Tom87

I had serious problems with a 57 plate ranger, 1st and 5th would constantly kick out of gear. I took the transmission out and had it rebuilt for just over £700. The guy that rebuilt it said that particular model (i think 2005-11) are renowned for gearbox issues.

I thought lime was a hardwood?

James, I honestly think the website is perfect. Nice and simple, the pictures present your product in a very clean and clear fashion. Nice and tidy stacking too! I would perhaps state the approximate volume of your bags. i.e is it a 0.75 m3 load or is is a 1.2 m3 load. Nice bass pro hat too, best shop in the world!

I forwarded your number onto a guy last week Wyn, he wants the machine for a week at least.

PM'd you

It would make complete sense going VAT registered, you get your 20% off your raw stock and only have to charge 5% on your end product. If you were having to charge 20% on the end product then it would be a different story. Plus you can get your 20% back on expenses like fuel and machinery etc.

I would suggest getting yourself a reliable but cheap log splitter to keep your costs down but maintain a steady flow of stock and keep it dead simple, contact tree surgeons and try to get hold of arb arisings. The second option would be to go the whole nine yards, get yourself a quality processor and buy in a few hundred tonnes of cordwood in one hit but that's going to dent your finances very hard. If you don't have a large customer base already it will take you a good few winters to build that base up and match the amount of stock you need to push compared to the number of clients. I will hold my hand up and openly admit that I live on a farm and have plenty of space plus access to a telehandler 24/7 so I am extremely lucky. Without those luxuries I think if I had to pay ground rent or have to buy a telehandler/forklift, i'd rather do something else especially knowing the amount of work that goes into the end product then the burdon of relying on good weather to get people using up your stock, which is obviously completely out of your control.

I've burned a good amount bone dry and it was great, burns very fast but roared and kicked out heat.

I can't see that working effectively on the rear linkage, do you have any pictures of it in action? Much like John, I use a potatoe box rotator. I only use the full steel crates, not the the wooden pallet based versions. Strapping the crate to the rotator will reduce the pressure on the bottom frame area as you turn the crate. I have had the frame section seperate on two occassions as I was not using a strap.

Was about to say they look like MCA bags. I have put a full ibc level filled bounced load into one and still comes up so short. Those bags probably hold something more like 1.4 cubic meters

Amen.

Hi Philip I bought a load from mca kingstone, I think around 100 or so. I stopped pushing smaller dumpys last year as the cubes far more common. Let me know if you're interested they're really good quality. They hold approx 0.6 of a cube PM if interested

I had a 240 volt kindlet, great machine although it did slightly lack power when you get into slightly knotty stuff. You may want to consider the posch machine which is a bit more price wise. It cuts 8'' kindling but I believe you can buy an ajustment plate to cut 6'', you can also alter the stroke to cut logs (I think this can be done on the kindlet too?). The posch seems more set up for tackling round timber, my brother runs two posch machines flat out every day and he loves them. Then again I thought the kindlet was great. I suppose you best bet would be to go and give it a try yourself or ask fuelwood if there is a customer near by who can do you a demo.

Aldi are currently selling plastic bags of kiln dried kindling for £1.99, about the cheapest i've ever seen. The same sized CPL product is £7.75 per bag in a nearby BP garage.

What about car boot sales. What's the surrounding area like and are you located on or near a busy road? If so get a sign up, big but legal obviously or someone will take it down. Give it two weeks notice and work out what you need to charge. Same with logs, get a sign up! If you've got timber down log it up and flog it, you should be able to shift more than £100 worth a week and you're not paying for timber to come in which is a bonus. There's a bloke not far from me who I wholesale too, he was in a similar position a few years ago and his self esteem was as low as a snakes belly. I gave him a decent wholesale price and it ticks him over and I'm earning a bit too. That being said, he still needs to be articulate when it comes to bringing money home, diversify and try anything. Go and cut some swedish candles, if you've got a spare half hour chop some kindling and bag it up to sell with your logs.