I reckon getting my wife to hoist the thing upright could be a bit of a challenge. Alec

You call that a bar? Now -that's- a bar!

Thanks, I'll give it a go Alec

Thanks Eddy - checked the poles, none of which have any signs on but several have BT carved in to them with what look like dates. I think that's clear enough. Alec

Worth trying to work out how much you have. Say 2 tons/tree if you are taking the wood? If so you will have a few hundred tons. Roughly 4 bulk loads to the hundred tons so it's probably worth asking the relevant carriers if they are buying in your area at the moment. Demand and price seem to be very patchy. The other option would be to stack it until next winter and use it as a mulch around the trees - no direct return but good for weed suppression, water retention and improving soil structure. Alec

I can offer you one in North Essex. If it helps, drop me a PM. Alec

I agree that piece is almost certainly just rested on friction pads, however if you really needed to fix it down there are some silicone adhesives which have a refractive index matched to glass which would do it. They would have enough give to cope with movement in the wood and would be pretty much invisible. We did some work a couple of years back for the new medieval gallery at the V&A which was installing some very large sheets of glass bonded to onyx and they had some failures due to local stress concentration in the fixings. The adhesive didn't fail and was to all intents and purposes invisible. Alec

How many days per week were you paying - was it a 5 or 6 day week and were there any days at college, if so did you pay them for these? This makes a big difference - our apprentices are on 5 day working weeks but spend two days a week at college. If we paid £30/day but only for the days on our site they would be earning £90/wk so working from your figures they would have £30/wk to live on after rent. Food would be £35 so they are already in debt before they start, let alone travel or clothing. At the other end of the scale, fully paid at 6 days per week would be £180 which you could cover all costs with comfortably. What do you reckon their travel costs would be - could you rent in a location where you could walk to your yard and to college, or would you expect them to get themselves to the job site - if so what range (could they cycle it or would a car be essential?) Where we are there is a site bus to and from the nearest large town, which is also where the college is. It costs a pound each way (3days/wk) so travel is around £300/yr. If you had to get the public bus the same distance it would be £3.50 each way so travel would be around £1000/yr. The difference between these obviously makes a huge difference when you are talking about living near the margins. FWIW, we put our successful apprentices onto proper employment contract rates if they pass their second year. They can then reasonably expect promotion after around another 3yrs if they do a good job, which will give them a wage of around £100/day. They know this up front, which is a good incentive to stay. By this stage, they earn this for us anyway and employing someone equivalent would cost the same so it's reasonable. We look on it more that they have been trained to fit what we want than that they owe us. We have quite a good retention rate overall. Alec

This is true, to a point, but where does he live and how much does it cost him (inc. food etc)? If you go down the academic route there are student loans - yes you have to pay them back but at least they cover the short-term living costs. If you aren't subsidised by your parents, you don't have the luxury of doing something you enjoy - sometimes you just have to do what pays the bills. You can't just not eat or live anywhere for a few years A lot depends on how employers view apprenticeships - is it education or is it employment? There seems to be a prevailing view that it is education which the employer is providing and hence the apprentice 'owes them'. This is hardly likely to lead to a working environment which the apprentice wants to stay in - not surprising they move on. Employers then seem to feel this is somehow disloyal, but if it has been treated as training, why wouldn't they move at the end of the training period? Some simple calculations - £4/hr for 8hr days, 5days/wk = £160/wk = £8320 annual. Some current costs (derived from the students I employ): Round here, a basic single room in a shared house is £350/month = £4200 annual. Bills will be extra, usually around £50/month = £600 annual. Food can be done (just, but I challenge you to do it!) on £5/day = £1825 annual. So basic costs £6625 annual. This leaves £1625 annual for travel (you can only cut this to zero if you live in walking distance of both work and college), clothing, PPE etc and assumes you have absolutely zero social life. I lived like this for a year once when I was a student (figures were somewhat different in those days and I didn't have the option of either a grant or a student loan). Believe me, it is not healthy, either mentally or physically. My view is that if you want the best, you have to offer the most attractive package. If that means you are prepared to pay a reasonable wage and offer training on top then you can have the pick of the apprentices and they are likely to carry on to become a good employee. If you feel that they owe you so you can give them less, they treat it as a period of training and then move on. If you take a negative attitude towards them, either by keeping on about how much worse they are than you at the job, or focussing on their weaknesses rather than their strengths, or simply treating them as inferior and giving them only the worst of the jobs, they may take it as part of the role but will move on to something better the first chance they get. The above has been borne out by my own experience - I have taken on about 15 students and apprentices over the past 8yrs and employed six of them (didn't want to employ three, four others didn't want to be employed but delivered good service while they were with me, the other two I didn't have the need for at the end of their fixed term). I treat them as employees, whose contribution is as valuable as anyone else's, and pay them a good wage accordingly. I give them as much responsibility as I think they can handle given their experience and tend to push this early in their career. Only one has let me down and we had a polite but frank discussion which he found uncomfortable, and then he chose to move on. For me, treating people professionally and trying to understand what is likely to be both viable and motivational has got good results. Alec edit. I think Eddy_t has just expressed the same view but rather more succinctly!

Hmmm - doesn't look to be doing the normal run away and hide routine, more like full on going for you! Alec

Thanks all for the comments - I'll have to figure how to distinguish abc cables from BT but otherwise sounds like I should be fine - maintaining 2m wouldn't be a problem anyway. I should perhaps have made it clearer - at the moment there is no hedge or fence whatsoever - field is completely open to an A-road, which is just inviting nomadic types to drive straight on. I want to plant up a hedge, which will be laid in due course, but would like to plant it with some standards of my choice, specifically some disease resistant elm which I have been propagating for the purpose. No problem getting the height to be well clear of the lines and my grandchildren should have a really majestic view if it works. Alec

Agree entirely. Balsam is an annual with a very weak root system, so it's easy to pull. So long as it doesn't set seed, it is easily eradicated. The problem comes in natural areas which are not maintained. Rabbit is best stewed Alec