Mark Wileman

As stated usually when asked to keep firewood, people only keep >4-5inch stuff and chip the rest, although fairly tall, there isn't a huge amount of wood on those trees. Always worth shopping around on quotes, £1000 seems a little expensive to me but I have no idea on what part of the country you are in or what you have parked on your drive! Better luck next time!

As Mr Bolam says, go small, go home. You could get all fancy strapping the two together and try to fell the lot under control (assisted fell). But keep it simple, climb as high as you feel comfortable and then go higher, that is the safest place to take a top! Wishing the guy in the video a quick recovery.

Think of it as a savings account driving down your tax return. And if you are corrupt enough to stay under the threshold and not pay any tax, then you get it all back in a rebate!

We should join forces, unstoppable!

On a slightly more serious note: Getting roped in to help my Dad do DIY kind of stuff from a young age led me to be pretty handy as a youngster. 3 year Carpentry Apprenticeship after leaving school, mainly first & second fix on new builds. I enjoy making the odd furniture-type bits and pieces, but I don't have the time or equipment to make really high end stuff. But the missus usually ends up with some kind of useless handmade tat each Chrimbo A lot of military/mountaineering work led to a strange fascination with maps and navigation, I love it and if I had my time again I'd probably try to be a Cartographer. Recently taught myself to weld, only with an arc but nothings fallen apart yet! I really really want to try my hand at black smithery, I've stuck an evening course/experience on Santa's wishlist. Aside from occasionally falling into my 12 year old self and wasting hours painting little soldiers and scenery, that is pretty much it for my skill set! Oh, I make a living cutting and climbing trees, so I should probably list that in my skills (cautiously though, in this environment )

I can start a chainsaw and hit nails 70% of the time with a hammer. My skill set is unfortunately pretty redundant in the civilian world, anyone need to call in some proximity fuzed artillery to crown reduce a 200 x 200 area?

But on a serious note, I spike everything so never need to do any pull ups

This is me in the gym last week, it's easy if you train hard enough.

?

To be honest I don't think anyone has ever been asked to do a survey and said "Nothing wrong with all these, they look fine to me!" ? If you need a hand give me a shout, I'm getting pretty threaders with the same old faces around here! This close to packing it all in and re-enlisting! ?

I've worked a bit with a guy who was dismissed from there for not using NPTC recognised cuts, ie, not step cutting everything. He's the best climber I've ever seen on the job too ?

I don't understand why Tree Work is so different to the build trades, they churn out thousands of bright eyed busy tailed tradesmen every year, who charge what they got told they are worth, no questions asked!

Not the former!

I just work for the experience and occasionally the client lets me keep some leylandii rings, i'm saving a load up to sell them for biomass.

Over 500 soldiers have died in the past 15 years, I've read about maybe 5 tree surgeons in the same period, all of which seemed to have an aerial rescuer on site.

If you want to stop receiving spam e-mails send me the last 3 digits on your debit cards and I'll use them to generate a code that will stop all unwanted email. Best regards, Maerkusy Wylemein, High Prince of Antarctican Jungle Plains

Alternatively look into doing a distance-learning foundation/bachelors degree with Mysercough, funding is available.

Heres the list of level 2 qualifications: https://www.nptc.org.uk/qualificationschemes.aspx?id=3 and level 3 (cs32/windowblown stuff is level 3) https://www.nptc.org.uk/qualificationschemes.aspx?id=9 Click on the awards and then go to the qualification guidance PDF for each one, basically tells you everything you need to know including the exact objectives etc...

BATUK is Kenya mate

Hi Jack, I left the Army last year and have transitioned just fine into tree work. What you lack in experience you'll quickly find you make up for in work ethic, the hardest days tree work is still a walk in the park compared to a BATUK calfex ? Feel free to drop me a message regarding the route I took and what qualifications helped and what were just overkill. There is a wealth of information here on Arbtalk about what kit to get hold of and youtube is a good teacher for tree stuff, so long as you look in the right places! (Climbing Arborist and the American ISA series are a good place to start). Good luck mate.

Has anyone used the Makita stuff, I'd love to get my hands on their DUX60 power head. Has a decent range of attachments plus runs of 18v makita batterys and I already have 4!

Photo's please!

Does anyone else do the "backcut and hope?" cut?

Can anyone point me in the direction of somewhere I can get all those fancy pictures of trees before and after lifts, reductions, pollards etc? I don't want to breach any copyright stuff by getting htem directly off google. @AA Teccie (Paul) It would be nice for the AA to include just things in their help for Arborists section! Regards, Mark