Kent Arboreal

Couple of real pros with a mac....

Hi 
 
Thanks for all the replies...  More than I expected!  [emoji4]  
 
Do I **need** wellies?  I guess not totally, but we do have a stream that runs the length of the garden and I do find myself in it from time to time sawing fallen branches.  
  
 
 
The instructions state:  "The footwear should be visually assessed for suitability after 5 years of storage".  When I quizzed the makers they said that the issue would (could?) be the rubber deteriorating.  I replied that I can visually inspect the rubber to tell if it's ok, but they insisted that they could not guarantee the safety of them after 5 years storage.  It felt like arse covering to me tbh, which is why I thought I'd asked for more practical thoughts here.  
 
@Wonky  - I'm not quite sure what to say about that animated picture!  
 
The reason I bought them, apart from the stream (and generally/usually wet garden) was:
 
- Price.  They were £25 in the end.
- I'm a vegan.  I'd buy leather boots if I absolutely had to and there weren't alternatives, but there were, so....  Leather style boots tend to be leather, or at least when I looked I wasn't finding synthetic ones
- Frequency of use...  I've got a load of felled ash trees I need to process.  Once that's done, I'll only be using the chainsaw on rare occasions.  It's all just personal use.  I'm loving my new bowsaw and I'm even thinking of getting a crosscut saw, which would mean even less chainsaw use.  If I was planning to use it more, or work in the trade, then I'd have definitely looked to spend more on something better and more comfortable.   
 
Thanks again for all the contributions
 

Drove out to a copse to look at a parcel offered on day rate, blew out the front tyre on a bit of ragstone, swapped for the spare blew that out on another bit of ragstone, had to get the mrs to pick me and the wheel up take me to the tyre place then drive me back to the truck in the morning with what was now the third tyre. I only went to price it up, cost me 180 quid in tyres.

Don't forget you got your number on your truck could be some nice person finding out what you got and borrowing it at 3 in the morning 

Should have called and told em your neighbour was having a beer with a mate.

I’ve just scribbled out the diary and moved it forward a week. I’m gonna spend some time with my new mate instead. And maybe the wife and kids if I find the time.

I would go with utilities markings but by us we had white chalk markings by driveways which were supposedly dog nappers. Would have thought they would just use Google maps or what three words considering it's not the 80's anymore... [emoji23]

I've driven plenty of vehicles with gearbox worse then land rover. 

Just use your face mask

Anyway sorry...this tree...

Things like this really irritate me. Someone buys an house with a tree in the garden, someone gets an illness, blames the tree, bye bye tree. Someone buys a house next to a farm, complains about the smell, bye bye farm, .
Why don't people think before they buy. There are many more instances I could think of as well.
It's just barmy.
In this instance , it looks like it's a dormar bedroom, I would be looking at the insulation in the roof, ventilation, what type of heating system is installed etc. I would look at conditions inside the house before looking elsewhere.

This ones turned out to be funnier than the jokes thread

Get a Bluetooth card machine do a good job and take payment before you leave. Saves hours of chasing. If you get corporate contracts make sure you know their payment terms and make sure they stick to them. If they don’t, send a final invoice and get out. A £25k contract will just end up leaving you thousands out of pocket if they don’t pay. I have three corporate contracts that pay like clockwork. I’ve had others that never had any intention of paying. If you get caught by one of them you’ll be surprised how quickly they pay when you turn up at the head office and talk loudly about it in front of the suits.

Maybe I missed something, but if you climbed him to take out the weight on one side, why didn’t you just dismantle him while you were up there?

One from my daughter.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To get to the idiots house.

Knock knock

Who’s there?

The chicken

A mate of mine is a jeweller in Hatton Garden. One day they set a boiled sweet into a gold ring and told the work experience lad to put the ring in the polishing machine but to be extra careful because it was a £30k emerald. Polishing machine basically sloshes it about in boiling water for half hour so when he came back there was no “emerald” just a gold ring. They let him stew all week before they told him.

People will always have a go. My father in law told me the story of how he connected his consumer unit to the mains by wearing a pair of marigolds as insulation and telling the mother in law to stand behind him with a wooden broom to prise him off if he cocked up and started to cook himself.

