Day-glo paint and duct tape helps me to keep from finding tools later with the mower.
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Day-glo paint and duct tape helps me to keep from finding tools later with the mower.
True that. Which is why, in Canada I keep all of my hand tools organized in the organizer on one of the buckets. There is nothing worse to me than going to the third floor to fix something and discovering that I have to go down to the basement and outside to the shed where the tools are stored when I realize that I have brought the wrong sized Philips head driver or forgot the needle nose. It sort of keeps them put away and organized yet allows for male pattern blindness and forgetfulness. The smaller place at the ocean, yeah carry what I need because it is handy to go back and exchange the tool for the right one. There you just gotta make sure stuff doesn't fall through the deck cracks to the dark sand down below. I learned that one should never do bike repairs on the deck that way. But that's a different although related thread.
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Mrs. RW rolled out her new wheels this morning, after 30+ years of using my old wheelbarrows.
Holy cow do I miss my Garden Way cart. Passed to me from Mom and used to it's death. Incredibly useful.
No comparison Dan...extremely stable because of the two wheels and long wheel base and it takes a decent load. Our yards has some hilly spots and I don’t worry about it tipping. The website has other models as well.
https://www.smartcarts.com/
My wife and I just spent 4 hours assaulting bittersweet vine in a corner of the property. I think I pulled up several miles of roots. Tha basstids.
It takes me a while. Need to get through the hemming and hawing and hand wringing. Our landscapers are going to give me a couple lessons just to make sure I am doing it right. I already don't like the helmet. I have chaps hung up in the garage. I was going to get non-Stihl brand chaps but my wife wouldn't let me out of the store without them. She does what she needs to in order to keep me among the living.
With the battery in, the saw feels nicely balanced but has some heft to it.
I also got a string trimmer that works with the same batteries but uses a remote connector cable for the battery that is out of stock at Stihl. I used the same string trimmer at our Hillsdale landlord's house, and it is a real beast so that will definitely come in handy.
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https://roguehoe.com/product/60h-2/
Picked up a rogue hoe for yard and garden work. Heavy duty for sure.
You did good. You won't miss the noise and fumes.
Some friends- timber framers- like Petzyl: https://www.petzl.com/US/en/Professional/Helmets
If I get logging pants as opposed to chaps- mine are Stihl and are very cut up at this point- I will buy these.
If I get logging pants as opposed to chaps- mine are Stihl and are very cut up at this point- I will buy these.[/QUOTE]
https://goclogger.com/
forgot to paste the link
Look at "Carts Vermont" because they do two supports on either side instead of one across. I have one with one across, in the old days I used one with them on either side where you don't bang your ankles on them if you're not careful.
Lots of "ow, dammit" with the one I have.
Jorn- I'd be interested to know why you chose the model you did and what your initial impressions are. The more thought I give it, the more sense an electric saw makes to me: I can take it when I walk with the dogs to do maintain trails. I went on the Stihl site not expecting to find an abundance of choices, which there are.
Repairing small engines has become somewhat of a hobby for me.
I bought a 362 with a scored piston this winter and rebuilt. Took a couple hours to go over everything really carefully. Easy.
Also have had an FS280 brush cutter for a couple years that lost spark. New ignition coil and it runs like a champ.
It feels good to take care of this stuff.
Tomorrow I'm hoping to snag a Stihl KM131R that supposedly only needs a new pull starter. Then its a whole bevy of Kombi attachments to do tree pruning, hedge trimming, etc.
Looking to purchase my first Dremelesque tool and I am leaning toward cordless, such as the Dremel 8220...any advice?
https://us.dremel.com/en_US/products...mance-cordless
why cordless?
personally, i use a dremel a couple times a year, maybe. for infrequent use, the burden of keeping a battery charged and available makes no sense. corded tools work year after year after year, where as battery tools eventually succumb to obsolete battery standards, shorted batteries and otherwise uselessness. the nature of "stuff" i do with a dremel lends itself to being near an outlet so cordlessness is not really a big advantage for me.
my cordless drill is invaluable to me and i use it practically every day around the house, but for a tool like a dremel that sees use once in a while - corded is my preferred choice.
just a thought.
Seems apropos for vsalon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhcH2DATU2E
disclaimer: I follow RSW on YT.
