Billhook

I need figures, I am a hopeless trivial information junkie. Weight of Tigercat, engine type, power and torque, drive, lifting capacity and why you chose it over other machines!

Thanks for the replies Treemover and Goaty. I am encouraged by your success rate Treemover and as I have the Vermeer sitting here and the Oaks sitting there, I will take a little more time and care. A bit earlier in the dormant season as Goaty says, but there is not much I can do about the tap root now. They are moved within the hour from one place to the other. I like the idea of putting the four spades in a year before lifting to give the tree half a chance to overcome the shock of the full move, but I worry about damaging all the good work with the second lift. I have some old 220 gallon grapefruit containers which I could set down by each tree and have a hose pipe with some 1/8" holes drilled in to trickle a good supply of water. I am prepared to put the extra effort in as they are stand alone parkland trees and I have selected the best looking from the plantation.

Apparently you cannot call a spade a spade if it is on a slope.

What is that machine Stephen (full spec please) and when was it built? I wouldn't argue with it!

I suspect the tap root as being the cause. Do you prune the trees back a bit to help in the first year?

Planted some oaks about ten years ago which have grown well and are about three inches diameter chest high. They are too close together and rather than thin by cutting them down, I thought I would transplant last January into some open parkland in good medium loam soil. Vermeer 44" planter seemed to do a good job but I appreciate that these were probably tap root oaks and might suffer accordingly. I thought that there was enough good rootball and that their new home was in a better piece of ground to make up the difference. They were well tethered with four posts and well watered throughout the dry spells. They came into leaf but really only half the leaf area that the original ones had. They struggled on through the year but now I see all four of the test trees have died. I moved a paper bark maple of the same size at the same time and it has never looked back. It was in the shade of another tree and now out in the open it has really done well. Are oaks of this size and root growth a hopeless candidate for transplanting because of the tap root, or should I have another go by putting the spade in a year before to sever the roots and let them bush out a bit before lifting the following year? Any more tips would be welcome as it seems such a waste to cut down these fine trees just to give their neighbours some air.

Release a few lions as the human population is also out of control

When I was young and vain I wore the old hard type contact lenses which on a couple of occasions gave me the same symptoms as Stubby. I suppose that I had worn them for too long, they had scratched the cornea as well as straining the eye. In the workshop I always thought that I was safe as I wore ordinary glasses when grinding metal however I soon learned that bits find their way past. I think I was told in the contact lens period that you can put your finger on your eyeball without pain, but it is the eyelid where all the nerves are, but I may be corrected on that one. Anyway you cannot feel the little missiles from a grinder when they hit your eye most of the time so I religiously wear goggles now. After sawing certain woods such as yew and elm you need to take extra care but today I just cut up a hedge thick with elder and ivy and my eyes are hurting. There is a lot of fine dust with ivy but it could be that either elder or ivy sawdust have something toxic in them. As for a relief I always carry a little Optrex dispenser but I like some of the other suggestions on this thread.

Dnepr 650 imported by Nevals of Hornsea and converted to LH side car. Ukrainians copied it from BMW left behind after the war, hence the horizontal twin, and made it from what seems to be recycled tank metal! The local bike shop had an old boy with a dry sense of humour. Took it for a brake test on the MOT came back and asked me "'Ow many 'osses is it" I said "It says it has 35 hp in the book" He says " Well I reckon about 30 of them are dead mate!" Numberplate probably worth more than the bike, Airedale centre of attention when parked in the high street and the whole outfit seems to be the complete antidote to road rage. For those of you who have not ridden a combination, first ride you will find (with a left hand sidecar) right hand bends "Interesting" in that you tend to understeer into the hedge, and left hand bends are more interesting as the side car becomes airborne very easily complete with panic stricken passenger!

Matbro has a good pick up hitch so I would not need a hydraulic leg just a skid under the drawbar. Would only need a stabiliser leg for the crane.

Bought one of these for £16.10 free post. Seems to work fine, clear plastic but no place to put tools. However I find I actually use it more often than the Stihl one as it is cheap to replace when I run over it or drop a tree on it! FUEL / OIL CAN FOR ALL CHAINSAW USERS - COMBI CONTAINER HOLDS OIL / 2 STROKE | eBay If some of these cans are costing £67 you can buy a lot of fuel/chains for the £50 difference!

Strange how people love to" hug " certain animals, such as Badgers, rabbits and squirrels but hardly anybody cares how you kill a rat. I had a problem in the farm grain store where I stored the tractors. Rats had made a nest in the cabs and eaten the wiring. I decided to buy an electric fencer unit and i rigged it up to the tractors, looping a wire between them and hoping that there was enough insulation in the tyres. Where should I connect the earth? the grain store has a metal grid grain pit and a whole series of metal elevators, ducts and metal grids over the suspended grain floor. There are a thousand possible nooks and crannies to hang out in. I decided to earth it to the grain pit grid, turned it on and the most amazing thing happened. There was a whole load of squealing from all over the store followed by a mass exodus of rats. It seems as though the whole floor was electrified, maybe through the steel strengthening in the concrete. One rat jumped out of a tractor and squealed every time it touched the floor and made its exit after a series of jumps!. I only received a slight tingle touching the tractor (with rubber boots on)so rats must be highly sensitive to electricity, especially since they have four bare feet on the ground. I have not had a problem since. I bought another unit to protect six bags of seed corn in a metal Ivor Williams trailer. In the past a mouse or rat had usually found its way in to make a hole in the bags but not any more.

