maybelateron

New one looks way too bulky, I'll stick with my old one for drt, and VT+rope wrench and micro pulley for the rare occasion I use SRT.

I always pay anyone who is doing a few days trial work. To do otherwise is unethical in my view. Flip side is if someone is useless/idle on day one, pay them for that day and say goodbye.

I am in Stoke on Trent. If we have a decent sized takedown that will produce good free fall sections to film I will let you know.

I have never seen a tree looking happy to be covered in Ivy. Sure, Ivy is not parasitic, but it doesn't exactly sit benignly in the tree doing nothing. It grows ruthlessly, adds weight and wind drag, and deprives leaves within the crown of light.

One thing that seems crazy these days is people who are told there credit rating is low, when the reason for this is they have not been borrowing money, or using a credit card. Our three grown up children got wise to this and made sure they had enough use of credit card (but paying it off in full each month) to help there ratings when applying for their mortgages.

Agreed entirely re (honest) cash. The lad who works for me bought a sensible low mileage car about 3 years ago. Asking price from dealer was £10,400. By the time he has finished paying for it over 5 years it will have cost him £15,000. When I started as a a tree surgeon in 2001 my first truck was a 1984 Renault Dodge 50 series bought for £400. I ran this for a bit then bought an LDV convoy brand new over 5 years. I ran this for 10 years and kept putting enough aside so that I had saved enough to buy my next truck (Iveco Daily) and have the body built a swell, without any finance costs. If you can, the only finance to run is a mortgage. I realise I am looking at it from the perspective of an individual, and a very small business. I guess it is a bit different for the big firms who lease their plant.

You know the area well for a man in Suffolk?

I did indeed escape from St Edwards when we gave up the grounds maintenance contract at St Edwards Park in 2016!

Wetley Rocks, about 3 miles from Kingsley. Happy to take a look at aforementioned tree. Don't tell them we call it Cheadle gloves when we pick up 2 lefts or rights off the truck floor.? www.mtagc.co.uk

Have you met my wife and sister? She's over there.

Two left handed gloves

Regarding the negative results from the research lab: When I was still working as a GP I learnt that often the lab would fail to grow a positive fungal culture when sent a sample of toe nail clippings, when the nails had a classical appearance of fungal infection. This is a common symptom from middle age onwards. We were advised that if it looked fungal then treat it as such even if lab result was negative. Does anyone know if there is a similar difficulty sometimes for testing trees samples for fungi? I have been observing a lovely large Atlantic Cedar over the last five years on a site we used to manage. It has been showing typical dieback compatible with Sirococcus, and keeps having a flush of new needles then dies back a bit again. It overhangs a road in the housing estate (in grounds of former county asylum, lots of lovely big mature trees), and is next to a bus stop, so risk assessment of fell vs wait and see is a bit interesting. The entire site is TPO'd and the local tree officer (who is great to work with, unlike the other councils I have to deal with) agreed it could be felled. The site management company asked us to take it down, then when two residents living opposite the tree kicked off big time management said leave it as it is. I gave up the grounds and tree maintenance on that site two years back, due to frustration on many counts, and the tree is still standing and dithering about live vs die. No doubt if it sheds a limb and there is injury or worse to anyone the residents who kicked off will be the first to point fingers, but not at themselves.

I have invested in a Li ion top handle chainsaw. This is great for light pruning, light dismantling, and also very good is sound sensitive situations, eh early morning start in residential areas. It is light and less tiring to use if you are like me, an older climber well past peak strength years. Once I am at a point where I need to be making mainly cuts into 6 inch or more diameter I get the petrol saw sent up to me. I also feel the electric top handle saw is a safer tool in the tree, as the chain spins much slower, so is less likely to do quite so much trauma if the event of mishap. No reason the get lax on safety though. We don't have a rear handle saw yet, but this will come I am sure, as I agree entirely with James905 comment about battery saw for a quick cut by the chipper. I can really see the power and versatility of battery saw increasing in the near future.

My flail is 5ft and has very heavy duty hammer flails. It was fine with the demand from the flail except in the heaviest of stuff, eg meadow left until grass 3ft tall. Then drop into crawler range rather than carry on in mid range of 3. One time a friend cut back some Hollies and left a pile of brash for me to pulverise. Max stem diameter was probably an inch, and it handled this easily. Don't forget you might need an overrun clutch on the pto shaft if the machine doesn't have one.

