Dan Maynard

Look at the Treerunner, had mine out again yesterday. Have to admit seems to have gone up in price quite a bit, sure it was under £200.

Unless you've spent a huge amount the you'll be well under annual investment allowance so just charge it all in first year. Google AIA if you're having trouble sleeping one day.

I heard a story from a tree surgeon who was asked to make all the willow from a job into nice habitat piles on an island in the river near us. River floods over winter, logs all disappear....

Think of Gloria, you'd end up regretting it and having to buy it back.

Postage cost has gone up to £600!

Good point. Think long term.

I reckon you can tell the client Leylandii and they won't argue 99.9% of the time, whatever type of conifer it is.

Rather than one big heap I think it might be good to put some pallets across to divide it up into bays. This would end up with no log more than half a pallet away from the wind, or similar to using IBCs which work well for me. Other thing might be hoops of stock fencing, you can go two high on a pallet and point the conveyor in the top. Sure there's got to be no need for stacking individual logs.

I haven't seen that much which I am absolutely 100% sure is dieback. I did read that trees in woods are more susceptible, in gardens where people sweep up the leaves it tends to break the fungus lifecycle.

I am very curious about what caused the initial damage, but we can see it was a while ago and the tree has survived so far. In your second picture there is a nice ridge of callous on the left, where the wood is growing back. How are the leaves on the right hand side? My opinion this is one of those trees which depends on your garden. There are three options really: 1. If you want everything perfect in the garden then fell it and replant, it's never going to be a nice neat perfect tree. 2. Cut the right stem, this will remove a lot of decayed wood but probably unbalance the crown and leave a huge wound at the base. This will decay, as you can see cherry is not naturally decay resistant. 3. Do nothing, the tree is already reacting to the damage and could survive for years. I've seen cherries hollow so much you wonder how they stand, in the meantime it will be a haven for invertebrate and bird life. I don't see any point in option 2, it moves the problem but doesn't solve anything. There is probably included bark at the bottom but close to the ground this is less of an issue as both halves anchor to the ground. If mine, if there are decent leaves on the tree then I would just keep it like it is. When/if it dies back then I would fell it. But my garden is not the neat and tidy type and I'm a wildlife enthusiast.

Game changer always has me asking that question too. Surely at some point it will end up across a branch where a rope one would just bend?

I'm also on hitchclimber and been intending to do this for ages, not quite got round to it. I did buy the Schultz effect though, and it's really good. He explains a lot of different approaches to things and reasoning why, and also a section comparing approach using SRT and DRT to move around the same tree. I would say it improved my DRT climbing already.

I think it's unusual to use ash for cladding but it could be ok, it will only decay if it's damp. Plenty of overhang on the roof and nowhere near the wet earth. TVI in East Anglia will have as many wet days as Les has dry ones in Wales.

And just to add, whether it's been briefly in a kiln or not I'm afraid the bottom line is that it's wet and isn't going to dry well tightly stacked in a cellar. Only options I can see are to take the wood out and stack it where the wind can blow round it over the summer, or else turn your cellar into a kiln with dehumidifiers and fans (but that will take weeks and cost a fortune in electricity).

Conventional wisdom is that the cost of extraction will not pay back, it's so bulky it's hard to move around. Price has been fluctuating recently but maybe £10 a ton? If you clear the trees into a whole tree chipper with a shear/grab then leave the brash on, this is what they do with road building type clearance.

Surely when milling the pulling chain is doing all the cutting, so the nose bearing is just pulling the slack side of chain back to the tip? It doesn't really make sense to me that this should cause nose bearing to go. In normal cutting use you would expect to knacker the nose by boring hard or perhaps using pushing chain because then all the cutting tension is applied to the nose roller. I am thinking either kerf is a bit narrow or load caused by sawdust getting dragged back round must be making it difficult to pull the chain back to the tip? Otherwise what's overloading that roller?

Now there's what you can do if not trying to keep to 3.5 tonnes.

Pretty sure my 261 has an adjustable oil pump, that's 2010 model.

I haven't used the 24hp one, would be interesting - but on the older 37 I would say the stress control rarely kicks in unless you stick big bits of wood in all the time, so there is plenty of power spare. 24hp may actually be enough for normal use. Maybe they would do you a trial?

He can go deeper though, say in a coal mine. Not in Suffolk though.

You'll always get much more wear at the splice end, so having two splices can mean twice the life out of the rope. Or if you damage the rope and need to cut a section off you still have a splice so again doubles the life. Then again if it's a long rope you don't use much then it will still need retiring at 5 years so maybe not save anything.

I don't think hawthorn, what I've had split really easy and was paler than that. I'd say pear still possible. Can be small trees but I've cut 18" hawthorn and pear.

How many cubic metres are there? Is 5 cube a quarter a drop in the ocean or would it be a viable to do over a few quarters?

Proper clotted cream in Cornwall is more like butter.

Are you trying to wind up the people from Cornwall? Or Devon? Sure one of them will say you put the cream on first.