Haironyourchest

Nice vid by the way, I always thought it was a photo. I heard they also used a lot of native Americans from a certain tribe in the early days of skyscraper building as they apparently had a generic trait that gave them immunity to vertigo and fear of hight. Could be a myth though...

The men of our great grandfather's generation had way higher testosterone levels. Proven fact. Nobody knows why we don't - could be plastic bottles or soy.

HiI have a tirfor clone too, (0.8 ton) more than happy with it. For the fast, long pull it's king. More often though I'll use my chain lever puller, 0.75 ton, with upgraded 4 meter chain. The whole package it small and relatively light for nearly the same power as the tirfor, no need to worry about kinking the chain, or damaging the chain with abrasion. No fear of cable jaggers. It is slower though, and limited reach, but I pair it with a 30m dyneema winch rope and the 4m of travel the puller affords has never not been enough to pull a leaner over. I made my puller, dyneema rope, dyneema sling, chain choker, various shackles etc all fit in a metal box bolted to the floor of my van. This set-up is always with me, and has got me van out of the mud a few times. The puller was from William Hackett UK, they very affordable, but the extra long chain can be spendy., But it was special galvinized German chain. If you go for a generic 8mm chain China import, chain is cheap.

Lithium battery tech will take off in a few years, they've discovered a way to increase the number of charge cycles from 300ish to tens of thousands. The only thing limiting batteries right now is the life span, so that you have to replace them after five years or so. For folks who dont travel far from home, a battery vehicle would be ideal - cheap to run, quiet so you can hear your tunes better, reliable.

The equivalency to lorry drivers is not quite right IMO. The roads network is uniquely dangerous, accidents caused by hgvs have a very high chance of mass casualties. Its a risk factor many orders of magnitude greater than tree work, and rightly requires some governmental oversight, like licencing, tachometers etc. (That being said, lorry drivers are still poorly paid, for what they do - the licencing requirements benefit the public, not the truckers, and self employed truck drivers now have to pay to be retested every few years). Not so with tree work. The reason you don't get guys felling trees onto motorways on a regular basis is down to fear of liability, so the gov. Or landowners hire people who can demonstrate competence and carry insurance. This is a side effect of the free market - risk Vs reward. Licencing would not benefit people like me, because the market I work for - domestic, and private businesses - will only bare so much. Having a "licence" would not make our customers pay more. They will instead turn to "non union" guys - the gypsies. This would then require the state to chase the gypsies, which the state will not do, because they are too costly to prosecute. Or criminalise the customers for hiring gypsies. I don't want to live in a society like that. Next thing house painters will need licences. Window cleaners. Chimney sweeps.

Oak is notorious for warpadge, even factory made composite boards will warp when taken out of the plastic wrapper and exposed to different temp& humidity conditions. I milled some 2" thick boards similar to what you describe, havn't used them yet but was thinking rustic steps. For a bartop, I would cut an inch thicker than you need them, stack and let season, then mill again, at least on one face, to flatten out. Any cracks can be filled with clear epoxy and sanded before finishing, actually looks really cool. For a bar counter they will have to be pretty flat as wobbly pints will cause vexation.

A mechanical aid makes the whole process much more enjoyable.

Yes the top of the flu should be 2 feet higher than the ridge of the house roof I think, otherwise you can get wind Eddie's, downdraft, won't draw kind of problems, or smoke coming into upstairs windows.

Yes I realise that, we live in a free market economy after all, at least in UK & ROI. Actually I was going to edit that and soften it a bit but whatever. I do painting, gardening, building etc. Even bringing rubbish to the tip for people with my trailer, without holding a waste transport certificate!!! The horror...the reality is not everybody needs, or can afford, a hot-shot tree surgery company.

Thank's mapleacer - for just flushing a third of my livlihhod down the crapper, or making me a criminal for doing trees part time. Nice one.

Yeah, I wish to amend my position - just do it, daytime, chainsaw, tape&sign etc. In Eire we remove fallen trees on main roads every winter, forget waiting for the council, locals just get out and do it. And we take the wood as well. Self reliance keeps civilisation going, we are manly men not dependent children.

Just be discreet about it, handsawing instead of chainsaw, wait for darkness.

All the time for pottering about, but not for tree work. Only once in an emergency had to resort to a headlamp. That said there are some seriously powerful "floody" headlamps around now, miles ahead of last year's offerings.

