5thelement

It’s a bit hard to work out what you are actually asking, but I will give it a go. The groove on the bell housing in your hand lines up directly with the oil worm behind the clutch which drives the oil pump. If you shine a torch down the outside of the clutch you should see a piece of metal sticking out, locate the groove over it. If you can’t see anything sticking out, the end may have worn away/snapped off. You will need to remove the clutch to replace the worm.

I only used a grinder on harvester chain, mostly to remove damage and uniform the angles and cutter lengths. I would then put an edge on with the hand file. You have to be careful not to remove too much at once with the grinder otherwise you change the temper of the cutter, which can make it brittle and difficult to sharpen and it can leave ragged burrs, you also have to monitor the profile of the grinding disk and it adjust accordingly. Unless you are sharpening lots of chains/large chains I wouldn’t bother, just get some better glasses😉.

I have never experienced any shortage of climbers/groundies in the UK, quite the reverse, the UK is saturated with them. Colleges and training providers are spewing them out constantly, most of them thinking they are the finished article after a couple of months. Lots of them are up to their necks in debt after arranging cheap finance deals to buy shiney new kit that most people have spent years building up to owning, they then devalue the job by going in low simply to find the monthly finance repayments. Every decent climber with a good work ethic that I have worked with wants to go out on their own long term, which makes them virtually impossible to hold onto in an employed role. The rest are crap to mediocre (despite how they see themselves) and their payment in an employed role reflects their skill level and attitude. I have never heard of anyone using a recruitment agency to find Arb staff either. Most people I have worked with are head hunted through having a good reputation in the industry and through word of mouth.

Once they identify PR in plantations they usually clear fell the lot asap, in a bid to harvest at least some timber value. A lot of harvesters have been transported up North to deal with the extensive storm damage seen up there so NWR may be short on machines/drivers.

The main issue with leaving PR infected trees standing is the spores spread onto healthy trees each time they come back into leaf. The last block of Larch that I clear felled was only 10 acres, only half a dozen trees had been identified with the disease. Below the site was a large stand of Sweet chestnut, also susceptible to PR if left unchecked. I have never heard of any Larch being resistant to the disease.

The French election this year was no better. The French where calling it, “a choice between Cholera or Typhoid”. Has there ever been a worse group of politicians in office and in opposition in the UK? I can’t think of any in my lifetime, what a shit state of affairs.

Fury v Usyk would be a great fight. Both have fantastic boxing brains and great movement for big men. I think Fury has the shear height, size and reach, combined with great jab and hand speed to put Usyk in serious problems. I would have Fury for the win. AJ could fight the Bronze Bummer, hopefully he could put the misery guts on his arse then face Fury for the belts, a Fury win over AJ would certainly be the perfect time for him to retire unbeaten.

I don’t think the fight will go past 8 rounds this time. If AJ wants the belts back he is going to have to come out blazing and keep the pace up, chase his man down and use his weight advantage. It is a gamble though, if he runs out of steam and Usyk is still standing, it’s game over. AJ can’t use the same game plan and box Usyk like he did last time and expect a different outcome, hopefully he learned something in the last fight and has trained accordingly. I still favour Usyk though.

I visited a local Fete the other day and came across this chainsaw repair guy. He has over 500 saws in his collection so this is just a handful. I fired up the 160cc Dolmar, it ran sweet and sounded like a motor cross bike, an early Stihl top handle, the red planking saw is British and powered by compressed air, the yellow planking saw is from Japan and it rotates 90 degrees.

I reckon they have been developing for about 8-10 weeks now, full sun and outside grown. It has been unusually warm for an extended period, 30 degrees for most of the last three months with highs of 40 plus, it’s only rained about three times in that period.

It’s not going to win any prizes for beauty but is certainly the biggest tomato that I have grown. The first time that I have grown this variety (Inca), they are absolutely heaving with fruit, massive yield with solid flesh and great flavour. Just weighed in at 750g.

That tree doesn’t look anywhere near 35ft and I would doubt it is doing any damage to the house. It’s more likely down to movement/soil shrinking around your building. Prune it in the Summer, not Winter.

If I remember it right, he also did the voice of a Sweaty Sock Womble called Nessy, maybe that’s the main issue Andy has, robbing hard working Jocks of their regional accents?

Picked the first of the baby corn. Certainly better than any I have grown previously, 4-5 per plant, not far off the standard sweetcorn in size.

Where about in rural France are you moving to, it’s a huge place? I am a Forestry Instructor based in Charente/Vienne, I could train you here if the distance isn’t too great.

It looks like one of the many dwarf apples in the Malus domestica family, at a guess I would say ‘Spartan’.

My point is that we have a long history of creating spectacular feats of Enginneering in some of the worlds most inhospitable places yet are getting all hysterical over doing a bit of tree work in a couple of days of hot weather.

You seem to have omitted the thousands of Irish navvies who helped build the extensive canal and rail networks from your list of slaves, do they not count as their skin is too white?

The temperature went from 18 to 28 degrees pretty much overnight, so no time to acclimatise, just get on with it. I am from Manchester, I’m not used to this heat and you don’t just get acclimatised to it, you just adjust your working methods to suit it, like we did when we built an Empire.

I’ve been working in higher temperatures than will hit the UK for two months now, it will be 40 degrees plus here tomorrow. Plenty of liquids, regular breaks in the shade, change jobs around if possible but just crack on, unless you are made of chocolate.

What is the current retail price of a Jo Beau M500. I’ve been trawling the net to no avail. Are there any better machines with the same, or similar specifications on the market. TIA.

Oddly enough I have struggled to find suitable wind blown sites for years to conduct training/assessments on, certainly in the SE. Had loads of people wanting to train but no sites, been sending them over to Wales. With the scale of the current situation, the only efficient way to clear the backlog is by machines, with hand cutters clearing out poor access sites and oversized butts. I agree with Spuddog, by the time this timber is cut and extracted the majority will all be chip wood.

I can’t see why the UK Ash stock will fair any better than the rest of the EU countries affected. I seem to remember Scandinavia calculated less than 6% showing resilience.

I bought a new Toro Turfmaster in the UK before I headed out to France, cost me a grand on eBay, €2400 here. Twin blade, 76cm cut, Kawasaki commercial engine. It has the option for collection bag or side eject mulcher. One thing I really like is the engine keeps running without the blades being engaged whilst you empty the bag, saves a lot of stop/starting. Had it a year, cutting an acre twice a week, never dropped a beat so far.