Peter 1955

Flash git! In the old days, when neighbours and I still had projectile weapons, I had a wife, an Opel Rekord Estate with the windscreen removed for greater field of fire, and my mate in response to me getting a Weihrauch .22mag bolt action, got a Heckler and Koch semi auto in the same calibre. There was some sort of GPMG copy also in .22mag I seem to remember, ( not sure exactly, memory is fallible ) and we toyed briefly with the idea of mounting a belt fed beastie on the bonnet. 😲 The idea of .22mag was low cost and enough energy to stop foxes. It did, but not reliably enough. A .223 solved that problem.

No, but now you've got me interested. Re loppers, that's my take on it. So tidy, so quick, no flat batteries. However: I'm a sucker for new toys. I'm an 18/36v Makita, not 40v man. Too many 18v to start buying something else, cos I'm tight. Well you know where I come from, goes with the turf in God's County. On the basis that there's unlikely to be a Stihl version using the 500AP Battery 😲😲😲 what flatteries ( imitation is the sincerest form of flattery 😂) might anyone suggest? I know Kram has one he likes at least as much as the Makita. Away you go chaps, while I see where I can get those behemoth loppers.

I came across those in my searches, nice to have a personal recommendation. A Silky or these new mini battery saws are about the only things suggested that I don't have, and my son has just bought a Milwaukee mini saw. To be honest, although I will doubtless have a go with it, I don't really fancy one. I may decide it's indispensable after trying it, who knows? Loppers have always been my weapon of choice for light pruning.

I think the penny has just dropped, having watched the video. Perhaps he doesn't have English as a first language. He doesn't mean " engage ", he means " latch". He's complaining that the brake is permanently on/engaged, and he can't latch it back so it's free, and he can cut. Am I right? 🤔

Thanks for all the thoughts chaps. I appear to have been spoiled by the large capacity of the Fiskars, which is probably why I bought them initially. I found some no name ones on Amazon which I think will put me on until I find something which satisfies my needs on a more long term basis. I will have to get into the dealership and handle some.

Recommendations please. I have various big bypass loppers, mainly Fiskars, with a 50mm capacity. One pair suffered a mishap when I interrupted a power cable with them, and another one is heavily used/worn. Sadly, I don't think any of them have replaceable cutters, so am I now needing something new, really. I'd like at least 50mm capacity and replaceable cutters ideally. Telescopic handles less important than durability. Brand not too important, I just have had good service from Fiskars. Is there a better option than the LX98 ? I found a Fiskars US import at silly money, it's just whether I can get replacement cutters here. Thanks in advance.

When you're 40, you think you're old. 🙁 When you're 70, you think you're ( still ) young. Sadly, your body may expose the fallacy.

You young 'uns, always moaning. Did you really expect the area inhabited by us wrinklies to be a mile a minute roller coaster of excitement and intrigue? 😲

Now you're just being silly. 😛 Blair was/is just an evil self serving weasel. Starmer is basically incapable.

Not entirely unrelated, but I spent an unhappy few minutes checking every possible safety device that could prevent a forklift from moving when I had started it. Then I was told that to get it to move, you have to wiggle either the steering wheel, or a hydraulic lever, I forget which.

Well done that man. Isn't it curious and infuriating when you find that a part you thought was good turns out to be faulty. I once in my late teens had a Mk2 Cortina, and replaced the distributor cap and leads, to cure a misfire. It did, so I put the old cap and leads at the back of the shed. A neighbour's daughter came back from college with someone in a Mk1 GT estate. Apparently it had failed at some point, and been retrieved to a shed. We were asked to help, with little success. Mum had put Sunday dinner on the table, so we went back home, after giving the owner this old cap and leads, with the warning that it had caused issues on mine. We're sat enjoying Mum's cooking, when this green blur flashes past our window at high speed! Seems it worked just fine on his! Interestingly, Ford had two different distributor caps for those engines, looked and fitted identical, but the fixing clips were rotated quite a way. Threw the timing a mile out.

I once felled a bunch of willows round a pond, and stacked the trunks on a concrete base. I got so sick of seeing them sprouting, I gave them a dose of Roundup!

I just about remember being in my late teens, and having a mini. I think we all had one at some point, with whatever performance enhancing/aesthetically pleasing bits of your choice bolted on. This one had a vacuum gauge, and if you drove carefully, with it never leaving the green segment, you could go for miles on a cupful of petrol. However, if you drove with it firmly planted on the stop in the red sector, it wouldn't pass a petrol pump, especially with about a five gallon tank!

Once upon a time, our cough, licensed tipping site, cough, cough, was inhabited by cattle. We used to bring thorn hedge cuttings in, and before we could get the ropes off, they were tucking in to the stuff! They loved it.

I'm sorry, but having seen the cost of some of the hardware used to shoot down these cheap as chips drones, I've got this vision of a cost effective option being pilots in Fairey Swordfish or similar, with a navigator in the back with a pump action shotgun! 😉