drinksloe

Alright Just wondering if any of u worry about storing chainsaws in hot sheds?? The shed i have been storing my saws is an old tin shed, i extended it and replaced/added some extra roof lights So it's now quite a decent sspacey workshop and relatively secure I welded up a big frame/shelfs i was meaning to make it into a secure cage type thing for all my saws and genny. Last year on the rare occasions we get decent sunny weather in scotland i noticed my combi cans always really swelling in the heat and contracting at night. Could the same thing happen in the saws petrol tank if it had some left in (say 1/2 a fill) and could it damage the saw? Was worried about it cracking a tank but i suppose the filler cap will be the weakest part. Some of the tanks on modern husky's where they go into the handle never look that strong Or i'm i worrying about nothing?? I have a shed next door which is stone built and stays cool, so was thinking of blocking up a corner to make a secure cupboard, but ideally i was hoping to keep the petrol smell in the other shed Cheers

It's just 1 off those things 1 size will never fit all,, esp in farming as such a varied industry. To be fair the mep/farmer bloke from NI will probably be fairly clued up on smaller/poorer farms, quite a lot of poorer ground in NI. And even i he does own a decent farm it will be a small enough farming community he'll know other 'hill' farmers. Which wouldn't be the case if he was down in some intensive arable area down south Somehow the way they implement the CAP in france they still have heaps of small farms that are vaible, just not sure how they do it as it certainly is not the case here

No prob's, i must admit i mis read ur post slightly and didnae realise u had done the work. Some of the bodge jobs i've done in the past make me shudder, althou usually only for myself. I'm sure u'll see that sort of stuff all the time thou, the bigger the site the more dis organised and more botched jobs, wasted money. I doubt if ur QS/site agent/mr kier would even have a clue who done the work in the 1st place. And yet that squad can be putting loads more in wrong, reaping a nice bonus for doing sub stanard work and then costing the next squads money as wot should be a simple job turns into a head scratching botch

That's sort of wot i mean if 1 companies men done all the work they would have to fix/deal that themselves, or even if a different squad came in they'd have an idea who done the work and give them stick for it. Same when u have 1st fix joinrs and finishing joiners some 1st fix aren't too bothered if door styles plumb/square as they do have to fit the door, not really fair onthe next boys who have to fix the mess When u have loads of completely unrelated subbies, sadly many don't care about the next squad to come in and just stick thing in the easiest way for them or the most bonus pay. Been there and done it, i remebering years ago labouring to some brickies, got sent to build a 6ft garden wall as next houses/lifts weren't ready so effectively sealing off a decent vehicle/machine access to the back gardens of 4 or 5 houses. I even had a word with the site foreman about it told to carry on, poor ground workers had to barrow tons and tons of top soil in and level gardens with a tiny min digger as wee had walled up the access. Many subbies don't really care how there work affects other trades or subbies (even if the work there doing is up to standard) I bet if u done the original work u would either have brought the right gear to do the job or sited the tank in the correct position in the 1st place cos u know u have to tie into it again later.

Kier are terrible. They just 'allegedly' built a fancy leisure centre near me, think only lasted 5 years, been shut for last 3-4 attempting to fix it. Built the olympic sized swimming pool too short!! I just heard a rumour that the new fully fixed pool is losing serious ammounts of water and walls are doing wot there meant too. Just a shambles from start to finish Reckon te new refurb'd centre will be lucky to last 10yrs, all council tax payers money. Quite ironic when the old pool it replaced was donkeys years old, fair enough a bit run down/old fashioned but it still done wot it had too (ie held water) There should be QS's or someone on site to stop stuff like that happening, but thats the problem with a load of subbies

Are u not allowed to block a road for 20mins at a time? The wagon delivery driver for a local building suppliers told me that years ago, as they will regularly block roads when hiabing loads into houses.

Cheers wick, must admit i've never ever heard of that before, but every day is a school day. Never really have to shunt that many heavy trailers about well never really struggled that much anyway Surely there can't be that many vehicles with manual locking hubs nowadays.