Priced a job a few years ago to remove a large limb from a willow, but they turned it down on account of the price. I know a guy who lives by that particular tree, apparently they had a few quotes but weren’t happy with the cost so the guy bought himself a plug in black and decker saw from b and q, climbed it on a ladder and sat on the limb and started cutting it about a foot from the trunk. The limb was about 20 foot long and give or take 24 inch diameter. He didn’t take any compression out the bottom, not that it would have made any difference given where he’d decided to start cutting. He got about halfway through then it split knocked his saw out of his hands broke in the middle then swing round on what was left of the fibres and knocked his ladder over. Then he hopped down, got the ladder and saw and cut the rest off from that. Bark was stripped all the way from where it snapped to the ground about a foot wide strip. Apparently he genuinely thought he’d done a good job of it too.

I find flyers best. A bit labour intensive at first but once you get a few jobs from them then word of mouth takes over and you don’t need to drop so many. Been using flyers for years, my top tip is don’t write too much, assume they’re all going in the bin and write them in a way that can get your point across in the time it takes to walk from the doormat to the kitchen bin. Also drop the same areas regularly, then you stick in people’s minds. I see so many flyers that are just impenetrable or meaningless

CS30 CS31... etc means nothing to a customer, Fully insured... they expect that... also don’t list every service, much better to write something like “Professional Tree Surgeon” than

Limb removal, crown reduction, wind blown removal, pollarding, felling, hedge laying, hedge cutting, stump removal blah blah... if you just put “tree surgeon” they’ll assume the rest. And if you don’t do certain things, just say no when they call, you don’t need to list it all.

Also one more, with SEO, don’t try and crowbar “tree surgeon Surrey” or whatever into every sentence, Google has come on a lot and now ranks for regularly updated relevant content, it spots drivel and penalises it. So many sites read like

“Tree Surgeon in Surrey

If you need a Tree Surgeon in Surrey then call Surrey Tree Surgery. We are tree surgeons based in Surrey and our Surrey tree surgeons provide a great Tree Surgery service. In Surrey.”

Who the **************** is gonna call that?!

That’s me done

2 strokes are all much the same to start, squish the bubble ten times, put the choke on, if it has an on/off switch make sure it’s on (amazing how many people don’t!) pull the cord until it turns over, when it does take the choke off and pull it until it starts. Make sure the brake is on when you start it.

Make sure the chain is sharp and tight enough.

Don’t touch anything with the tip, that’s where you’ll get kickback from.

Don’t take try to change the chain with the brake on you’ll turn an easy two minute job into a complicated two hour one. If you’re not sure why that is, don’t worry, you’ll find out sooner or later!

Make sure there’s always oil in the hopper otherwise you’ll overheat the chain and **************** it. I find I go through one tank of oil to every two tanks of petrol with my husky 550 XP which is a similar size saw I think although I’m not familiar with mcculloch saws, but different saws are different. Obviously.

Put 50:1 2 stroke mix in it, most bottles of 2 stroke oil have some way of measuring out the right amount to add. Rule of thumb better to mix it too rich than too lean up to a point, after that you’ll foul the plug, but even then better a dirty plug than a seized engine.

Try not to let the fuel run dry, it’s a pig to start again if you do.

If you’re going get paid to use it at least do your CS30, most of that is learning about how the saw and chain works and when you understand how it works it means you’ll be a bit more clued in what to do when something goes wrong, how to maintain it, troubleshooting etc etc

So, I use a subcontractor his standard is very good, and I've put him though pretty much all of his tickets, he also gets his own work - not a problem.  I trust him to do a good job and leave him to it.  As with most Arbs they don't like being questioned.  All fair enough.
The question I have is about a broken gravestone, in my opinion it's the guy who does the cutting that is generally responsible for his actions?
It gets slightly more complicated as the guy doing the lowering, is a young lad.  I had previously lowered another using a 3:1 system and raising the branch maintaining control, used the lad to be eyes as it wasn't that easy to see Arb cutting etc. 
Looking at the broken gravestone (1896!) Arb took 3:1 system out, expected lad to drop it at the right time, doing his own thing,  I was chipping some stuff as I don't want to be constantly questioning what said Arb, or other competent Arbs do.
Who is liable?
I do have insurances, his opinion (and no apology) is that it's my business I have to take it on the chin. 
Over to the floor [emoji4]

We get it in the ear from joe public all the time. Not so much the saws but the chipper. I used to worry, now I’m more of the opinion of wtf else do you want me to do with it? Six trailer loads instead of one? Turn up with 40 beavers and let em eat it? Piss off!

I pick it out with a needle every once in a while. Dunno how much good that does it but it ain’t broke it so far. Always amazed how much shit comes out.

I don’t lend any nice tools . They always come back broken

This weathers only good for a pub garden. Been killing ourselves all week. We’re doing some fencing on Friday and a sparky dropped by to tell the customer he was sacking it off cos it was too hot to work. Pussy.