maybelateron

I would love to be passing this motor stuck in mud or snow and offer to pull it out with the PTO winch on the front of my 1975 SWB Series 3 Land Rover.??

I've not purchased anything from Northern Arb, but do use Saturn Knives, no complaints there, although turnaround time has varied a lot. They find time to ring me every so often to promote their services - perhaps the time could be spent better on other things? On a different note, I use Gustharts for supplies and cannot fault their speed of delivery. I order on the net, and on the rare occasion I need to check something by phone they are helpful every time. They even put Stihl orange sweeties in most parcels. One time when crunching on one I broke the side of one of my teeth (that had previously been filled a lot). Ouch. Stihl use them for everything.

I agree with you entirely on that point, only an idiot would disagree. You can still choose to work dangerously or sensibly. Not sure why I am big boy?

Think you missed the point here. 1) I didn't have to go to hospital for anything (you used past tense "chose") 2) There is some degree of choice in that people can choose to work sensibly and safely, or take stupid risks. It also makes the point to newbies, or idiots (not saying newbies are idiots!)

The rule of 4 H's, something I tell any newbies working with us: You have 4 choices of destination at the end of the day's work: 1) Home 2) Hospital 3) Heaven 4) Hell It makes the point.

Winches can be wonderful at times......

I sometimes say we learn from our mistakes, make no mistakes and don't learn a thing.

Some years ago we we reducing a long wide conifer hedge using our mewp. I had looked along the far side of the hedge, ie the side that was not facing the customers premises, and all looked ok. There was a BT cable within the hedge, just to make the job nicer. What I could not see when I did my recce was two large wooden poles within the hedge with a large oil filled container between them. So imagine my horror as I was cutting stems to suddenly come face to face with a transformer within the hedge, presumably 32KV. There were no power lines in the air to it, both the feed and exit wires came up from the ground, who knows why. Scary or what?

It can only be a matter of time until I'm submitting RAMS for a commercial job and I get told that I need EFAW certificate. Just as well the lad who works for me and my two main subbies have it!

Spent all my weekends and school holiday working on the dairy farm over the road in the 70's, loved every minute of the hard work. First experience of chainsaw use was being shown how to stand on the tractor bonnet and cut back badly overgrown hawthorn hedge around the field. No PPE, no chain brake, no mobile phone, 1/4 mile from nearest house, farmer left me to crack on alone after showing me how. SORRY, DID YOU SAY HEALTH and SAFETY?! Lol Parents felt I should go to university, dad was a surgeon in NHS, older sister gone to medical school, I ended up doing the same. Coped OK with it, but always aware I took the more practical/pragmatic approach to things compared to many of my peers. Went into full time general practice for 14 years after a total of 9 years training. Late 2000/early 2001 had to take time out to sort out my head/depression. In the very lucky position of my wife being part time GP, so we could make changes and allow me to change to part time GP and set up my small business doing groundcare and tree work. Did part time GP for 12 years while also doing trees, at age 53 decided to quit the desk and go full time on trees etc. Regarding the medical job I feel I need to make it clear that I feel we were well paid for what we did and to my last day I still loved doing what I actually trained to do - dealing with patients, even the few difficult ones. It was the "constant change" of moving goalposts pointlessly that made me quit. It is the same for teachers, police, and many others. I realise that I was in the lucky position for 12 years of having a stable good income to live on while investing in kit etc. Even with this fortunate start in the trade it is difficult enough to invest in really decent kit. For three years we also had a grounds maintenance contract for a nearby up market housing estate, and this allowed me to invest further in kit. Having managed this I eventually packed in this contract, so we could focus more on trees. I am now 59, well past my prime, but still climbing and loving every minute of it.

I find that when the cabin fever starts kicking it is is time to get outside again. I can reverse the fever by going out in the yard (which I am lucky enough to have at home) and doing some logging or machinery maintenance. Short half day outside and then I can cope for a bit longer on the festive season. When we do start up again for reaI I have never know any of my workers say anything but "it's good to be back at work". I think this is just another indicator that many people working in the arb sector enjoy their work to the extent that they accept/tolerate the relatively low wages it pays. We all know that arb work is not generally reimbursed either for employees or business owners at the rate it should be, considering the skill and dangers involved, the sheer hard work, and for businesses the investment in kit. End of rant on behalf of all of us!