I have Kubota STV40 compact tractor with front loader. The bucket is great for moving logs, woodchip, and good sized bits of timber. I bought a cheap 3 point mounted jib crane 3 years ago for one job. The crane did not cost much, we took the tractor on the plant trailer to a job 20 miles away and used it to drag large 90 straight felled conifers to the chipper. I run the sawbench off the PTO, and use to run the splitter until I bought a new self powered one. For another job we used the tractor with the front loader and also transport box on the back to shuttle timber from a wood to the customer's yard. I have used it to help pull trees when straight felling. I have also used a heavy duty flail mower on it for site clearance. If I had a telehandler I could not do all of these jobs with it, and could not move it to the occasional job on a trailer behind Land Rover. I also used to have a well restored Fordson Power Major tractor with a bigger loader on it, but the Kubota is way more useful than this was, and is so manoeverable.

I only sell unseasoned logs these days, to the small number of well trained regulars who buy well in advance and season it themselves. This saves me cluttering my yard and barns up with logs while seasoning. Literally a couple of days before last Christmas a new customer rang, desperate for some seasoned logs. I knew I had more than enough of my own seasoned supply, so I loaded up the trailer and went to deliver them. At the time we still had snow lying on the side roads, so I had asked him if his road was clear, which he assured me it was. I turned into his side street (cul de sac) to find the road completely covered in packed snow/ice, with neighbours' cars parked on the roadside close to both sides of his drive. I did just manage to reverse the trailer onto his short drive, but this left my vehicle still on the road, at risk of a car coming down the hill and not being able to stop before running into it. Point of this story is guess what - he rang me at 4pm on the Saturday before this Christmas wanting a delivery of seasoned logs. No surprise here, I told him I only had unseasoned logs for sale, which was true. Why would I break into my own supply of seasoned logs for such a person?

I had a Jo Beau M300 for some years as a backup machine and for restricted access jobs. It was excellent, even better when I added the rotating discharge spout. Used to chip into a wheelie bin then take that to the vehicle. Amazing what awkward stuff eg rhodies you could push through it with a home made blunger stick. I only sold it due to not using it enough + raising funds for a tracked chipper.

Needs painting/ needs a lick of paint = might be stolen/don't get caught before it looks different

Agreed, I use Tachyon and really happy with it.

One of my principles I try to get across to newcomers I work with is that accidents are more likely or worse when you are being greedy, and by this I mean trying fell or lower too much timber with one cut. If in doubt take it in smaller pieces. Another phrase I learnt from an older tree surgeon is : "There be old tree surgeons and there be bold tree surgeons, but there be no old bold tree surgeons". Agreed, I hope the the guy does OK.

Fair comment, as long as the customer knows the score I guess.

I always make sure a customer is fully aware that anything other than very light reduction on Silver Birch usually results on rot setting in fairly quickly in the pruning cuts. That way they can't complain after the usual scenario of "I want you to take more off than that". Purely a personal view but I hate reducing Birches, I prefer to leave them alone, raise them, or fell them. That's not intended as a criticism of your planned work at all, just a recognition of how challenging it is. I'd love to see some pics of the result. Have fun.

Yeah but no but yeah: I largely feel I can tell where to make each cut either from the mewp or climbing, but sometimes a good groundie will spot things you simply can't gauge from the tree.

I never use use kindling to light our stoves or boiler. One wax firelighter under well seasoned logs never fails, especially with the pointy edge of a triangular log sitting in the flame.

Agreed entirely. I contacted HMRC re this issue on 2016 and they told me I could apply to be exempt from this CIS deduction of tax at their discretion. I applied and they approved me to be exempt, or "gross contractor" status. When I have submitted an invoice to a construction firm or similar since then I do as HMRC told me: Tell the client/main contractor that they need to contact HMRC to verify your status with respect to the CIS scheme, give them your name (Oh really?!), NI number and UTR (unique taxpayer reference). If they don't do this they are potentially in trouble with HMRC. In reality I only pursued this to make my accounting easier with my computer software. At the end of it all HMRC will be having the tax, but it just made my electronic book keeping easier by having invoices paid in full. If it helps any one I can post a copy of the letter I had back from HMRC in response to my query.