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My early 090 AV. The more modern ones are in theory the same, but there's just something about the original red and cream paint job, the sound of it, and the sheer raw power when it's ripping with a long bar. Alec

Yes I work alone, but only for certain operations. I don't climb anyway but if I did I wouldn't do that alone. I prefer to have a second pair of eyes/hands when felling. I find people are curious and have a tendency to come and see what's going on. The second person's job is to spot them and tell them to go away so that I can focus my whole attention on the tree in hand. Felling in the woods there is a risk (near certainty) that eventually something will hang up. At this point you will need a winch. I prefer not to lug my large Tirfor into the woods on the offchance of hanging something that day. The second person's job would then become to stand near the hung tree and warn people off while I go and get the winch. You can see from above that the second person doesn't have to know or do anything. One way of working would be to go out felling at the weekend, then buck and extract on your own during the week. Alec

I have, thanks It means that there was an interview with Robert Hardy on Radio 4 this morning on Broadcasting House, on the subject of longbows. It was in connection with the permanent exhibition of the Mary Rose opening. Nothing particularly new, but quite interesting nonetheless. Alec

The bigger the diameter of the threaded part, the more the contact area, so the greater the overall strength. Hence why the steel helicoil is stronger than the original, even on the steel to ali face. This was done to my 064 - no problems (well, with that bit anyway). Alec

An 88 would have enough hp to handle a 12" cut, although it wouldn't be as fast as in that video. I'm on much safer ground here than with the racksaws being discussed earlier in the week - we have a sawbench with a 24" blade running a 10" cut off a 5hp Lister B at 650rpm and it does it easily enough. If it could handle a 10" or 12" cut it would do just about anything you ever needed as a finished size. Be interesting to see more information on them. Alec

As per Spud. Re. Rowena's website - erm, yes, well, not much to say about it. However, ring them up and you will get one of the most helpful people imaginable. Get the make and model of the carb first, from the saw not the manual as there could be several options. Their kits are genuine, not pattern, however they come in Tillotson/Walbro/Zama packets rather than a Stihl packet and as such cost a lot less. Impulse line is ordered by the metre - a metre will do everything you will ever need. Fuel line is sometimes by the metre, sometimes per saw. Looking at the saw without doing any dismantling you can see the fuel line coming out of the tank and disappearing into the innards. When you've taken the aluminium air intake plate off you will see where it plugs onto the carb. The impulse line comes from the crank case, from the other side of the carb near where the crankshaft would be, loops round over the top of the choke rod and in to the visible side of the carb. You might as well renew them both while the thing is apart for the price of them. If they're old they're likely to be perished and a hole in either can cause air leaks, resulting in the saw running lean which risks seizure. Alec Fuel filter is the one in the tank pickup. Only costs pence.

At least it looks like the problem is identified - I have a reason for knowing this one... On the carb and fuel system - yes it's sensible. I would equip myself with three carb kits from Rowena, a length of impulse line and fuel hose from L&S and some replacement fuel filters. This lot should cost under £50 for all three saws with a bit of luck. I would then set about the first saw - ideally with a jam jar of white spirit, a paintbrush and an airline to hand. I would at first be staggered by the amount of crud you find when you lift the flat aluminium plate off the top of the carb, then start blowing it out with the airline, painting the stubborn bits with white spirit and letting it soak in to shift it. The carb on these is really easy to take off, take apart, clean and put back together if you follow the manual. You need a few small spanners, screwdrivers etc but nothing complex. While the carb is off you can get a really good view down onto the top of the piston, which lets you see if it looks reasonably healthy. It's easier to clean the carb with an ultrasonic bath - even a cheap one. Reassembly is easy, if a little fiddly on the screw on the fuel tank side of the air intake plate. You do have to jiggle the throttle as you're putting the air intake plate back on as it has a tendency to trap the throttle linkage the wrong side, which is irritating as then you have to slacken everything back off to get it to work properly. Before running hard, in an ideal world I would go for a pressure and vacuum test, followed by tach tuning, but to be honest I've never had any problems by tuning to factory settings, tweaking down the idle so the chain doesn't spin and away you go. Alec

