Pedroski

Here ya go lads.... the link to the V.T.I.O. web site: Victorian Tree Industry Organisation And the link to their SRT article: http://vtio.org.au/Content/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Single-Rope-Technique-i.pdf

It'll be a Mick who ran a farm shop and used to be in the SAS. Must have done a roaring trade to be able to afford Aspen, and what waste for the murderer to use it to start the fire - unbelievable!

"So the petrol that was used to start the fire?" "It was an unusual alkylate type that matched the petrol found in Mick's chainsaw" A scriptwriter whose done some research???

All good, but now you open up another can of worms....... I've seen the "recommend" thing go badly wrong in the past, in several ways. The guy I work with has actually recommended a plumbing firm, who are well known to us, to a customer. The customer was expecting x amount of work over a couple of weeks at a cost of Y pounds. The recommended plumbing firm then managed to stay in there for something like 12 weeks "finding" all sorts of other "urgent" problems and successfully got our long standing customer to pay up tens of thousands of pounds. This then left us in an awkward situation with out customer, who proceeded to please poverty and we lost out on a load of work. I'm half surprised there was no issue of professional negligence cropping up, what with the bloke I work with making the recommendation as a paid service provider! Another way things go wrong with, say, recommending an arb firm and putting the customer in direct contact with them, is that it's all too easy to lose future landscaping work to the arb firm. I'm VERY wary now of this, and will never put customer and another firm in direct contact with each other.

This is the thing, though. The only requirement, according to my insurance schedule, for someone to be a bona fide sub-contractor is that they hold their own PL insurance. There is no requirement on my insurance schedule for that sub-contractor to have an aerial rescue qualified groundy, and the whole aerial rescue has nothing to do with public liability, surely? This is something that someone should have from the point of view of H&S, and certainly doesn't determine whether or not they are a bona fide sub-contractor. There have been interesting legal cases in the past where one can be proven to be 'competent' and therefore qualified for the job, without legally requiring any piece of paper to prove that competence.

I'm not sure if it's a LOLER issue with buiders merchants - I think the main issue is the fact that the bulk bags generally get ripped when ballast, sand etc, is being shovelled out of them, making them pretty worthless.

I can't help thinking of Caddyshack

Right, I have PL and EL insurance for landscaping. It doesn't cover me for tree felling/lopping (as they eloquently put it in the policy schedule). It DOES cover me for sub-contracting out to a bona fide sub-contractor. I am asked to do some big trees. I get a bona-fide sub-contractor to do it (with PL for tree work). He tells me his price for the work. I write out a quote for my customer factoring in the cost of the sub-contractor. The sub-contractor has all of his own gear. He arrives in his own vehicle. He decides how the job is going to be done. He is not paying me anything, I'm not employed by him, but I am clearing the drop zone. I even make him tea and send stuff up to him on his rope. To the customer, the sub-contractor's job is to deal with the tree using his expertise. I'm just there to clear the ground and make sure the sub-contractor gets paid, make sure the sub-contractor completes the work and to invoice the customer. So, just because the sub-contractor is working on the tree, and I'm just clearing mess and doing the other stuff my customer wants, how does that make one an employee of the other? As far as I can see, we are two different entities doing two different jobs. Sure, I'm in the drop zone at times, but only when the sub-contractor says it's all clear and is moving around the tree while I do my job for the customer of keeping the site tidy.

I've just done that, and am now really hacked off. The doc showed me the list of charges here and I wrote him a cheque for £120, now find Drivers Medicals would have done it for £51! Winkers!

It would be a lot of holidays, but instead I've got 487 MS261s here in the living room, and the wife is going mental!

We need to be pro-active, and go out planting, and encouraging people to plant....

Here's my lad today, testing out new harness etc.....

Yep, the pivoting head IS a good idea, and I hadn't thought about just pulling the tape when cutting close in. But despite taking care of it, and never dropping it out of a tree, the blade pivot still gave up after a few months of use. Mind you, work mate is a heavy handed burger! I guess for what we were using it for, it just wasn't up to the job. I might, though, give one another go.