Bought one yesterday, just started splitting with it this afternoon. Generic Chinese 9 ton vertical, 3kw with a 16 amp plug. So far it's been excellent, for the price of €580 with bolt on cross head and wide head. I had to remove one of the arms and Jerry rig it so it can be operated one handed as the idiot proof two handed operation is not sustainable. (This can be done non destructively) I plan on changing the fluid after a couple days use for quality stuff. My machine ran off a 13amp fused plug adapter and seemed fine, but I hear long term this can slightly undervolt the motor and cause damage, so I bypassed the fuse in the adapter plug and the heavy duty 30m extension cord, not proper I know but been monitoring the plug and not getting warm. I'm splitting laylandii rings, about 12 - 16" diameter and 8" thick, no issues. Nice and quiet, 110 kg so not too heavy to move around. I will have to put pneumatic wheels on it though, to raise the hight a bit, as the activation handle is a tad too low for me to be perfect (I'm 5'11").

Smarter not harder - yes indeed, I'll buy into that. Makes me scratch my head when older people than me hard-charge the task at hand. The worst culprits are people who don't usually work physically. These days I'll get the sack troll to move stuff that formerly I would have simply picked up. Something else that somes in very handy is a cheap cable winch - you know the pot metal €£$20-something jobs - was trying to park my trailer yesterday behind a bush, the ground was rough and I just couldn't drag it in there. In my twenties, I would have struggled with it "I wont be beaten by theis!!!" but dont have patience for that kind of carry on now. The wee winch would have made the whole thing easy and painless, but didnt have it on me....

Think it comes down to inboard or outboard clutch really. If you get the Stihl bar stuck in big wood, at least you can take the head off if you have to do something risky with a winch, or leave the job for another day. Can't do that with the 395. (I stand to be corrected if this is wrong?)

Do you have the smallest 25cc echo, compatible to the 150? If so, how do you rate it for vibration?

Old news now, but there was a comparable event some time back where they fished a fish out of a guy's throat. He'd been arsing about with the live fish for a photo and it got lodged in his throat - he nearly died. Ah jeez, just had to Google it...this carry on happens regularly in China, it's a folk remedy for constipation.

Jon, how do you manage your work position stability-wise? Seems the pivot point of the debate is one handing gives you a third point of contact - ie. your free hand, which increases safety. As I understand it, it's the cut&hold that's the problem, rather than one hand full reach perpendicular cut. Would you concur? I've done a straight stem takedown on spikes with my rear handle, no problem - would rather work with a rear handle in that situation. But still considering a battery top handle, so far have done everything else with the silky, but it's getting me down. I just can't see myself being happy with only my feet/shins for contact and stability. Maybe next time I'll try using the silky two handed for all cuts and see...

Could make a collar out of old chainsaw jacket sleeve or chap leg with a breakaway cotton seam to prevent strangling if cought. I suppose. Would be ok in cold weather. Thing I wonder is in these kickback to the neck events, has the chain stopped or not? It should, if the inertial break is working, and if so, is the penetration caused by the mass and speed of the stopped chain and bar alone? I wouldn't be surprised, the human neck is a pretty fragile thing. If that's the case then a long weave polyester or Kevlar pad probably wouldn't help much as the blunt trauma alone would be terrible. Maybe a slightly better chance, but probably not worth the trade off in heat and annoyance. What might help is nose guards for the saw, making the saw incapable of kickback, but at the cost of utility. For small diameter branches it might be acceptable though. Maybe use 2 saws, one ultralight protected for pruning, and another for bigger branches?

The legendary flying groundie - yet to be beaten!

It will split into two camps, one economically and culturally tied with the UK, USA and traditional western culture, the other more like a watered down Soviet Union. Germany has already more or less fallen - government confiscating private property to house illegal migrants in Hamburg, censorship of social media punishing citizens with massive fines for wrongthink etc. Sweden was lost years ago. Spain not looking so hot. Central Europe is standing it's ground, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Czech Rep, Slovakia. Italy will come round I hope. So there will be a "Free New Europe" accord and also whoever is left in the old EU, which by that time will be a miserable mess. But I could be wrong...

So, UK, Ireland, Denmark and Malta have voted to NOT join the EU army. Good.