I concur with the above, however other things to note on the second one. The thing that feels like compression kicking back and trying to take your fingers off sometimes when starting isn't. It's something to do with the way the ignition module is configured on older saws (ask Spud for technical details!) edit: Spud has just provided technical details! Anyway, it means you can't take it as a sign of good compression. On the saw that feels seized - check that all the screws that hold the fuel tank and starter housing are present and tight. When they work loose, the whole thing tilts up a little when you pull the cord and it jams the starter. Alec

You can make big stuff lay, but you will need to control it down, maybe with a winch. The standard cut is more like your second one, using a deep back cut, low down, and then 'sculpting' out from above with a downward cut, trying to leave a thin strip on the front face. If you want to do it all with a chainsaw, aim for the starting cut to start about 3-4 times the diameter above the crosscut. The remaining front strip should be about half an inch thick or so, although you may need to experiment with this as I haven't tried it on willow. It really doesn't look like enough to support the tree, but it does! I have managed to lay stuff up to about 6" thick like this on my own without a winch, using a handsaw and a hatchet but it gets a bit precarious at the end trying to hold it up. Much easier with a winch! Alec

I had the same standard reply as others, but then I got in pretty early. I suspect their subsequent lack of response may be due to their inability to handle the volume of traffic, which may perhaps not be a bad thing in its own right.... Alec

Today I have also been busy. I have also spent about half an hour reading Arbtalk. This would have got me as far as my local dealer (not back again) and it wouldn't have done me much good, as arriving at 6.30pm I would have found them shut. Even if they had not been shut they would not have had the parts I needed in stock. My online dealer however still has his website operational, the parts in stock, and I could place an order and be confident of it sitting in my letterbox by the time I got home tomorrow. Alec

3m is 10' in length. If the mid-diameter is 60cm, that's 2', so a radius of 1'. Area is pi * radius squared, so 3.14 square feet. Volume is 31 cubic feet. Alternatively for Hoppus feet: Mid-girth is pi * diameter, so 75" Mid-quarter girth is 19" Mid-quarter girth squared is 361 square ins /144 = 2.5 square ft * length = 25 Hoppus feet. They're a bit on the small side for ideal, and if some aren't that straight I would be expecting around £3/Hoppus, i.e. around £75/log. If you are being offered £6/Hoppus, which it sounds like, I would jump at it. Alec

Ah, the noble art of skip-diving. I learned from my Dad, who was a master. I think it's best not to reveal just how much I have salvaged over the years from various skips, suffice it to say that my old boat took a ton of scrap steel ballast per inch of draft, and we needed to get it 20" down.... Alec

There was a fairly long piece on the PM programme on Radio 4 this evening, at around 17.45. Lots of concern over the source, much of it coming from logging of the hardwood swamp forests in the southern states. Alec

On here, Arbtrader. On other sites - try chainsawcollectors.se Alec

Yes, it would be the cheapest option - stick a roller or sprocket-nosed bar on the Sperber mill. However these mills are pretty heavy and they're slow to adjust, so if I had the money I would go with the Alaskan as well, just aim to make it do something 'different' so either go large to maximise capacity, perhaps buying the upright extensions too, or small and easily managed with the best possible surface finish. Once you've lugged one by hand about half a mile into a wood, small and light is definitely good. I'd agree with your assessment on the 051 - should be ideally matched to a 24" mill or would handle a 30" (I've run 28" width cuts with an 044, but this is really not something I want to repeat). It would just about handle the 36" but would be painfully slow. Alec

With what you currently have I would buy a 36" or 48" Alaskan and a long roller or sprocket nosed bar. The 48" will do almost anything you will ever find but is a bit more of a pain to transport while the 36" will do 90% of what you find and is a bit less unwieldy. The 46" Sugihara bar would be a good choice, or the 41" Cannon. Others are cheaper but flex a bit more. Try chainsawbars.co.uk for options. One of your 076 power heads will run any of the above singlehanded, which is the big plus, although you will need either the aux oiler or frequent rests with liberal use of the manual oiler if you use the bigger ones. You could use a hard nose bar but it will be noticeably slower. I wouldn't think around using the 066 - you'll find it painfully slow after trying the 076, although if you put a 25" or 28" bar on it then it will give a good finish on smaller stuff. Alec

This isn't scientific but Dad used to run a 24" blade on a 6hp Lister and it didn't struggle. I reckon 12hp and up would be OK on a stationary engine - more like 18-20 if you want it to cut full width flat out without struggling. Also important to get your pulley ratios right on the input/output to keep the tip speed right on the saw teeth. If you haven't got the calcs for this I can dig them out. Flat belt btw can be had from your local fire station when they're changing the hoses.... Alec