Forgot to say that my insurance gives £5M PL and £10M EL. It also gives a some legal fees cover in the event of claim having to be defended etc.

I have a guy who has set up recently on his own, and he subs for us a bit. He was told by his insurers that he would have to have EL as well as PL, in fact he says they declined to provide only PL. I guess although it will cost you more, you will have the comfort of knowing it is one less loop hole insurers can use to avoid paying up if a subbie working for you gets hurt. Regarding cost, I am with Trust Insurance, who specialise in arb insurance. Premiums are priced on the basis of turnover and what types of arb work you do. I am a very small firm, turnover varying between 80-120K per annum in recent years, and my combined cost for PL and EL has been around £950-1000 for several years.

Forgot to add that with the ZZ or the ART positioner (I guess same for various other mechanical devices) the problem of resin on the rope when working on Conifers etc is nothing like as bad as with rope hitches which refuse to run smoothly once they have sap/resin on them.

Definitely go the ZZ route. I used Blakes hitch for years and was slow to change to slack tender pulley. Then moved on to ZZ, would never go back now. I also love the ART positioner with swivel for my strop. Any kit like this can can help me keep climbing at 58 is a good thing!

I have a MS 160T and it is great for pruning/light dismantles. I have also briefly used a Stihl rear handle leccy saw for a few cuts on the ground. Impressed with that too. Opted for the bigger battery capacity in my 160T and a spare. Surprisingly good run time in fact. Take two fully charged batteries out to work and you wont need the charger for the climbing saw in the day. When lithium ion saws can match the 261 or 460 that will be a real game changer.

What's the condition of the joint between the co-dominant stems? Any included bark?

My 2014 Iveco daily single cab tipper with large toolbox is about 2800kg with tools on but chipbox empty. Within weeks of buying it from new I had helper coil springs fitted on top of the standard leaf springs. Did the same with my 04 LDV convoy. With the chip box full the back end still sits nice and high. Also I have a fairly high top tailboard which makes it less obvious how much is in the box.

For years now I have only ever used bio oil, not experienced any problems with it. I was using Buxtons own brand which was good, then tried 20L of Oregon Bio as cheaper. Lots of gloop in the bottom of the container, so never used it again, went back to Buxtons brand. For the last couple of years I have been using Stihl's own brand of bio, more expensive but I trust Stihl's judgement. Also bio oil pours much better in cold weather than mineral oil.

I have found (as have two others who work with me) that Buckingham steel irons are much less prone to gaffing out than the Gecko carbon ones I have eventually changes to. This applies to both my own Gecko carbon ones, and a pair a lad working for me had. I have found I just have to make a more conscious effort to drive the gaffs in, but Iu would not dream of going back to the Buckingham ones, as the carbon ones with velcro straps top and bottom are so much more comfortable and stay in place. No more of the steel shank trying to move in relation to your calf.

Cowboys need to be reported in my view. The more of them that can be put out of work the better.

I have no experience of a drying floor, other than leaving logs out on the concrete in my yard in this summer's heatwave period. They seasoned very quickly doing this. I am sure that whatever method you use to dry/season your logs they should be split first. Generally I find logs split more easily when still fresh, and this is using a decent hydraulic splitter.

1: A weekend when our three grown up children all come back to see us 2: Watching something good on the box with my wife, with the stove burning logs 3: A good days teamwork on an interesting job for a decent customer who makes drinks

Goes with the territory of over ?? years

Yep, heard it all before. You can spot the newbie stove owner the moment they ring up looking for logs. They have read the Bear Grills manual of life in the urban jungle and spout such 130110X. Bloke rang me once and the call was literally like this, word for word: Hello have you got any kiln dried Oak logs? No. Oh, well have you got any kiln dried Ash? No. Ok, bye. I just wasn't in the mood to try to educate someone about the reality of logs that day, so he got monosyllabic answers. The other temptation I get is to say: Ah, well you see, you need to go to a specialist "I only sell Cherry and Beech logs" supplier. Such ignorami!