5thelement

Don’t forget to use it in exactly the opposite way to what the manufactures who designed it say.😉

Yes, the maxi flex has no memory, no one will be decapitated if the strop comes off.

It is in Lancashire.😂

The genuine ‘maxi flex’ cable recommended for use with a genuine Tirfir has no ‘memory’, so won’t fly back at high speed if it suddenly disconnects, it just moves back slightly and hits the floor, that’s why I don’t stand right on top of the object being pulled. These winches where designed to be operated as per manufacturers recommendations for a reason.

You could just put a pulley on the anchor tree and increase the mechanical advantage by nearly double, twice as less strain on the handle.

It looks like you have that winch set up backwards?

I have had Australian guys come over to the Uk in the past with the equivalent qualifications, although they demonstrated a lot of different techniques, particularly with felling. All went on to do the equivalent NPTC certification to be at a standard that would be widely recognised by UK employers. None of them required much in the way of training. There are assessment questions on UK legislation/HSE/Puwer/Loler etc that they were not familiar with, they just downloaded the NPTC assessment schedules and I went through it with them and familiarised them with some of the more widely used felling cuts. As an experienced climber I would recommend you do a couple of days on a refresher course, just to get your head around the two rope working system required here for the assessment, this will also allow the instructor to cover all the assessment questions and legal stuff with you. Where do you intend to settle in the UK?

The Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester run Forestry and Arb courses, short and long term. Tim Bendle is a LANTRA/NPTC Verifyer and H-Team member, he runs the courses there. You could send some details/photos of the trees/site etc, most training providers are constantly on the look out for good quality training material.

Chestnut will coppice well from maiden trees at this size. Unfortunately these trees where on a nature reserve that was being managed for Lowland Heath so they never got the chance to regenerate. A mulcher went through an followed us up after extraction

This is the only example of stored coppice that I can remember working on. The Sweet chestnut coppice stools had been singled out around 50 years previously. The stems where all drawn up straight and clean with no shake. B9B326D9-DC66-4594-BFE5-26E3299BE003.MOV

I was looking for a decade in East Sussex, never found anything suitable and a minimum of 10 grand an acre. The last site I looked at was 1 acre, terrible access, terrible standing timber, not a flat section anywhere on the land, sold the same day for 18 grand. Good luck.

Just remembered, there is also Rob Blake (Blake Training) Ex- NPTC Principal Verifyer, Somerset.

I am out at the minute, you could contact him on Instagram, he is listed as T4rry As Steve has posted, Roland Heming is in your area, I don’t know him but he has a good reputation and his own training site with digs.

That is a very lucky sighting indeed. I’ve seen a few on the water fishing but never seen one actually catch. Fantastic.

I don’t think you would mistake a White tailed Eagle for a Buzzard, they are huge in comparison. I used to see them a lot when I travelled home on the boat from Skye to North Uist. I have never seen a WTE in England, I have seen Osprey in Scotland and in Cumbria, and Buzzards don’t hunt fish.

That must be an Osprey surely?

Stubbys first car was what the illustrator of The Flintstones used as the basis for Fred’s.

The nearest guy I know is Terry Banyard, Dorset based, runs courses regularly and one of the best in the business.

If you intend to use the certificate to enter full time employment you will need a pro saw. Any 50cc saw with a max 15” guide will be suitable. Stihl 261, Husqvarna 550xp, but you could also look at Dolmar/Makita and Echo. I would suggest that whatever saw you purchase you have it fitted with a semi chisel chain, if you are training in hardwoods and doing bore cuts you may struggle with full chisel. You will need a filling kit for the saw, buy a magnetic file guide(about £6) and a Vernier calliper for measuring the cutter lengths ( screw fix do a decent pair for about £15), these will help you to sharpen spot on. A few spare bits like a spark plug/break band and a clean soft paintbrush for cleaning the dust off the air filter. When it comes to PPE, get the best you can afford, try and visit somewhere like Honey Brothers/ Fr Jones where you can try the stuff on rather than ordering from the internet, nothing worse than poor fitting PPE. You might be better off with a pair of type ‘C’ trousers for now, especially if you intend to climb down the line.

You cant be assessed using a chainsaw in the tree if you don’t hold the felling small trees ticket. If you have the old CS30/31 maintenance/cross cutting/felling then crack on, but if you only have the maintenance/cross cutting part you need to do the felling ticket first.

We would always finish the harvester chains off by hand file after using the grinder for exactly this reason. The grinder was largely used to uniform/resize the damaged cutters rather than sharpen them.

Have you got a stone to re-profile the grinding disk? I have only used a grinder to reshape and sharpen harvester chains, I would have to reshape the disk occasionally to get the desired result in the cutter.

I have never had any improvements in ripening by removing the leaves. I did it twice as an experiment, one side of the greenhouse had the leaves removed, the other not, the ones with leaves ripened the same and where better sized. I generally remove the tops at 4-5 bunches of flowers if outside, 6-7 bunches if in the polytunnel.

But it’s all for the greater good Rob….😉

Have you used you log moulder yet Andy? Don’t get banned before you do and post your results please.