Another one off the bench. 066 had lost power and was running badly. Then it would only start on choke, at which point it ran on full choke but wouldn't run at all if knocked off choke. I assumed carb or impulse. Pulled the muffler to check - not a mark on the piston. Before ripping the carb apart I took a look at the plug, which looked rather eroded. New plug in, now running fine without even tweaking the carb, so I assume the plug was the problem and on we go. This is good as it should have some serious work to do in mid-July. Choices as to where next - the 051 with the handle to sort out, the completely dismantled 076 to try and get clean (struggling even with an airline) before reassembly or the saw with the suspect bent crank....

My previous and current 090 use(d) Aspen. If you've just put a new carb kit on, expect no problems - might need a slight tweak for optimum tuning but I tend to set the top end revs a bit low anyway and I've had no trouble with idling. Some of the components in modern petrol cause the rubber to swell. Once you switch to Aspen the rubber can 'dry out' and become stiff, in which case the diaphragm may not work so well and you may get air leaks. I haven't had this though. If it happens, stick a carb kit on and carry on. It won't do it again as the Aspen won't swell it. No need to clean out tanks (it's not like using bio-oil) - just stick Aspen in at the end of a tankful and go from there. You may notice that after a few tankfuls the exhaust becomes very clear of visible fume, this is normal and a GOOD THING! Alec

Sadly not. Big saws - 0.9l tanks on most of mine. About 20mins, which with a good set-up should open up around 30-50sq.ft of surface area, depending on species, how long it's been down etc. This is my thinking too. I reckon I get through about 10l in an average full day's chainsaw milling. That's about 6ml of benzene alone that's in the atmosphere with standard fuel. I won't breath all that in, but it will end up somewhere. By my reckoning, standard petrol plus good 2-stroke oil is about £15 for 10l. Aspen will cost me about £35 for the same. This is not significant relative to the value of timber milled in the day if it's my own, or can be accounted for in the day-rate, or is even worth it just for the extra hour or two when I get home and am able to carry on and unload and put away tools/wood etc, rather than lying around feeling ill. This is irrespective of any long-term effects. Alec

Aspen is an alkylate petrol, available as a pre-mixed 2 stroke fuel or as 4-stroke. It has far fewer of the unpleasant and downright unhealthy additives present in standard pump fuel. In a 4-stroke engine, combustion is essentially complete, however in a 2-stroke engine some of the fuel comes out of the exhaust unburnt, associated with using the fuel as the lubricant rather than having a separate oil system. That means you're breathing in the additives, not just nominally carbon dioxide and water as from a car exhaust. There are several unpleasant things to be breathing in, the one which I'm most interested in being benzene as it is significantly carcinogenic. It's added to pump fuel at about 2%, so about 0.6% is present in the exhaust vapour. In a day of milling I reckon I would breath in enough to be worried about. Aspen is more expensive than standard pump fuel - definitely. It's about £17.50 for 5l round my way. However, even if that adds about £20 to the fuel costs in a day of milling the fact that I don't feel ill afterwards, and am less likely to be seriously ill in the future, makes it worth it for me. A convenient side benefit is that it doesn't go stale like standard petrol, so you don't have to throw away the remains of a can, or even drain the tank on the saw. Alec

Are you using Aspen for milling? I do now, as I found it made an enormous difference to how I felt afterwards. Alec

Not overpriced - the powerheads look really clean and to have had little use so would make £300-£350 each. The mill with what's probably a 50" double ended bar is a good £200 worth in its own right and that would be a bargain. If it doesn't break the £900 mark then you would be hard pressed to buy the equivalent for less. Note, you can definitely buy 076 powerheads for less, but they won't be as tidy or they will need some work before they are in good working order, or you will have been very lucky! Only comment I would make on the mill design is that, unlike the Alaskan or the Stihl mills, this one runs on rollers. The disadvantage is that this design tends to roll up over the sawdust, making the cut rather uneven in thickness. The Alaskan and Stihl mills scrape the sawdust off which tends to work better. Alec

I'll happily give it a go, but it will have to wait until I have replaced my brushcutter, which was one of the things that was stolen last December.... Alec