Pedroski

Oi, we shop at Lidl, and so do lots of my minty customers. They're minty because they shop at Lidl and not Wasteloads. Mind you, it's the most minty that generally want to knock money off and also get £35/day people in to do painting and sh..., stuff.

Wood, init? Looks much nicer than the placky ones.

Nice one! Pleased to hear all went well. I'm just going to turn the grill on now...

Naaaahhh, if anyone drives into that boulder then they're on the wrong side of the road so it serves them right

You must get insurance, and you've got to pay tax and NI. I hate being undercut by P*KI*S who can only afford to undercut by not paying their dues. Sure, tax and NI are a pain, but you might realise the value of it one day when you're in hospital being treated for free after felling a tree on yourself that you've charged a premium to fell. And you don't pay tax on the first part of your earnings anyway. If you make nothing, you pay nothing. You just need to make sure that your prices take into account the tax you will have to pay, and budget for it properly. And where's the sense in paying hundreds and hundreds for an ad in Yellow Pages, yet nothing on insurance?

Another BIG for the Samsung Solid phones. I had a Samsung Solid when they first came out and I never could break it. That is now used by my son. I then got the Samsung Solid Extreme at upgrade time when they first came out, and got one for wife as well. Mine is now with one of my daughters. And last upgrade time I got the Samsung Solid Immerse. They've all been fantastic, in rain, in snow, on beach, dropping all over the place. The Samsung Solid Immerse is better than the Extreme that it replaces, largely because it has a bigger keypad and is dead easy to use with gloves on. My workmate often has to use my phone when he's done things like break screens, got phones wet or whatever. And he finds his new iPhone dead frustrating when he wants to dial numbers with gloves, in the wet and cold and muck. Another good thing about the Samsung Solid phones is that they're priced just right so you don't have to pay a penny toward them. The Solid Immerse is easy to set up for email, it's got built in GPS and compass as well.

Old thread, I know.... make sure the phone is "unlocked", that means it will work on any network.

Sometimes, I think you have to grin and bear it, or like it and lump it. We've had a quite a lot in landscaping - pricing up small jobs, even mowing ones, to find it's then done by a nephew or friend, or someone else they have in mind. It's annoying, but I don't think it's immoral.

Why do you need a spliced eye tail for French Prusik? The French Prusik (autoblock) I like for rapp back-up is done with a Prusik loop.

I'll check with the "boss" when he's back from hols next week and will let you know.

We use gloves like those Showa ones in SJH's post. My local hardware store does them cheap for me when I buy 20 pairs at a time (paid just under £2/pair), and they last well. Always have 2 or 3 pairs with me, and I wash them at home - straight in the machine with NO washing powder, then a tumble dry on low setting. The way to wreck them is to use washing powder and conditioner, and tumble drying on hot - it makes the coating go all sticky. They come up clean in the machine without powder. Get a couple of weeks of use out of each pair. Expensive gloves are just a waste. I used to go without gloves but started getting white-finger through strimming and hedgecutting. Decided it's stupid to store up problems for the future - don't like the thought of being a crippled old man!

Mine says P763 PLN. It's private. I was gonna flog it to Plan B for a few k!

Something like TEUFELBERGER Multi-Anchor? It's a rope with rings, and if you combine it with a loop then it can be used as a trunk anchor. But then, there's still rope-on-rope as you have a friction hitch for adjustment, and there's rope-on-rope due to stitched ends. Again, it's nowt that can't be done with a bit of rope and a krab or 8 etc for lowering the climber. How about a ratchet strap with an attachment point for figure 8 to hold and lock the climbing line? But then again, there's rope on rope when tying the hitch to lock the line through the 8. Unless you do away with the 8 and used a toothed cam device such as Petzl Traxion in its place. You can't release the Traxion under load, but if you need to lower the climber you can still do so by connecting in the fig 8 descender in the tail end of rope (provided you're keeping enough length to lower the climber), pulling the tail through the Traxion (the built in pulley helps here) to take the load off, then releasing the Traxion's toothed cam. You can then lower the climber on the 8.

What's wrong with rope on rope parts for an anchor, especially if using a separate bit of rope? 3 or more half hitches around the trunk, secured with a timber hitch looks sweet and also means the climber can be lowered safely if necessary. Or secure a figure 8 or other belay device to the tree with rope/webbing, route the climbing line correctly through the belay belay device and lock it off. Keep enough line on the ground and again you've got something where the climber can be lowered easily.