Must admit there is some new advice i've definately never heard before, must admit i'm not sure its all correct thou. The light on ur dash for 4wd drive won't indicate if hubs are in or not only if lever is in I've also never seen or had an l200 with a diff lock button Been a long time since i've had free wheeling hubs but we just left them free wheeling all the time until needed in 4wd and never had any bother, But i would folow the advice of ur mechanic Never really see them now Why would u use 4wd low with the hubs not in?? Is it just for the lower gear but still in reality being in 2wd?? Never had to do that either when reversing trailers U don't need to go to a muddy field, any bit of loose gravel or steepish hill, stop and spin ur rear wheels first to get feel then try the same when u are in 4wd with hubs locked and see if u can feel the difference or get someone to watch

Was it not a thing when Turbo desiel engines 1st came out u were meant to let it idle for 1-2mins after a long run to let engine/turbo cool down? U do it a couple of times then just carry on as normal. Never hear of it now Must admit with most machines (esp if not worked that much/hard) i tend to give them a few mins warm up or working at low revs and build up more gradually. Even putting the chipper up to speed i tend to allow it a bit of time them throttle gently a lot of boys just crank it up. I just thiknk it gives u even 20-30 seconds to hear if machine is making all the right noises before its oing full pelt

Just had a look at 1 of my benches (have to admit been a while since i seen the work top) i made it with modern chip board flooring, quite like it, harder and smoother than OSB, and comes 600 wide. If u step up to 22m thick its pretty strong. Aye i done somethin similar in mty last workshop, have seen it with the lines round it and quite liked it. Didn't have the patience so just wrote the tools above the nail/screw/steeple. Not quite got my new ones organised yet, inherited a load of old metal filing cabinets which are quite handy as big tool chests

I recently bought a long length of worktop for my kennels from wickes for 25 quid, had a mark on it. But u can buy a 2m length for £30, if ur itching to get on u can also buy kitchen units of the shelf, again cheapest i found was wickes, about 50ish quid depending on sizes/ design. Instead of a tool cleaning area, just stick on old sink in, will do the same job even if u never plumb it up. Usually find plenty at local coup/dump or of plumbers U could very easily hill billy plumb it, a tank/bucket filld with rain water and gravity fed into the sink tap, be rubbish pressure but enough to rinse stuff off clean paint brushes. Personally iwouldn't have a workshop with out a sink, once u've had 1 u never go back. Just be careful if u plumb it into house water as can be a pig for freezing Mick is there a reason why ur worktop is raised up on 2x2s?

Same principle as trough but just but a thin piece of edging proud of the bench top, stop things rolling off. Also if using scaffold battens does that mean u'll have joins as usually only 8" wide, my last few benches i've just made the legs with 4x2 and used some ply (or even OSB) or splash out and buy a kitchen worktop (althou the rounded edge can be a pain). If u have any mates who do kitchens always ahndy to offer to take some units and work tops (make great strong shelfs too) and even wall units. Makes ur shed look right tidy Also i now fit mt vice to a piece of thick ply, so its mobile enough to move about but also stable enough to do most of wot i want. If i'm really abusing something i can either stand on it or screw it down to work top, that easy now with modern battery drills

Plus not every farm will be getting yields like that,only the better ground farmed well. But u will also get poor years when the weather is terrible yields could crash. In my area which is not an arable area but a few of the better farms grow it to feed there stock it is not unusual in a bad summer/back end for fields not to be havested, mibee 10yrs ago 1 estate lost hundreds of acres of crops unharvested, which was the same all over the area. I imagine most on here will do tree work etc, to make a living. I imagine most will go out to price a job knowing ur hourly/daily rates and estimate from there, some u win others u lose a wee bit, but generally with exp u should be up on most jobs. And get paid on completion of the job or thereabouts after it. How would u feel working away for 3-4 months or even the whole year in case of arable or hill sheep farmers and only getting paid then? And not even a price u have dictated but a price the supermarkets and foriegn imports/weather have deicided Probably the arb equivalent would be working all year at an unkown day rate (still paying staff and working chippers etc) while a load of foriegn/cheap labour flooded the arb scene so rates plumetted so when it comes to the square up day the rates are 50-100% lower than they need to be. If i won the lottery (a real big win) i'd love to buy a big piece of land/small upland estate to farm, as a lifestyle choice. but things are easy when u have plenty of cash to employ folk so wether the farm makes money it doesnae really matter. An awful lot of farmers will have millions tied up in the business (land, stock, tractors sheds etc) yet only making a few % profit if lucky. Not a great business model really, most would be better selling up and living of the interest

Must admit i thoughtit was only 30m machine exclusion zone for badger setts in forestry. And a hand cutter can fell the trees on top of the sett to the machine. Used to be the same on the railways no machines/chip piles for 30m around a sett and u had to drag every thing, i used to hate badger setts To be honest if the nest was over 10m away i would say u'd be fine, as has been said from now till august u'd get very littlework done if u couldn't work within 10m of a nest. Then wot about folk triming hedges, cutting lawns next to hedges with nest's in?? It just could get awfully silly very quick

