5thelement

I planted several species on an FC site in Kent. So far the Eucalyptus floribunda are the largest in height and girth, unbelievable growth rate actually.

I see ads for Paulownia planting for biomass here. Massive growth rate/volumes but pretty sure it looks and burns like Poplar. Stunning early flowers for the bees though.

Not all species of Eucalyptus coppice from the stump.

No phone handy but caught a glimpse of my first Swallows of the year this morning.

UK politics is currently like a competition to see who can front the worst leader and still get elected. The Tory’s have done many incredible job so far, but Labour are winning hands down with this waste of space.

You where climbing two ropes on two Prussics, mixed up hire kits, what kind of training place was this as it’s all starting to sound like horseshit?

If you don’t use the saw all the time the Stihl bar/chain combo will be fine then. It makes a massive improvement over the stock 241 and 261 .

They are missing a trick with this singular gauge size, maybe they will produce different gauges later. I would say this chain would be more widely used in Forestry rather than Arb, where most cutters use Husky’s on a different gauge.

The narrow kerf Sugi Hara bars are far superior and durable than the Stihl version, stiffer with far less flex.

I have an old snake charmers flute that I bought from a mystic in India, I play a tune and the rope ascends out of my bag and up through the tree to my desired anchor point, it’s not CE marked though.

Did the rest of the assessment go well. Schedule knowledge, pole rescue etc?

If you have been using it successfully, could you not hire it for the assessment?

Did you do any formal training? If so, where you not using a throw bag from the ground to at least get one of your anchor points set high?

The step cut, spear cut, 80-20 front cut have always been in this schedule( the split level and v-cut are extra in the CS31 schedule). They are to be described rather than being demonstrated in CS31. The purpose of these cuts in this situation was dealing with small diameter trees, dense/tangled canopy with no real bias or felling direction option, stuff you would be removing from your escape routes to allow access to the larger trees you intended to fell, or to remove trees from your felling direction. The 80% cut would be made horizontal, the remaining 20% would be expected to hold the tree from trapping the saw, the final cut would be angled (like the last part of the dogs tooth), if the tree sits down it shouldn’t trap the saw as it is angled, not flat. The tree is then lifted and walked out. I rarely use these cuts on anything 8” diameter, my rule is if the tree is big enough to form a hinge, that’s what I will do to gain control of the fell. An 8” Birch or Sweet chestnut on a coppice stool can be pretty tall/heavy, I would rather deliberately hang the tree, reduce the hinge and roll it out rather than use any of these non hinge/attached to the stump methods.

What are you asking here, you have written the description of the 80-20 front cut, it’s not a question. What is it you don’t understand?

That money was ring fenced from day one. I only know of MWMAC in Wales who got any. You can guarantee the large Forestry and Arb firms, Tilhill and the like got the bulk of the funding.

That is a fair size. Apparently the Romans used it to turn very thin walled drinking vessels for wine as it is watertight and holds its contents. Gave a similar piece to a turner friend who found it very bitty and hard to get a good finish.

He’s too ugly for BBC TV and can only do radio.

Started felling 200 boundary Oak trees on a farm, lots of fence wire, high fells and pretty poor form. Got the French cutters coming in next week to help so I have left them these.😉 IMG_3305.MOV IMG_3306.MOV IMG_3307.MOV

I found the best way to get a cutter to produce the best quality fencing material was to put them on the peeler for a couple of days. First day with good stuff that I had cut, second day, stuff they had produced with knuckles and double bends in, they don’t cut much crap after that. I cut some chestnut in Kent just before I moved over here, best I had ever cut, gun barrel straight, 4 rail blanks per stem before branches, all went to biomass.

Best thing is an anti spill spout and a spill mat to stop it going on the floor in the first place. Get yourself an old plastic tub like the ones you get trade emulsion in. Clean it out, a spill mat, put in a small bag of cat litter ( very absorbent) for any larger spills , a dustpan and brush, black bags and a few zip ties. Spill kit for less than a tenner.

I had to stop buying the mixed seed. Birds of several species would discard the seed they didn’t want in favour of the ones they did, leaving a pile of germinating seed in the flower beds and emptying quite a large feeder in an hour or two.

There are some of the earliest Blueberry cuttings from America in the National Pinetum In Kent. Planted on a bit of scrub/heather Heathland with high Scots Pine canopy, they do fine and I would regularly harvest them when doing felling work there. I had soil specific raised beds solely for them in my old place in the UK, kids ate them all before I even got a look in.

Loads of Goldfinch on my feeders, they are emptying the one containing sunflower hearts daily.

He won’t be Instructing LANTRA courses or Assessing for City and Guilds though. This is the problem with College based training, they are internally audited and appraised with no external regulator involved, they could be good, or pretty crap.