Today's Job...

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Back again folks.
Despite not posting much lately I have spent a reasonable amount of time on the saws but mainly with the smaller Casuarinas as outlined above. I wanted to fell all the trees on the map prior to starting my new job on the 25th of March and still had around 700 odd left come Easter. I ended up getting my brother to come with me on Easter Monday as I require a spotter on this property if there are no employees working.
Having my brother there to move the vehicle up etc helped massively and I ended up dropping the remaining 700 trees in just on 5 hours. Despite only using smaller saws this is the highest number of trees per hour I've ever averaged (140/hr). I think my previous high was with my old Dolmar 5100-S early on in this thread at 120/hr. I used the 241C for the most part but ran the 550XP for around 100 of the larger trees.
One issue I have found and I've mentioned this elsewhere is that Husky filtration compared to the new Stihl HD2's is utter crap. The Casuarinas above are coated in dust due to the amount of machinery travelling up and down the tracks. The 241C's filter stopped the lot - the Husky let a massive amount through and they are now being oiled to stop it. Husqvarna need to play some serious catch up with their filters. The photos below show the Stihl with around 10 times more hours on it than the Husky. Remember too that a lot of this is REAL dust, not wood dust. This gear will end up causing premature wear. All Husqvarna have to do is run a dry paper element like the Dolmar HD or Stihl HD2 - it's not that hard or expensive!

MS241C



550XP






I also had to drop a boundary row of Eucalypts for a winegrape grower just down the road from my place. All I had to do was drop them and it took 2 1/2 hours. Nothing really tricky or overlay large. The guy got his son who was on holidays to cut the rest up with an 024 and 18" bar. Probably took him all week.






There was some good firewood in this lot for the owner.
 
I finally got out yesterday to drop that big Norfolk Island Pine that was mentioned earlier in this thread.
Beautiful tree and a shame but these things just get bigger and bigger then start dying when they hit about 50-70 years old. This tree was in prime condition. The local tree crew wanted $2500 to take this tree down WITHOUT getting rid of the wood. It took us around 11 minutes to get it on the ground and another 2 hours of cutting to limb it and cut it into pieces around 1-1.5 tonne for the loader to shift it. These guys have their own Vermeer chipper so they are going to clean up the smaller stuff this week.
All went well and the 390XP pulled the 36" bar and full chisel skip chain without a problem at all. It was a new Carlton A3LM chain and it was throwing some nice fat chips.

This was the tree...



In the video I disappear for a bit behind the tree but this was cutting the jack hole and I used a 20t bottle jack to get it over. We hooked a tractor up and chains for safety and we preloaded the chain before I started cutting but otherwise the jack and a few wedges did it easily considering it was leaning backwards a small amount.







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looks like he went behind the tree and took a leak half way through the job :msp_biggrin:

Also known as "MCW Weedkiller", guarenteed effect should the saw not work! And on this spot nothing will ever grow again... :D

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Been a while since I posted in this thread.

The first thing I'd like to say is that I'm pretty pis*ed off that since the hack all the Youtube links for videos I've posted in this thread are down. EXTREMELY pis*ed off. A lot of time was spent posting in this thread and it has been running over many years. The videos are all still on Youtube so not sure what has gone on. The photos are still up though but they only tell part of the story :(

Anyway have been continuing on felling Casuarinas for the same company and still a long way to go. Nearly all the larger trees are down so am now into the smaller Casuarinas which are actually quite boring and mundane. I loved felling the larger trees :)

Total tree count now is up over 40,000 and with the smaller trees like in the photos below I'm averaging around 80-90 an hour with the little 241C. Most of my time is spent hacking my way through lateral limbs to get to the trunk. The 241C is a great little saw and even stock it impresses me every time I use it. The 550XP's starting issues I mentioned earlier have somehow fixed themselves and apart from the poor filtration in dust and the lame arsed spike it is also a great little saw. I keep it as my backup on this job in case the 241 has an issue - which I doubt it will. As mentioned earlier despite the 550XP having a lot more power than the 241C the little Stihl is actually getting around 10% more trees down in the same time period through fuel economy alone.






I also had another funny thing happen. An old guy brings me this absolutely pristine 038AV saying it won't start on choke. He's been priming it with fuel in the carb to start for months. He'd had his local Stihl dealer look at it and they said "It's just an old saw, things like that happen". Anyway it turns out that the filter mounted choke wasn't working and a new filter fixed the problem. Unfortunately the nylon oil drive gear off the clutch was worn that much it was about to pack it in. I told this old bloke that he'd need new gears and at the same time I also converted it to a rim drive setup for him. $160 later and it's all good. Anyway he decides to cut a tree down and it sits back on the bar (Wedges? What are they?) and instead of trying to free it he's just sat on the throttle with the clutch slipping. The result is below and now he needs another $120 odd in parts. He's well aware that it was his fault. It takes a fair amount of heat to do this :)


 
Oh and also dropped a tree for my mum and dad in their back yard. If it wasn't family I would have left this one as it was tight but in the end it went where I wanted with some rope and a winch to hold it in line and I didn't wreck anything. I trimmed as much as I could with the HT131 pole saw but found that the trunk was rotten about 80% of the way through. I should have plunge cut it to check but ah well, all good in the end. I was lucky that I folded the clothesline up to start with or it would have been destroyed. I knew it would be close but not as close as it ended up being :)

 
Been a while since I posted in this thread.

The first thing I'd like to say is that I'm pretty pis*ed off that since the hack all the Youtube links for videos I've posted in this thread are down. EXTREMELY pis*ed off. A lot of time was spent posting in this thread and it has been running over many years. The videos are all still on Youtube so not sure what has gone on. The photos are still up though but they only tell part of the story :(

......

The software change after the hacking actually was what "killed" so much of the good stuff on here, not the hacking itself.
 
The software change after the hacking actually was what "killed" so much of the good stuff on here, not the hacking itself.

Good point Niko and I'm sure you are correct. It's a real shame as anybody who reads a lot of the older threads won't get the full story with video links being down.
Hope all going well over there in Norway? Warming up yet?
 
....
Hope all going well over there in Norway? Warming up yet?

Yes, it has been warming up some, but there still is some snow that needs to melt - as a lot fell in the later part of the winter.
I am still waiting for my ancle surgery though....
 
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