Dan Maynard

Give it a few weeks and the brown will spread if it's DED. I think the most positive ID comes from the beetle egg galleries under the dead bark, but round here it would be a very rare elm that got bigger than that without DED so is most likely candidate.

Wasted / spent a while around his site dreaming of becoming a scythe master in the summer instead of climbing trees when it's too hot. Straw hat, bottle of pop, dog named Spot, what more do you need? ETYMOLOGICAL NOTE The word snath can be spelt about as many ways as the name Shakespeare: snaith, snathe and snead are the most common variants. The Oxford English Dictionary gives ten different spellings which it says are "irregular and difficult to account for". The word comes from the word snead or sned , meaning a lopped pole or branch from a tree, and a snedding axe is still the term for the tool used for limbing felled trees. It is related to the German schneiden, to cut. The US pronunciation (which is what I use) rhymes with US pronunciation of the word "bath" or the English word "hath". In the UK, as well as the US pronounciation, I have heard snathe (to rhyme with bathe), snaith (to rhyme with bathos), sned (to rhyme with bed), sneed (to rhyme with bead), and snuth (to rhyme with the Northern bath), but never snarth (to rhyme with the upper-class bath).

Hmm did wonder about a sorbus too. Just been reading, Arran whitebeam is one of the most endangered species on the planet, has lobed leaves though unlike that. Could your one be rock whitebeam though?

Can you pop back and photograph the bark? I was wondering about cherry.

If the compression is really that bad (and not caused by the gauge) I'd have thought you would see piston wear. What's it look like down the exhaust port? If the decomp has been pushed in then obv compression will be low....

I'm a bit like that, quite happy to dangle on a rope but was up the church tower a few months ago, looking down the middle through a trapdoor 40 feet to the ground made me weirdly nervous. The bloke from the bell company was perfectly happy free climbing around on the bell frame though, it's what he does all the time.

I think you should go on holiday to Devon to remind yourself of the rain.

Did you do the deal through eBay? I think if you did then then buyer protection may apply, it has to be as described but you have cracks undeclared.

That's it, and a box of sparks to help it start once you've got it all back together.

Health and Safety Case in Forestry and Arboriculture: Case studies WWW.HSE.GOV.UK A selection of case studies relating to incidents and accidents in Tree Work. Farmers in telehandlers, people on ladders with no ropes at all, they're all in the list. "Self employed arborist" Several lacerations to the neck in the tree, number 5 was rescued by the groundsman and other climber but already unconscious and died. One thing that came out of the recent first aid training I did was that you've got about 3 minutes after a severe laceration so having the first aid kit in the van at the front of the house, maybe keys in the climbers pocket is useless. I have never managed to keep a kit on my harness but have celox bandage in side pocket and a harness kit with celox, tourniquet, bandage in my rope bag so it's always at the bottom of the tree.

Delivered?

I'm extremely frustrated that we have no proper statistics , or reports on accidents, that would help us be safer. Id climb on two ropes every day and practice aerial rescue every 6 months if I thought it would really help. I think the example of speeding is actually a good one, we end up finding a level of risk which is tolerable. It would be safer if everyone drove at 50mph but we tolerate the increased risk and crack on. Hundreds of people get killed every year on the roads too.

I guess not more than £50 a load, though you've got to decide if you're doing it to get rid of the logs (so you'd be loading them anyway) or to make money. Time taken cutting, loading, delivering is going to mean it's not that lucrative. Can you get people to collect it? I've got a pile of rings on my hardstanding and people keep stopping and asking if I'm getting rid. If you cut it up small enough to fit in a car then people will take it away.

8 cubic metre tipper trailer is what I use, cut the hedge then chuck in all recent sawdust rankings etc. There's a couple of places to tip green waste by the load round here, I figure it's cheaper to do that than buy chipper blades which are fearsome expensive for a JoBeau M500.

Personally, I wouldn't. It's had a tough time, hard winter and dry summer, I'd leave it be a year or two until you are confident it's healthy.

Go down to stores and get some left hand thread spark plugs, young lad.....

Think about 4-5000 for elite athletes, it's not totally implausible but probably a bit high.

Broadly, removing leaves takes away food and shade from the tree so isn't helping it. If you need to keep it away from the neighbours then summer is the time to prune, otherwise I'd leave it be to get as much food as possible this year.

Leaves mostly, at this time of year.

Rust protection like an 80's Alfa Romeo.

Keep an eye on that if you want Rotatech chain, that's 0.050 gauge. Id stick with narrow kerf given the engine size, but Rotatech might only have standard 0.058.

As far as I'm aware there hasn't been an epidemic of poplar failure so tempting to conclude the risk hasn't been driven up much by the moth. Maybe this will change now with the drought though as they seem to like it. Only case I've identified where it was important the pop had codominant stems, shading a nice cherry, next to a road, so PCC elected to take the safe option and fell.

Thinking about it, the state of the arb market and failure of FrJones throws a new light on the takeover of Honeys, maybe they were sailing close to the wind as well.

Honeys always been good but I'm a little bit wary now they've been taken over, we wait to see.

Late ones were a lot cheaper, so much that it was cheaper to buy the 365 and send it to spud for porting than buy a 372, which is what I did just in time. Can't buy 365 now and spud's retired.....