gdh

1 hour ago, Brushcutter said:

Seem to be between 50 and 80.for what is available at the moment. Biomass boom and supply I'm betting supply issues.

 

Expect another 20 to 30 depending on the crane now.

I'm with you now. There's two different versions of the 15inch. The more expensive one has a conveyor infeed and strengthening to be fed more safely with a crane although I think the main drum is the same on both models.

16 hours ago, GarethM said:

60k ex vat for a used heizo tho 

That's with a crane I assume? Decent used one of ours should be 30-40. Less for 12inch.

The heizohack chippers don't need a lot of horse power. We run a 15inch chipper from our 140hp Deutz. I don't much contracting but we charge £100 an hour plus vat and travel. No crane on ours though.

We're between £85 and £97 a cube with our smallest load being 1.8 cube. Probably going to put it up £5 in the new year to cover the increased purchase costs. I like to sell at the same price we're buying in to avoid big price increases.

At the moment we have enough stored luckily (although we're paying a fortune) drying is our biggest issue.

What I've found with ash dieback is essentially it's accelerated death and rotting. They usually rot from the center out so dry faster at first because they can contain so much deadwood but after a certain point the rotten parts start absorbing water so there can be a big variation in one tree 

Talk to Clarkes, they do the fully automatic ones but they are a few thousand.

If you use an electric saw and splitter I can't see a problem. Avoid circular saws because the sound from them carries a long way.

The 550mk2 is a really good saw and an improvement on the mark 1 but it has gone up £150 in the last month.

4 hours ago, GarethM said:

How big are potato boxes, I've been using IBCs. Decent volume, easy to hand and customers can buy either full or half.

 

Drying is more about wind & air movement than just keeping the rain off, outdoors my average is 16%.

 

Worst mistakes I ever did in the beginning was using the barn, pointless waste of time and effort.

Standard boxes are 1.7-1.8cube depending how much you fill them.

We use potato boxes as they're bigger and safer to stack. We kiln dry so I can't compare to outside but it dries fine in them, we just make sure to test the center of the box.

Old boxes are cheap enough and you can repair them easily but they're about £100 new 

I did the same while making ours, I think we just played around with it for ages but you could just put a square on it and make it straight both ways then hopefully just use the other side to perfect it.

For what it's worth I rarely adjust it again between blades and to check I just spin it a few times then run my fingers round to make sure all the blade is flush with the back of the wheel. Torque isn't that important either. Just reasonably tight by hand as if you're doing a lock nut. We have the standard 130.

Is it only when the wind is one direction? That could help work out where it's coming from.

Only thing I can think of is if wind is getting better slates and roof felt somewhere, we had that once.

I can't think of anything on a livestock farm that would run constantly like that.

I've tried loads of different stuff but always end up with the chainsaw in a vice and a file guide. 5 strokes one way and 4 the other. I rarely touch the depth guages because we're always on firewood.

Having said that, after sharpening thousands of chains the novelties worn off and I have a fully automatic sharpener on order so fingers crossed that goes well.

We have been using a ryetec 1.2m 40ton splitter for the really big stuff and stumping the rest to drop through a 12 way splitter but it's a lot of manual labour and the metre lengths don't make the tidiest firewood. 

We're in the process of upgrading to a 3m ryetec splitter to hopefully just quarter the oversize and put it through like normal logs. Also looked at cone splitters but they take time and do a messier job.

26 minutes ago, s o c said:

Great pictures of carving, amazing skill and well done.

but any photos of big toys ???

Everything's getting delayed at the moment. Some machinery is 12-18months wait. With saws I've found it's worth visiting/calling a few local dealers to see if they have any on the shelf, even if it comes without a bar.

If you're already vat registered it should be a simple question. In an average year do you pay or reclaim more?

If you're paying and not likely to go over the threshold (85k?) then there's no advantage to being registered 

Just now, Steve Bullman said:

Not quite accurate. There’s no requirement to submit all invoices and bills physically. You should have them in the event of a vat investigation though

Sorry, I meant an online copy of physical bills. I put a reference number on them then make a duplicate on Xero for the vat workings.

That's right, if you're a reasonable sized firewood business it's worth going Vat registered because most quarters you'll get to reclaim more than you pay.

After making tax digital came in a few years ago you have to submit all invoices and bills (they can be a copy of paper ones) online every quarter to do the return.

We use rotatech chains and usually Oregon bars. I'm experimenting with a tajfun bar but so far that's the best value and performance.

With a 24inch bar I average 30cube to a sharpened chain and 500+ to a bar.

It's easier to chip fresh definitely, I've seen big biomass chippers struggle with older ash but they'll still chip it and are designed to so I wouldn't worry.

All I would add is that most chippers maximum diameter is for softwood. For hardwood you only want to go up to 80% of the size.

I don't know if you have any existing tools but Milwaukee just bought out a dual battery one. With the cost of batteries it's worth considering if you'll buy more tools from the same brand in the future.

I would go battery now but I have been impressed with our petrol mitox which was cheaper, more powerful and a longer warranty that the husqvarna we also looked at.

We use a box rotator to to empty our potato boxes. That has a fork to the side and on top so the box can't fall.

They're very quick and useful but on smaller machines weigh a lot and push the load out so you need about 2 ton lift for potato boxes like we use.

We bought ours second hand 10 years ago but I think they're 2-4k now.

Logs will dry well in this weather but unlike kiln drying you can't rely on it. If you're selling small amounts or have unlimited space under cover you can air dry but even then a wet year and some delayed cutting can soon mean you're not ready for the winter.

Kiln drying is just a different method that means you can cut through the winter and adapt to demand as orders come in.

44 minutes ago, scbk said:

 

I know vallorbe make good kit, but I wonder if there's much difference between it and a chinese one

 

Vallorbe Bar Rail Dresser

SKYLANDEQUIPMENT.COM

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Vallorbe from Switzerland produce the best equipment when it comes to sharpening your chainsaw chain. This tool allows...

 

 

Guide de chaîne de tronçonneuse universel, barre de Rail de commode outils de réparation pour l'amélioration du jardin | AliExpress

WWW.ALIEXPRESS.COM

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Achetez malin, vivez mieux! Aliexpress.com

 

I doubt it to be honest, the file will be good quality but it's just a cheap bit of plastic to hold it at a right angle. Probably all made in the same place...