Agree. Accidents have happened in rock climbing through people clipping into the wrong line, or anchor points giving way, or not securing themselves properly, passing anchor points the wrong way, climbing too far above anchor points, having too much slack in the line, rapping off the end of a rope..... the list goes on. So while the equipment is massively strong enough, it's all useless if it's not used properly, and you should only have confidence in it if you know how to use it properly. Speaking of serious rot - the 120ft poplar we did the other day looked, from the ground, to be really strong with proper tough anchor points. The main crotch that the climber anchored close to, though, only had a few inches of good wood - approx 4 inches of healthy stuff, and 20+ inches of proper rot. Anchoring on the wrong side of that crotch and perhaps a few feet out could easily have brought it down in one!

Jeee, I bet that wound is smarting a bit! I hope all goes well in surgery and that there's no lasting damage. I kind of want to say that it could have been worse, but when it's bad it probably doesn't feel like it!

Also, even if you're planting individual bare root ones, it's still much easier to just dig a trench through with a rotovator rather than digging holes for each.

We've just done a load of hornbeam - came in troughs of 6 plants in a metre length trough. 11 troughs on a pallet, one extra squeezed on. Old hedge ripped out with a hand winch, went through with rotovator attachment on Stihl KM130 to dig out row and loosen soil. In with some compost, planted hedge, heeled in, cord either side to help support in wind (secured each end with post). All beautified. 12m of hedge, about 1.2 to 1.5m tall, was approx £300 incl delivery, trailer load compost approx £30 for a tonnes (didn't use that much but customer kept left overs for when we do next planting). The dead old privet we ripped out went to composting yard at cost of approx £20. Work charged at one day, and done in double quick time. Two of us finished about 3pm, including 3 or 4 tea breaks and an hour for lunch.

I meant bottom of page 2, not 3

I'm happy in trees with lots of branches, and going through with my Silkys (I'm not ticketed for chainsaw in trees). Lots of branches kind of make me feel cosy. Almost like they will all break my fall on the way down! But I'm also ok on rock with very little of anything to grab. At the moment, though, I've been looking at this great big tree in a wood near me that's now a pole with big stubs..... and I'm going to go an climb it. But because there'll be so little between me and the ground (plenty of air, that's all), I'm expecting a whole different sensation!

My lakeland cross jack mutt bumsurfs quite a lot. It's because he swallows so much stuffing from soft toys. It's right proper fun pulling wads of stuffing out his bum for him! Even pulled a balloon out the other day.

Thanks The thread is here TreeBuzz Board: choking carabiner and the krab through BOAB is detailed in SingleJack's post, toward bottom of first page.

Alpine butterfly good, but when you reach TIP and want to switch to DdRT or relocate TIP you've then got to pull climbing line all the way through the butterfly haven't you? Rather than just being able to unclip it from the climbing side?

Use it for an SRT ascent, then it's dead easy to switch to DdRT. Tie in, remove the krab and clip the bowline on a bight into your harness, coil up your retrieval line, attach split tail to the line you just climbed, and away you go. To descend, set the tie in point again using the bowline on a bight as shown, attach the retrieval line, rapp down the climbing on a fig 8 or whatever, and retrieve the line.

You probably already know this, but I saw this neat method over on TreeBuzz for choking a climbing line on a limb with a krab, that completely avoids the krab being cross loaded and is also easily retrievable provided you add a retrieving line to the krab or leave a proper long tail. I'm not sure if it's permitted to link to other forums..... if it is ok then I'll post a direct link to it. But in meantime, all it involves is tying a bowline on a bight (see Bowline on a Bight | How to Tie a Bowline on a Bight | Boating Knots ) having each loop of the bowline either side of the climbing line, and clipping a krab through it. Here are my pics. Not very good, but they show the idea. First picture is the bowline on a bight. Second with the loops clipped around climbing line with the krab. Third cinched against the limb (well, my arm, but never mind). Fourth with a retrieval line attached. Alternative retrieval would be using long tail on the climbing line. Another great thing about this is that once you reach the tie in point it's easy to release without having to pull the climbing line all the way through a running bowline, and so the line can easily be relocated. What you think?