5thelement

As it is the wife’s Birthday on Thursday I have treated her to a Vacuum Cleaner for her new car. They say you shouldn’t buy a woman anything with a plug on it, so I’ve bought her a battery one. This could go either way, but if it does go tits up at least when the dust settles she will have something to clean it up with.

Im more in the Willy Nelson camp, “You slow down you go down”.

Unfortunately I am climber and groundy on most of my jobs, still, at least were both reliable and turn up on time. 👍

I had initial problems when I first moved to France. Stopping work all at once and no longer doing Wing Chun 3 times a week. Started getting stiffness and back pain/injury from mundane things like weeding/splitting logs, couldn’t sleep or tie my shoe laces for the best part of a month. Started back doing my forms and long sessions on the Muk Jong until the work picked up. Back to climbing most days now and training in between, touch wood I’ve been injury free since, saying that, I think I would be aching after trying to do that tree in two hours. 👍

I spotted my first Swallows and House Martins feeding over the river at the weekend, the resident Swallows haven’t arrived at their nest site in my barn. The Hoopoe has made its usual flamboyant entrance into the garden and the Cuckoo’s have arrived, although only heard but not yet seen.

This, and the echo batteries are apparently wank, especially in cold weather.

I took care of some trees in a small orchard yesterday. Mostly using a silky and the powered secateurs, one battery lasted all day and I have 5 spare. Used the Felco’s for 10 minutes and could already notice the hand fatigue kicking in.

I know the first point of the WAHR, but we can obviously assume that that horse has well and truly bolted. A decision was made to WAH, was there a safer method than climbing, probably several, but none of them were used.

The decision was made to put a climber in the tree, are you saying that I am wrong to suggest a mewp would have been a safer option, if so, why?

Better than climbing it though?

Well I haven’t seen the video and I wasn’t there, so don’t know what machinery was on site and why the decision was made to climb the tree. But the decision to climb was chosen and using a mewp could have removed the situation where a climber is attached to the tree and gets badly injured.

I didn’t say a tracked mewp is the safest way to deal with a hung tree, just safer than making the decision to put a climber in it.

Hitch climber?

The first thing HSE will need is a thorough explanation as to why a tracked mewp wasn’t being used to dismantle the tree instead of climbing, costs overriding safety will never be accepted in a courtroom.

The Stihl Gta40 is my new favourite toy. I have been using it constantly on re-pollards, tight crowned reductions and fruit tree pruning. The best part of it is the light weight combined with the narrow profile as it hangs on the harness, the small batteries provide a very well balanced machine. Although it is intended to be used with both hands like any other top handle saw, it is really good for reaching out and cutting one handed. The only negatives I have found are the low chain spread doesn’t deliver as neat a finishing cut as my Echo 2511 and it tends to judder a little when using the pushing chain to cut. It’s purely a light pruning tool, if I want power I have petrol saws.