Billhook

I feel your pain , being only three years behind you! Mainly through natural idleness if there is an easier way to do something, I will find it. Lifting heavy logs is the worst thing a we grow older. As I have mentioned elsewhere I have an old Palax Combi with manual feed via rollers and a multi toothed circular saw followed by an automatic Splitter and elevator into one ton boxes I built a simple log feed table with just a slope and a manual stop for the logs. I load about twenty at a time with the Teleporter. The main idea is to pick up usually wind blown ash in the woods and cut into 8 foot lengths held by a muck grab . The Teleporter does all the lifting if I have done it correctly. As you point out not all wood is straight and indeed many Ash limbs are far too bent to go through a mechanically fed processor. I find it easy to slide or roll the logs down the table to a set of rollers and it is easy again to slide sideways into the Palax If the wood is bent it is again easy to hold it in the right position to present it to the saw. Sliding is a hundred times easier than lifting! Sometimes I bypass the splitting knife with smaller branches and I can cut half a dozen lengths without operating the Splitter ram which speeds up the process no end. I also find that I need a moderate amount of activity in these colder periods and I would not like to be standing or sitting in front of a load of hygraulic controls which in fact give me less control and keep me cold. Sliding activity is perfect for this I have never so far caught any clothing in the rollers but am careful how I dress for processing

I think that there should be a crackdown on lap steel guitars

I am in Finland at the moment in a glass igloo looking at the Northern Lights. The hotel which owns the igloo has very friendly staff especially since I told them that I have owned a Palax Combi 600 since 1996 and also Fiskars X27 and other Fiskars tools, all of which have stood up to my abuse. So I am hero at the bar tonight! The Palax I bought second hand from Jas Wilson for £2500. It was pto but I fitted a three phase motor which still allowed the pto to work without changing anything. i also fitted a drawbar and removable wheels making it a very versatile machine only one tiny fault in twenty two years that was repaired in ten minutes. The time and work this machine has saved me is tremendous. i operate it on my own with a Teleporter and home made log deck. I do not think an extra man would make a great difference to output The wood all goes into old one ton potato boxes i have rarely used the pto as it is so quiet with the 3 phase i would not entertain a chainsaw to cut the lengths as a good multitooth tungsten tip circular blade really is like a knife through butter and you can "feel" the blade through the wood. Having said that I am only using timber from our own woods. So knowing not much about the other machines my only advice is that Palax build good machines and that it is always a balance of the capital cost versus the throughput. So while 15 or 20 k may buy a superior machine, how long will it take to make your money back?

Father Christmas bought me a jar of Porter Foods Marrons Glaces. Nectar! Also bought me a couple of Gilets Jaunes which is meant for my bike but will be there ready for the revolution!

And a Happy and Safe Christmas to you and your family!

Just looked at the inoice from Welmac and it was the Remet RP150

I think that is the one I have but without the conveyor. Did they not used to be called "Remec" or something similar?

So what model is your PTO one? I initially bought an Urban SM70 with a petrol Briggs engine and it seemed to work well at a nice steady speed. The blades were such that they did not grab the branches and I never had any problem just holding onto the branch to stop it going in. That Urban model was nicked by some thieving scumbags and I bought the TR110 pto version which was quite a bit cheaper, but it took slightly bigger diameter branches and definitely had a bit more grunt. I think that it would take 4 inch diameter but it would break the shearpin on the harder woods with a knot. And those big diameter branches really flipped up and down hard and you needed to stand clear otherwise a long branch might flip up and hit your arm or face. I found that the pto model ran a lot faster than I wanted it to at 540 rpm so that is why it works so well at tickover revs., it also is quite easy to stop a branch being pulled through A nice even feed and no strain on anything and no broken shearpins.

I have my pto branch logger fitted to the little grey Fergie with a petrol engine. The stop switch is wired to the ignition which stops the engine immediately but I run the Fergie at low revs so that it will stall the engine before it breaks the shear pin. The main difference between these branch loggers and the chipper/shredders is that if you hold on to the material you can easily stop it going through so that you are very unlikely to be dragged into the machine if you have a bit of clothing which becomes tangled with the branch, unlike the feed system on the chippers.

Ok, I admit as usual I am not sure of what I am talking about at these sort of ranges. You should be able to nail a pheasant at 50 yards with a 12 bore and No 6 shot, maybe 60 yards. It would probably need to be a head shot. I have always been told that a BB shot pellet can kill at twice that distance, hence the use of heavier shot for high flying geese. My Browning would let off 280 BB pellets in a matter of seconds with the 5 shots. Peter Scott did much work with a surgeon at Boston hospital rocket netting flocks of geese and bringing them in to the hospital for XRays to assess the amount of lead shot in them. I think they found some fantastic figure like 80% of them were carrying lead shot because they had been shot at out of range on both sides of the Atlantic. I would think that tethering a helium balloon on 300 foot of string would not tell you much about the ability of lead shot to bring a drone down as the skin of a balloon is easily punctured. If you kept letting out the line you would eventually find the point at which the shot loses all its energy and starts to return to earth, but that would take a lot of time and balloons. Best Idea is to use a helium balloon to lift a hard plastic model plane to various heights and assess the damage, making sure the balloon is obviously out of range.

Try barking like a dog before you shoot it to see if it is frightened

Browning needs a firearm certificate. As far as I can tell a .303 bullet weighs about 12 grams and is pointed. If not fired vertically it can maintain a high velocity and kill at great range. A BB shot weighs about 0.4 gram and is round. The chances of being hurt by that falling under gravity I would have thought was fairly unlikely. I would guess that a 12 bore with full choke and BB shot would bring a drone down from 300 feet maybe more. Anyone have one for me to test?

Not with my five shot Browning semi-auto which also has full choke!

A massive fine followed by a long prison sentence at the moment!

I am sure BB shot would work well. Dangerous at 450 yards according to this https://news.gov.mb.ca/news/archives/1959/10/1959-10-02-shotguns_can_kill_at_a_long_range.pdf It says no.4 shot is dangerous at about 300 yards. It says no.4 will go through a telephone directory at 40 yards whereas BB would probably put the telephone directory through the fence behind! But you would need a calm person only shooting vertically to be safe and the pellets falling from above would be unlikely to hurt anyone.

Was this Difflock last Christmas??

Your head must be quite sore by now Timon and the ceiling will need redecorating!

Sounds like too much Southern Comfort!

Mind you don't bash your head on the ceiling when you are headbashing to that one Timon!

Good choice! My wife and I are off to see the elusive Northern Lights hopefully at the New Year in Lapland. Might pick up some firewood tips from Father Christmas at the same time!

I do not think I would like to be wielding that bloody great thing all day long. The X27 is the best compromise of light weight and effectiveness.

We have a Clearview Vision 500 (about 6kw)in the office and an Aarrow Stratford boiler stove (4.5kw room,24kw boiler) for the house and fill them with tubular shaped scuttles rather than the tapering coal scuttles which tend to bung. It is quite easy to swing a load in from the side. I have adapted a wheelie bin with a hinged flap at the bottom which makes the scuttle easy to fill.