Aye Fair play. And thats the thing, i'm talking about fields i grew up and worked in that i''ve known very well for 30 odd years, i'm sure that is not comparable to some intensive arable unit. And very easy esp on here to be arguing over a point but we're both talking about it in 2 very different situations, round my general area there really hasn't been many hedges ripped out or ponds filled in, infact in last 20 yrs been miles of hedges planted and new ponds dug. But where i'm talking about i could still go to the exact same hedges/rabbit warrens i used to ferret 30 odd years ago. The same ponds are still there, very little has changed there in 30 or even 50 years (apart from that farm is no longer vaible without a 2nd job, infact that farm now is really a hobby farm and used to support 2 workers) 1 of the biggest problems with UK is the 'conservationists', they have somehow either convinced that predators don't make a difference or too scared to say it incase it costs them funding, publicity or members (rspb kills predators on most reserves but won't admit it) They also tend to be folk who've never worked in the real world/countryside so can spend vast ammounts of grant (taxpayers) money on projects that will never work It is people like billhook who have lived on a farm all there life and notice changing animal/bird populations over years/decades, most'conservationists' look down there nose at him and don't listen to wot he has to say. He might not have letters after his name but they do see wot's going on over decades. Suerly this massive rise in predator numbers at the ame time prey numbers are in free fall can't just be a conincedence In the whole river valley/catchment, nowadays there is hardly a rabbit left, while a mixy knocks them down (as it always has) now the rabbits don't get a chance to recover as they're is so much vermin eating them, buzzards, corvids, badgers, foxes, stoats, PM. U are in trouble when something whuich breeds as wellas the rabbit can barely survive. Ur talking about pollution, habitat destruction etc, again i don't know how it is south of border, but really most of that happened in the 60-70's, by time 80's most of the really dodgy chemicals were banned, ur were no longer meant to rip hedges. I can remeber burns/ditches swimming in slurry and silage effluent back in the early 80's, real stinking, while it wasn't the norm it was not unusual. Now u never see it, most burns will be cleaner now than they've been for 40-50 yrs, otters are making a comeback all over UK. My local river is chocca full of them, infact probably too many For me the whole habitat destruction/pollution angle just doesn't add up, most of any habitat loss happened before any populations started to crash and in many areas (poorer upland ground) there has been very little if any habitat loss or agricultural change yet still seeing the same things, rise in predators, decline in prey species As even in places where they're has been little or no change, no pollution and no chemicals some bird species are still declining, yet u go to an almost idetical piece of ground near a grouse moor/well keepered and all these birds suddenly reappear and are absolutley thriving. The GWCT study at Otterburn proved this where the other thing they changed was predator control and wader breeding success rose by something like 300% within a few months of the control starting (compared to the sites with no predator control) Also have a look wot they have achieved at there Allerton project combining a profitable arable farm with conservation

Farming is 1 of those things its very easy to cast wide sweeping statements or cherry pick certain things and compare them with something entirely diferent.. Supermarkets ahve a big influence of farming and not a positive 1 with the constantly chasing cheaper produce no matte rthe cost to animals or environment. And the british public doesn't help either, not just with farming but all industry/products too many residents would rather something was cheap and imported (not caring about standrds of the product or the workers) than slightly dearer made in the UK so supporting jobs etc Also politicain's never help matters either, yes plenty folk moan about the susbidies, but forestry also relies on subsidies as does a lot of boifuels industry too. The things gpoing on in the renewable sector the now are a disgrace with boidegesters and boi fuel plants as well as RHI scheme So far in the thread u have had hill farms mentioned nd then comparing them to intensvely worked farms, chemical/pesticides or habitat loss, all very different things. Hill farms probably haven't changed in hundreds of years apart from the quad bike. Even as recently as the 1980's the sheeps fleece's used to cover the rent of the farm as well as shepherd wages, nowadays it costs money to clip the sheep as often wool won't cover the clipping costs. I'm sure further south and east on better lower land they're has been a lot of changes and some habitat loss but when u get over 150m or so very little has changed as the ground just isn't good enough. So any loss in bird/animal life is not down to habitat loss or modern farming practices