I can't believe you did this this morning. I saw the thread title, then immediately went and bought up all the 261s I could find on ebay hoping to swap them for holidays, now I'm lumbered!

I've been going it alone on the tree front while landscaping as well. I've made, in 4 days, more PROFIT than I earn wages for a whole month of landscaping. That's profit AFTER paying climbers and groundies. Must be doing something right, for once in my life I think everyone needs to drive prices up a bit, and drop the number of hours/days worked. That way there'll be more to go round.

We've just binned one of those Fiskars POS things! They don't have enough leverage to cut much, the ergonomics of pulling the knob along the pole is all wrong if you're cutting something fairly close (you end up having to push the knob backwards behind you), for thicker stuff you have to get the butt of the pole in your stomach and pull toward that, the way the cutting blade is pivoted is crap and the plastic there snapped. We repaired it with an ally plate which has done for a while, but the final straw was the chain at the end and the internal pull tape giving up the ghost. Rubbish - a solution to a problem that is just too complicated. The normal pole pruners with the pulley end and cord coming from that are much stronger and more reliable. As for the cord getting caught up, simple solution is to just hold the cord and rotate the pruner a few times (so the cord is 3 or 4 times wrapped around the pole) and move around with it like that, then just unwrap the cord when cutting. Simple.

That'll do nicely.

Beware the incorrectly tied barrel/scaffold knot: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:Jt6V3XS8MJsJ:irata.org/safety_notices/Safety%2520Bulletin%25208%2520%2520Dangerous%2520knot.pdf+&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgcpCWzLbDnF3ec3QoKBfTu3h-V6c8jUbfnZFuwWzUan6ua2AQG2-Zisg35ewIlrwrvL4afN6nUIR5esiYYlS-nM2c8l9MVG-MKBVXJSznQFv_BTBAhocqPrMfZoeR69arw18hv&sig=AHIEtbT-N3QN4dT0OZ_iuT3MEGZV5DytVQ

Anchor hitch (with additional half hitch back up), because it cinches onto the krab which prevents the krab rotating and cross loading, it's compact, it's easy to tie.

I have read other reviews saying that Felcos ain't what they used to be. Whether this is correct or not, I dunno. But it does seem typical of what is happening to previously good stuff.

I chose the Ames because I MUCH prefer them to the Felcos, nowt to do with times being hard - the low price is a bonus. I'm a landscaper, day in day out, spent a few years with Felcos, and honestly think they're over-rated. The ergonomics and cutting power of the Ames ones are spot on. I didn't think I'd like them when my work mate first got me a pair, but that changed the moment I started using them.

The Felcos don't cut any better than the Ames. The Ames are nicer to handle, the loop handle on the ones we use makes them REALLY easy to handle when doing lots and lots of pruning - less prone to dropping them. The Felco ones are too expensive to replace. The Ames ones.... they seem to last forever, and don't seem to get lost. Certainly wouldn't go back. For the price, buy yourself a pair and see what you think.

Ames True Temper - been using secateurs on a daily pro basis for a couple of decades, and honestly, the ones I use every day now are the Ames ones. They're only a few quid so I didn't really expect them to do well, but they do more than well. I won't touch Felco again.

I use Loctite on mine. I found once that the sprocket came loose when I'd let off power and dropped the chain onto a lump of wood at the same time. Probably the screw wasn't tight enough, but I removed it, applied Loctite and retightened to be on the safe side.

Thanks Ashtree. I will persevere with it - as you rightly say, no way of knowing what's around the corner. Still not heard anything yet though. Definitely no need to feel a bit of a fraud! I think there are lots of us on here who are not arborists, but still work in the industry. I'm not an arborist but am a long time experienced landscaper, and get arborists in for jobs, and I've realised the importance of the knowledge that is here, and how it helps me. I also enjoy recreational climbing, and this forum has therefore become a brilliant resource. For the future though, I have other things up my sleeve.....