cyberstag

As a deer farmer we are used to knocking in tall posts, corral walling is using 12 foot timber posts. Friend of mine has done all his deer fencing using motorway crash barriers as strainers. they are 15 foot long and he has knocked them in 8-9 feet using his post driver, and that is into shillet, he only had a few where he had to cut a bit off the top. You should be able knock RSJs in ok with a decent post driver. Mine has a 14 foot mast and a 270 kilo hammer. As said before just make frequent adjustments to keep them plumb.

I have a log peeling attachment for sale (I hope it's ok to put this here) I have used it to peel about 12 tons of Larch poles for deer fencing and do not need it any longer. Here are a few pics to show what it can do. You can see info on www.lahzit.ee including prices etc. The blades are expensive because they are top quality Japanese steel and they certainly do the job. I did break one blade but that was my fault so there are 5 new ones included in the box as well as the 3 on the disc. I would like £285 posted for the kit if anyone is interested. Thanks for looking. John

That's interesting. I have fenced over 70 properties for deer and I also design and sell complete deer handling systems; that is raceways, corrals and a building with all the penning to sort, weigh etc and recently developed my own hydraulic crush for the jobs like de-antering and artificial insemination. Did the deer eat all the larch bark or just knock it off? If they ate it how hungry were they? I only have 100 acres and when fully stocked would be up around 300 deer at the end of summer. Now supposed to be semi-retired but as you know farmers never retire, we just work slower😀

The peeling disc came from www.lahzit.ee There is a video on his website, good chap to deal with. Here is the peeling cradle upside down showing the drive mechanism I cobbled together for it and subsequently abandoned. I could just make a better job without rotation, partly because I couldn't run it slow enough from the tractor hydraulics and was too mean to have the tractor running at idle speed for hours on end. Wheels and axles came from neighbours scrap heap, hydraulic motor and bearings were kicking around in my workshop, all I had to buy was 2 lengths of box section. Here it is in working position. It wasn't particularly hard work as the poles are at the right height when on the cradle but I did need a good thick leather apron to protect against high speed chips and chunks.

I don't know if this would be useful to anyone here but I had to peel a couple of hundred poles for deer fencing recently. My own deer fencing has been up for 32 years now and I am just beginning to get some stakes going rotten. These were all tantalised by Calders and Grandidge back in the day when timber treatment actually worked. I used to buy peeled and pointed from the forest and dry them for a year before treatment. I will not waste money on modern treatment other than pukka Creosote but that has got prohibitively expensive. So a neighbouring farmer was having a larch plantation thinned and I bought about 200 plus stakes and strainer posts. I bought a disc to go on a 9 inch angle grinder and peeled them all myself. I made up a cradle with 4 wheels and originally had it rotating with a hydraulic motor but that was not wonderfully successful so took the motor off and just rotate the logs by hand. Here is the peeler And the poles I have just bought a tank that will take the lengths and will order an IBC of creosote and give them the 10 day immersion treatment. Very satisfying to have the timber come from next door and do the work myself. Keep it local! John

Thanks for that.

I have been looking at the Mityvac but seem to be only from the US and import charges and duty are a bit of an unknown quantity. Do you know if they are available here at all? That's a good tip with a piston stop, I have heard of people butchering an old spark plug to the same effect.

I have just joined so this is by way of introducing myself. I am a deer farmer in Devon and also used to be a fencing contractor so have been using saws for years. All saws are Stihl and currently have an 041AV which was my dad's and must be 40 plus years old; still running ok. Next is an 038 AV which was running until a few weeks ago and is in pieces at the moment waiting for me to put a 50mm pot and piston on it plus crank seals. Also have an old 009 still working away, and an MS 181-ce which is my least favourite saw. My best saw has been the 024 AV but it has recently died. I have just cleaned up the piston and pot which may just last a bit longer but will probably do the seals too. Not worth spending much money on but it has the Stihl hedge trimmer attachment which is brilliant. I would like to buy a pressure and vac testing kit as I think it is air leaks that have caused the pistons to score. You can never have too many tools and I don't have much confidence in chainsaw dealers. I have read a lot of stuff here before joining and am impressed by the helpfulness of the members. I wonder which part of the country Spud is in, he would definitely be worth a visit.