Dan Maynard

To be fair we didn't know it was 4 foot diameter at the beginning. I'd need to put enough on it to buy a bigger saw.

I think it depends where you live, I'm in East Anglia and my wood is all seasoned outside in ibcs. Up off the ground like that the rain runs off and doesn't soak in. I also move it under cover a couple of months before using just to dry the outside.

Not on ash logs, spores are released from dead leaf material.

Love the word woodpeckering for that. Multisaver choked on the stem for me, hitchclimber drt so I can easily descend from any point if necessary (one handed).

Strikes me the easiest way would be for you to put the chain in a jiffy bag and send it to RobD, he could send it back with two replacements and a file kit for keeping them sharp. Just thinking out loud, would be for Rob to make that offer obviously.

I've taken a set of balls like that out of my MS500, was making a bad noise. Bearings and blades needed, change the belts while at it. Anvils were damaged so turned to the next edge. Have a look if the blade bolts are ok. You might get away with turning the blades round but they possibly have chunks missing. I used a grinder and some kitchen scales to even the balance on mine as I was a bit wary to put brand new ones in to test, and actually they were fine. Not really difficult, trickiest part for me was removing old bearings as no way to get a puller behind them so just ground almost through and split with chisel.

Maybe you can park a tracked TW230 at the base of the tree and chip everything into those bushes at the back? Then you have a fighting chance. Steve reckons 2 groundies is enough but then he's a climber.....

Have you done basics first? Fuel filter, spark plug, air filter.

Maybe depends a bit on what you do, I find hedge trimmings don't chip that well but for tree work a reasonable chipper is faster than stacking, you get masses more in the truck so fewer trips to tip, and you can generally find free tips. It really pays off, worth spending a few grand on something decent. That machine just looks like it will be too slow and awkward to feed, waste of money and time.

Unless you can't stand the sight of it I would just leave it a few years to see how it does. I would think it needs all the leaves it can muster so cutting anything off isn't a great plan. All the lower branches will fall off when the tree gets to 20 foot anyway so they aren't too important long term. The only thing to watch is that the tree keeps a single leader so that it develops with a nice single stem in later life, it looks like it's doing this already.

The other question with used saws is how much has been replaced by cheap copy Chinese parts, thereby making it as unreliable as a cheap copy. I think it's slightly less of a gamble on bigger saws as they last longer and people have upgraded to the latest. I know one tree firm where the guy changes all the saws every 3 years and sells them off, he hates unreliable saws so you could get a reasonable machine off someone like that but you'd need to know and trust the person. Other people sell a saw because they are fed up of problems with it so you may not be far off in your swimming with sharks. Personally I buy new.

Ah now you've got me at it..4" is about 100mm so which is it, 4" or 10mm?

As Khriss says the tree will most likely be lifting the patio slabs. If you want to stick with slabs and so decide to re-lay then ideally don't sever any roots but rather lift the height of the patio. Or gravel that area. My impression is that It's not a big tree, unlikely to cause cracking and also unlikely that it can cause cracking on the inside without cracking on the outside.

A JoBeau M500 has 24hp and 5" chipping capacity, and will drive itself up the ramps into your pickup. Sounds perfect, only snag is if you can find one secondhand it won't be £1500, probably double or treble. New they are over £10k I think, I bought mine secondhand. In reality even though capacity is 5" I don't chip a lot which is even 4" with mine, it's too slow and too labour intensive because as the operator you are the stress control on the engine. Up to 3" or 3.5" depending on species you can just chuck it in and the chipper will self feed while you pick the next bit. If you are serious about chipping a lot of 4" then you need a roller fed machine like a TW230 which will munch that happily all day. If I have a job with a lot of that to chip like a big conifer wreck or big tree then I hire in. I don't think you can get more than a basket case road tow for £1500 though. The problem I see with cheap road tow chippers is the there is enormous potential for expensive maintenance, hydraulic motors, valves, electrics etc etc. A wee chipper is an engine, belts, drum bearings, blades and anvil. If the engines ok you can refurbish the whole thing for a few hundred quid yourself. So a £1500 budget is more realistic, some of the cheaper ones can even be had new for that. I think you've got to decide how much use it'll get and how to make it pay, for me the wee chipper is a great solution. If you need the capacity then put £1500 deposit and get a bounce back loan to buy a decent road tow.

Yeah he sold her one last time.

Very rarely take a saw to a shop, all the basic stuff is easy to do and (touch wood) by keeping on top of that don't have much trouble. When I did have an issue with my Stihl kombi which I didn't understand I went to the local machinery places and they were 6 weeks minimum so I investigated more and fixed it myself. Maybe a garden machinery shop will spend more time on mowers and bigger machines? Sharpen, change the plug, change the oil, all in a mad rush in spring.

What about doing it for more than Morrisons but do it better? Might be better business to compete on quality rather than price.

The great advantage of the HAAS compared to homemade is that it's simple - you buy it, it works. The doubled up elastic length inside means that it keeps a reasonable force over a longer travel so you don't need to adjust anything for different height users. HAAS is kind of expensive but I don't regret buying one. Haven't seen the 4SRT.

There is a difference between full and semi chisel chains, if it's not obvious the full chisel have a sharp top corner whereas the semi chisel have a rounded edge (Oregon have pics). The full chisel need to be razor sharp to do anything, which is where you need to keep tickling it. A semi chisel chain never cuts quite as quick but deteriorates much more slowly in use so you can pretty safely sharpen two or three times less often. Domestic stuff like your pole is quite often semi chisel as it stands abuse better.

I can't think of anything that's not bar or chain, unless sprocket is also knackered so the new chain is immediately battered. See recent threads by RobD.

If you're on a farm in do you have a tractor? Tractor hydraulic log splitters are more powerful and a lot cheaper than petrol powered, you might buy one for the cost of a week's hire of petrol one. Then you can have it as an ongoing project, I would guess a couple of weeks at least to get through that. Does look like quite a bit of it would go through a processor, if you got someone in for a couple of days you'd be busy running the loader and it would make a huge dent in the pile.

Can you do that end first? Any knot I can think of lets string out of both ends as it tightens and so will be loose inside the balls. Otherwise you want something like tent pole elastic so you can pull some out before knotting and then it will pull back when you let go.

Back to the original question definitely not a silver birch. I recognise them. Could we have a picture of the ground around the tree? See if it drops walnut size beech nuts?

349 euros per day is ok if you can knock out a couple of 700euro stumps, though. Or one at 700 and a couple of smaller ones. You've got more in your back pocket and less aching shoulders at the end of the day. Tricky to take for a week though, you'd need a lot of stumps lined up and of course need to look after the teeth.

It's hard to tell from the photos if there is a risk of unbalancing the whole thing by cutting off all the weight from one side. I guess it would be a more precautionary approach to remove one stem, leave it a few years, then take another. I wonder what the long term future is for a three stemmed oak anyway? Will the stems grow into each other and split it apart? I was wondering if you look at that as a coppice tree that needs harvesting every 50 years then now is your turn. Just make sure to build a good cage around so that the regrowth isn't eaten off by deer or rabbits and then there will be a similar multi stemmed oak for someone else to harvest in 50 years time. This should definitely be done in the winter if you decide to do it.