Aicchalmers

I once had a 16" chinese chainsaw .. ran for a year with progressively more things going wrong with it .. mostly little things like the vibration mountings getting worn out .. then I was using it one day, got a bit of kickback and the chain brake handle just snapped clean off ... Needless to say I got a stihl after that

You think streaking on agar, isolating away from contaminants and then transferring to grain that's been pressure cooked @15psi for 90 minutes isn't good enough? When going from agar->dowel what was your technique? I'm experimenting with a few different methods, with the t. versicolor I'm just propagating it on cardboard and layering with dowels in non-sterile conditions a la paul stamets, it may not be the most reliable but will be interesting to give it a try with a small batch. The oysters on the other hand I have clean grain spawn nearing completion so was just going to pasteurise 6-7x the quantity of dowels and mix in clean conditions. I was under the impression that dowels are a lot less susceptible to contamination and once colonised should be fine, have you found otherwise? I guess it's just trying things out, at first just going to be making some few hundred grams - 1 kilo batches with different techniques.

Anybody else here into growing mushrooms as part of woodland management? I'm currently producing some p. ostreatus and t. versicolor grain spawn with the view to making dowel spawn.. 25kg sack of dowels just arrived! Peoples experience with log vs. woodchip culture? I've started off a few logs in my garden and as soon as I get more wood and the dowel spawn is ready going to get about half a ton dowelled and stacked up. I'd certainly be interested at some point though to start experimenting with woodchip beds. In about 4-5 weeks I should have a good supply of them for sale if anybody here might be interested

Right will give it a shot when I next can .. Is there any decent threads here explaining how to tune carburettors? I can basically understand them but still a bit unsure sometimes, with this I just put it to standard settings and it was within spec so I was happy.. It has the L/LA/H screws.

What would you recommend instead? I might as well splash out on a cheap compression tester- sure it'll come in useful .. but it cuts with plenty of power and idles fine it's just the mid range that it struggles with.

Was just making some 4" wide planks out of softwood

So I thought I had learned the golden rule: never lend your chainsaw to anybody! But I was involved in a project where we were doing some planking and thought 'well if it's all bolted into an alaskan mill theres not anything they can really **** up is there' WRONG! Got my saw back a couple days later 'uh it won't start' .. somebody had poured straight petrol into it :facepalm:.. But anyway, I took it all apart, unseized the piston and it was scored to all buggery, got a new piston and sanded off (!) the bits of aluminium stuck onto the cylinder wall. Got it all together again and it actually isn't too terrible compression on it, I don't have a tester at the moment but it has a fair bit of rebound. Since then I've used it a fair bit and it's had just about the same power as it did before but when accelerating from idle in the mid-low rpm range it really struggles even with no load, once it's up to speed it's fine and it idles fine. I've checked the rpm with a laser tach and it seems in spec. I'm thinking it's probably a crankcase air leak or could it just be really bad compression? Anybody have any tips on using liquid gasket properly? N.B it's a stihl MS171; was just making some wee planks with it.

I've never seen them for sale new before, thanks. I do prefer the 4 teeth then raker pattern seems to cut a lot better .. I did see some danish army ones for sale on ebay a while back for £45.

Anybody around here who uses these too? I've got a few around, will try and get some pictures up soon.. My friend found 5 of them for £2 at an auction a few weeks ago, one of them was brand new but just a bit rusty, polished the rust off, gave it a quick sharpen and it went through an 80cm fallen tree in about 5 minutes I really like using them especially for felling as you can hear what's going on above your head and there is certainly something rythmically soothing about spending an hour with a file redoing all the teeth. I'm also looking for pin gauges/spiders/ any other maintenance tools for them. I had a really heartbreaking one somebody gave to me a few weeks ago too .. he had filed off the rakers to half the height 'they were just getting in the way and it's just to clear out the cut ..' :facepalm: .. sharpened it up perfectly but all I got out was powdery sawdust.. Certainly they're not much of a competition with chainsaws for commercial work but properly sharpened they can do a lot more than most people expect of them.