Aunt Maud

Combined 35 years. Read the Petzl document, it tells you all you need to know about inspecting the Zigzag.

You all might want to read section 3 of the Petzl Zigzag technical notice. Available here. https://www.petzl.com/US/EN/Professional/Descenders/ZIGZAG#.Vtqkn0u0xlI 'Before each use Verify that the product has no cracks, deformation, marks, excessive wear, corrosion...'

Ex IRATA with 30 years of climbing experience including a spell in the oil industry in Bergen. 35 years in the construction industry working alongside heavy lifting. Brother runs a specialist piling outfit with plenty of heavy pulling and pushing involved. Yourself ?

Wow! If it was me, I'd take the climber at £120, as long as he's not just all bulsht and bravado, and stay on the ground for ever.

They may be happy until one falls apart and someone dies. In any other industry, a cracked piece of equipment is retired. It's strange that some tree climbers want to wait till it fails in a spectacular fashion before taking it seriously enough to stop using it.

It has failed already, that's why it has a crack in it.

This is our Birch coppice of 1 hectare which has been planted on an area where peat has been dug over hundreds of years. It makes for exciting felling as further in the area is covered by a raft of floating moss, so conditions have to be right to get in there otherwise swimming is a real possibility. I get a pocket money grant of £50.00 per year to keep it as a coppice, as it's a very rare form of forest management in Denmark. Most remaining coppices were grubbed up and planted with softwoods after WW2. I've another couple of acres that I'm just about to plant as mixed coppice with standards with Beech, Birch, Oak and Hazel. The Oak and Beech I've raised from seed and I'll take some Downy Birch from the other coppice once the ground thaws out.

Cut a shaving off the end of one with a Stanley knife, so we can see the end grain properly.

I had a peep at the high mileage CO2 positive firewood at the local builders merchant, they've crates full of the stuff at under £50/ kiln dried neatly stacked cube, seems like a good deal.

You can't judge the fact that the grain has come loose at the end as a way to ID wood. Am I right about it having 12 rings to the inch ?

I don't have that processor, but I'm guessing that the measurements on the yellow scale in pic 2 are 50mm increments, and the diameter of the hole for the stop is 10mm. So if I'm right it's 10-12 rings to the inch.

I'm going with Hornbeam too.

Swinging, jumping and leaping are best left for the others. Be a Steady Eddy, they generally last longer.

It sounds like you're feeling under pressure to perform to someone else's standard, that's not so good.

You'll be fine as long as you keep feeling that way. After working as an IRATA climber for years and with well over 20 years of rock and ice climbing, I still feel that way, and that's without having a chainsaw in my hands. Complacency leads to serious accidents and you only get to die once.