I was recently using a 6" timberwolf which worked purely off the hydralics, i thinkit was modified to work of hydralics instead of a PTO, not sure if factory mod or home made. Worked fine thou 1 problem u might have is a mounting system as u'll have no 3 point linkage? (but i dare say u could lift/manuuevre the chipper with crane) Also the logistics of feeding a 6" chipper with a crane, to be honest u would probably be quickier feeding it by hand due to chipper speed and jams. Might be handy moving piles of brash closer to the chipper thou Stephen makes a good point about taking axles off OR u could go the other way and put bigger lgp tyres on it and tow the chipper in, then u could also carry any logs/stems out on the forwarder and chipper towed behind, then load chipper on bunk for transport to site. But u might have a problem with weight if the chipper has its own engine if ur still wanting everything on the trailer in 1 go? Must admit i've been meaning to ask a question about converting PTO driven equipment to hydralic driven Ps how much will those cranes lift close in?? I thought it was around 350kg's but that could be further out, a lot of those chippers are about 750kg's

Could u not stick a set of twins on ur old tractor and sort of steer with the brakes if it really gets soft? Sometimes surprising how good a light 2 wd tractor can be with a set of twin tyres on, usually so much lighter than the 4wd drive before u start. I was on a big fencing job (think 8km of permant hill stock fence) and we ran all our wire and posts out and old stuff back in with an ancient old 2wd massey, a real heap of junk. Was so old it didn't have a pto but a big fly wheel at rear. It just floated over the ground if u never filled the trailer to full, and the MF390 which had the post knocker on and twin wheels all round would sink in every hole it could find, was a real pain (but a big post chapper doesn't help) On a similar note a local agri contractor 1 summer had to resort o using an ancient 2wd oader tractor to take his silage bales out off his own field, he usually runs big JD's but all sinking in and making a hell of a mess, the light ancient tractor managed to stay on top of the sod Like someone has already said if the ground is soo wet ur going to make a big mess wot ever ur driving even with twins or 4wd, if possible better to wait if u can till better weather

I must admit i think i have the same pair, very happy with them, but i also noticed they don't seem to have a chainsaw mark stamped on them. I thought all chainsaw boots/ppe had to have a chainsaw logo stamped on them? Otherwise most comfy and waterproof cutting boots i've ever had

I might be looking for a similar saw shortly I've cut with a few boys with 550's recently and all rate them. Got an older 353 and its a cracking little saw Wot puts me off them (husky's in general) is the external clutch, esp for forestry work, not that it happens often but if u stupidly get ur saw stuck in a tree an external clutch is a real pain to get bar/chain off. And usually happens at the furthest point form ur van so a long walk for ur spare saw So thinking might look for a small stihl instead

Depends wot ur wanting and ur tickets/experience are But i think everyone wants to be a climber/work in arb, have u tried looking at forestry work? I don't think u'll be that far from kielder or other big forests. Not for everyone

It does make u wonder wot the plois reponse time was? Felling 100 odd trees is hardly a covert op, by the time u start saws etc. Also it really doesn't look they've had any training/experience the way the stumps were, u can't jst cut that many trees down in 5 mins

Must admit i bought a wee 37cc efco 18 months or so ago and to be honest really quite impressed with it. Yes its not a top end pro husky or stihl but for a 37cc engine handles a 15" bar fairly well and was a lot cheaper than a similar sized 'brand saw' My 1 complaint as someone else mentioned is a bit of flex inthe plastics/handle so if ur just about to 'nip' the bar and are slightly too late pulling it out sometimes the throttle attachment/trigger gets jammed. All u have to do is tap the side of the handle and it pops back into place I have been told by a few folk (including the dealer who sold me the efco) that ur cheap bottom end/hobby models of stihl/husky really are quite poor and nothing like there pro saws But like everything it depends on the useage and the maintance So far very happy with it and its got me out a hole a few times when other 'better' saws/chains/bars have packed in and it was the spare in the van and done wot was needed

Must admit i do really love my 372's, great saws to work on bigger timber. Sometimes i worry with new models if there is any teething problems intially, and to be honest some new saws are just far too complicated. Esp when the old models works so bloody well. I bet plenty folk wished they bought an extra 254xp or stuihl ms 200 top handled before the new models came out. How much does that cost? As an aside i take it that will totally devoid the warranty with a brand spanking new saw? I take it it can be ported anytime? ie after warranty Must admit even a factory 372 cuts pretty well, be hard to improve on it really, esp with the length of time they last While i don't know anything about the porting thing, yet (will red into it somemore) i often think if u want the saw to last ur mibee better of with it not being over tuned or producing too much power. I do sometimes think some husky's (357xp for 1) are just too highly tuned and so tend to go bang a bit quickier than u'd hope.

I'm i off my head getting a new 372xp then?? Shoud i hold off for the 572? Had a few over the years and really can't fault them (plus a few donor saws to canablise as time goes on) I just really like the old 372's fairly simple saws that do exactly wot there meant too. nd are fairly long lasting compared to how hard there worked