Logbaron I would have thought that the TW would be a handful in the woods with long wheelbase, poor turning circle and weighing a couple of tons more than the County, but perhaps good for hauling a big load on the track. What model and year is your County? Mine is 1968. Hand cutter, I assume I would have to take a larger pipe direct from the Matbro spool block and a separate return to the tank, but I probably would only use the crane trailer with the 8210, which will have enough hydraulic power. I could load the trailer more easily with the Matbro than the crane, it would just make a mess if the ground is wet or if it is a tight spot, so I could use the 8210 plus crane trailer in that case. No one has answered my question about is it an undesirable proposition from the classic tractor angle to split the tractor and crane and restore the crane trailer and 1124 separately

I would restore the 1124 without a cab. I love fresh air! The crane bolts do not line up but I do not think making up a new plate would be too hard. I would use it with our Ford 8210 which has both the hydraulics and the PUH. I suppose I could use it with the Matbro which also has rear hydraulics and PUH. That actually would be a good combination as the Matbro could load the heavier logs onto the trailer and still carry a two ton bundle in the muck grab.

Too many nails in the yard! I have had this County 1124 and trailer for some years now and it did a fair bit of work. But now I find that I do most of the wood collecting with the Matbro teleporter which presents the timber ready to be processed on the Palax on a modified muck grab which makes unloading easy. The Matbro is far stronger and can lift large logs. The County is very tired, still runs, breathes a bit hard (like me) the Wartsila crane still works from the pump on the front of the crank, but there are no tractor hydraulics or linkage. I used to drive County tractors on the land and loved them all. 1124s, 1164s, 1174s, 1184s and 1454. So I quite fancy taking the crane off this one and restoring the 1124 to its original specification. I could use it for rolling and harrowing. I could then put the crane on the trailer and was thinking maybe making a large log splitter to cope with very large logs to go on the deck of the trailer. The crane could load it. Anyone done this? I would actually use both the County and the trailer if they were restored like this, but I do not think I would use the setup as it is again for Matbro reasons. What should I do? Is this a sacrilegious thing to do and should I restore it as it is?

Bow - Tie Locking Cotters - BOW - ** from Specialty Fasteners & Components Devon

Thought it was only weird Tory MPs that did the orange/jockstrap polishing thing!

Any bee keepers here with an opinion?

A bit more trawling shows that there is always another side........ [ame] [/ame]

I think I could easily become enthusiastic about bee keeping and have a few of these around if they do the job and are not too expensive. Beekeepers in Australia invent 'revolutionary' hive - Telegraph

You missed out seeing a farmer on a bike!

I think I do. Land ownership is really only a set of rights. We all dream of having our own plot with our own little castle and woodland. However ultimately it belongs to the Crown and there are all sorts of schemes that over rule those rights. Compulsory purchase for a railway/ motorway/ airport perhaps oil or mineral extraction, military needs and much more. This is apart from the whole host of regulations that come with land and home ownership. Back in the 1970s I could do nearly anything I wanted here to the house, land and woodland. Could have cut the trees and hedges down and taken the old house down and built a bungalow.(but I chose not to) Now we have been cleverly forced into an unwelcome farm benefit system purely to let the general public have cheap food so that they can become enormously fat and put a lot of pressure and cost on the NHS, but also to control the farming community. It has been very successful in both departments. The result is that I now have so many rules about everything that I think I have less rights than I would have as a tenant. I cannot cut down a branch from a tree bigger than my arm without permission due to preservation orders being slapped on in spite of the fact that it was my ancestors and myself who planted and cared for these trees. I cannot replace a bit of glass on a window in the old house without consulting the council glazing officer (really!) due to somebody listing the property. I cannot use a chainsaw myself without full safety gear and certificate on the farm, even though I do not employ anyone due to H & S laws and yet I could legally operate the same saw in the nude in my garden if I wanted to as it is not part of the business. There is an army of bureaucrats thinking up ways to stop me doing things (read "Parkinson's Law" by Cyril Northcote Parkinson about how bureaucracy multiplies itself. I cannot stop anyone from walking anywhere on the farm in practice and insurance and liabilties become more of a headache every year. The legal sword of Damocles hangs over all land owners. Shortly will not be able to have a pee behind a hedge without filling in a waste control form in triplicate! Then I hear quite correctly "Well Billhook what are you complaining about it is worth so much money" but in practice I could not sell as it is my life and living. What would I do with the money? Buy a yacht, fast car holidays? Fun for a short while but not very fulfilling in the long term or healthy or rewarding. Probably lose all the money with dodgy investments. No I would probably buy a farm and woodland with the money which brings me back to square one, just soldiering along trying to make ends meet in my own happy way.

Just thought I would exercise our old classic Land Rover today. Sandringham Sidney is a V8 petrol stage 1 six wheel drive made by Hotspur Cars of Sandringham. It was converted by a local to have a hydraulic tipping body and a basic but effective blacksmith built crane which I tested out today with a fairly hefty log. Sidney is quite good at carrying more than a couple of tons of logs out of the woods but leaving far less damage than the tractors/ forklifts. Also much narrower for sneaking in between trees. I love the sound of the V8 and all that power but I am conscious that every outing requires more fuel than my chainsaw would need for five years!

[ame] [/ame] Donovan from 1967 but the video doesn't look much like any Magpie I have seen. Perhaps it is a cousin from America.