David Goss

ok my bad sorry... All cherry pruning should be carried out in the growing season. This reduces the risk of infection by the spores of silver leaf disease which are most widespread in winter. Seems i got mixed up with pruning the saplings which is done in late winter/ early spring sorry

haha theres a contradiction... i am off to look it up

Late winter methinks Dean

The last few posts is where we are understanding the problem.... Topping a tree just for a view is not a good reason especially when you have an ugly stump in your view of what used to have a nice tree in front of it. When topping work is carried out it is NOT normally managed afterwards. The fact of the matter is that it needs to be managed for the rest of the trees life. This is something i will explain to the customer, you will pay for the initial topping and then 2 years or whenever down the line you will have to pay for it again and again and again... Is this actually what the customer wants? i doubt it. Once this is explained its usually the mind changing factor, along with the if you dont keep doing it then it may become dangerous and when your grandkids are swinging on one of the dodgey branches it may come off in their hands and down they come with a dull thud! Pollarding is done to keep trees small but is done constantly, a one off topping is just bad practice no matter how you look at it. The only difference being if the tree is in a woodland setting where there is not public danger, fracture pruning etc is done to create habitat blah blah blah... Understanding of when and where to do all these different methods is what is needed. The work in front of the carpet place was bad practice its that simple, those trees were not grown to be pollards otherwise they left it far too late to start and imo will not be managed. Anyway the beers are kicking in now so i better stop

Right with you there stevie... imagine the pain in the butt while looking for it, when you only have 1 of them and all you can find is the other universal types that work on all other saws except your new shiny 201 with an extra slack chain that you cant tighten cos you cant find the right combi key!

thats just sooooo wrong!! but funny

:lol:

A slap on the wrists probably... oh no wait you cant even do that to them anymore so i guess erm nothing...

right on

Stress??? whats stress? sounds like something for other people to worry about

wow that looks nasty, i hope nobody gets hurt...

They will have to prise it out of my still dead hands then:sneaky2: I may even buy a couple more before they get taken off the shelves just to make sure i stihl have a working one

All understandable stuff guys and its a difficult situation i know. We all just have to do what we each think is best. I have seen many topped trees break out large sections of crown in high winds because there just wasnt enough holding wood left but i have also seen many healthy trees fail from included bark compression forks and the like. Part of our job is also VTA and catching these problems before they do damage. As for topping i prefer not to be the one inflicting the damage so i say no and will continue to do so. I hope we can all have some kind of policed standard in the future that we can all refer to the customer to show that we are doing what is best. Here in Edinburgh there is lots of conservation areas in the city and you need permission from the council to do most jobs. Unfortunately there is always people who dont care and do the jobs they want with or without the permission so you see a lot of bad work around still. Anyway i think i have flogged this thread to death so most important of all stay safe and remember zamo or whatever he was called from grange hill.... just say no maybe i am showing my age now....

Just get whats comfy for you. Obviously price varies and the most expensive ones are usually the best ones unfortunately. If you think you are going to be climbing a lot then its worth splashing out the cash for a decent pair seeing as you wear them every day.

Finally some sense! This is what i mean, If you refuse to do the bad jobs then you earn the respect you deserve. When you have the respect then you get the calls and the money comes in regardless. If you just do what your told by people who dont know what they are talking about then you dont earn the respect and stay at the bottom struggling. Good man Dean keep it up

So no sticking together as a team and trying to do the right thing? lets just give up and do what money tells us..... great stuff guys makes you proud doesnt it. Oh well back to being a robot then, no point trying to change things i guess

Thats exactly where the problem lies. I am not even nearly rich enough to say no but i would rather say no and walk away knowing i did the right thing. I am old enough now to realise that my principles are more important to me than money.

Great Job. Its good to see work done with such respect

Personally when a customer asks me to do a bad job i explain to them why its not done that way, i can give enough reasons why its better to do it the way i see the job that i can usually change the customers mind. If you go to the doctor do you tell him how you should be treated for your pains or do you do what the professional says? Our job is not only going out hacking down trees and running off with the cash. We study and train to do this job correctly, so why does so many of us give in to what the customer wants, even when the customer is so obviously wrong? I have refused to do jobs because the customer wanted a butchery job instead of an arborists job, some of these i have lost and some have phoned me up later saying ok maybe you were right can you do it your way. The customer has more respect for you and the job done is a better advertisement for your business. Dont get me wrong i have also done this kind of work years ago and so have all of us at one point or another but dont you think we should maybe take a stand? I think we should demand a bit more respect from customers and ourselves alike. Am i the only one that thinks like this?

Not that i like pollarding or fracture pruning but that job is nothing short of butchery! Wouldn't it have been much more pleasing to the eye to just do a crown lift and/or thinning/reduction? this way the trees would still have their shape and you could still see the carpet place behind them. I understand why we dont do naming and shaming here but workers like this should imo be named and shamed to at least get them to think about getting the proper qualifications and learn how to do the job in the correct manner. Remember these people are getting our work which we have paid lots of good money to learn how to do properly, thats what gets me angry about this kind of thing.

My last 020 died many years ago and it rocked as well. Maybe this new 201 will be ok who knows. I do know that i wont be looking to husky for a top handled saw cos i never liked them at all. Good ground saws but for climbing they lost me completely after the first terrible effort and i never trusted them again:thumbdown:

good advice there, just dont let them sell you all the expensive stuff (not that our equipment is ever cheap) try before you buy and find a system that works well for you. Good luck:thumbup1:

yea thats true but i did save myself with "that remains to be seen" so i am not giving up hope completely. I just love my 200

well it certainly looks a bit easier to pull through branches when hauling it up. I personally dont see the point in changing or replacing something that already works well. I think stihl may have shot themselves in the foot with this one but that remains to be seen. I will be stocking up on the good old 200 if they are replacing it, to me its the best and in no need of changing.