I picked the MSA 220 CB because it is the first Stihl electric that comes with a 16" bar and it has the newest electric motor from Stihl, built around the AP300s battery. The AP300s has about 35 minutes of run time with the 220. Today I charged one of the batteries in about 30 minutes. Average is supposed to be 30-45 minutes. So that means two batteries is plenty for what I plan to do with it. My use will be high for very short periods of time. Afterwards it may sit for a while. So I didn't want to deal with a gas engine. I'm pretty good at taking care of stuff, but I don't want to deal with small gas motors, not for what I'm going to do with it. I just need a firewood saw essentially. I am not going to be cutting down trees. With all the ash around, they just keel over. This will work in a pinch if I need to move something that has fallen across the driveway or needs cleanup somewhere back in the woods, but I am not taking down one of our +80' pines or a big maple or oak. I'll hire someone who does that sort of work. Storm cleanup, cutting firewood, maybe cut a fence post or two or three, that sort of thing is what I'll be doing. Plus I can use the batteries in the string trimmer I got. That will likely see more duty than the chainsaw actually. Keeping the paths clean, mowing down the mustard before it goes to seed, trimming grass along the drive, behavior modification for some of the blackberry and raspberry thickets. With the battery it is about the same weight as the MS 250 gas saw @ 11lbs. I don't know how to compare it in engine size to gas, but electric motors often seem to have loads more torque than they do horsepower. And it isn't quiet but it isn't a motor noise loud either. So we'll see. Basically a big experiment.
This saw is supposed to be equivalent to the 250, but I don't really know how you compare motors. I really don't want to take on a big tree with a chainsaw. I could probably do it in the middle of a wide open field, but there isn't anything wide open about our property so inevitably the domino effect applies. I really don't want to become a domino.
I think I used up all my patience for motor repair on my Volkswagens - Beetle and Golf. But I understand the attraction of taking one apart and getting it back together again in good working order. Something very satisfying about making something go. And the self-reliance factor also. If I felt like it was important, I definitely would have bought a 250 and studied how to keep it going forever if possible.
I have a Proxxon. It is wired. I bought it now about 10 or 15 years ago. At the time, it was lighter and had a higher rpm than the Dremel. I thought it felt better in the hand. Very smooth. Negligible gyroscopic effect. Very stable. Also I think the RPM dial is away from your hand on the Proxxon. The Dremel's knob was down where the hand grip was. The Proxxon location made more sense to me. There are some chores that only a rotary tool can do, and I probably find those 2-3 times a year. Always a good day when I get to take it out of its box.
I haven't seen the battery ones. I don't even think there was a battery model when I bought mine.
I walk the dogs around our place every day and pass myriad opportunities to clean up the trail, limbs down and the like. A battery powered saw would be the best tool for these jobs.
Gas saws are unpleasant to use. Full stop.
Like you, I have a lot of standing dead ash. There are dozens of them along a fence line by one of the hay fields, and some of them its easier to just bring down preventatively than be constantly cleaning up sticks and branches, or worse - have them take out the younger trees (maple, walnut, hickory, cherry) growing up around them. They're generally leaning towards the field anyway, so its just a question of whether or not they are going to twist at all of their way down.
Just seeing this now, @Too Tall . If you really want to rehome your Dolmar in earnest, let me know. I'm guessing we could come to an understanding on terms and conditions.
We just got a real humdinger of a storm. Started out with the sky going black, then this crazy wind. At one point all the cushions on our outdoor furniture levitated and then flopped back down. I heard a "whump" in the forest and went into the bedroom to see if it was close. Just as I walked in, one of the pines over the septic field kind of pivoted and then snapped in half. Another whump. Then it started raining. Then snowing. Now seems relatively calm. Tomorrow we get 20 mph winds during the day.
But the tree down on the septic field means I get to use my shiny new chainsaw tomorrow. I'll report the results from my hospital bed.
A proper New England, third-week-of-April day:
Sun enough first thing to recreate outdoors and arrive back at the car as the heavens open and torrents fall.
Back home thunder in abundance, shaking the house while hail teems off the roof.
Going out for firewood now snow falls, drifting without a care in the world.
It beats the cut off low snizzling for 10 days at 42 degrees 30 degree dewpoint. At least its something different every day and as noted in every day.
Spring storm this week corkscrewed a pine right off its foundations. I saw it go. Almost like the wind lifted it up and then set it down, and then the upper 3/4's of the tree landed on the septic field. I limbed it yesterday but the winds were still thrashing the trees so I left cutting up the trunk for today. Saw worked really well. Very smooth and easy to control. It was a pine though, not a gnarly old hardwood. I think I spent more time afterwards cleaning all the pine sap-filled sawdust off the saw, me and my gloves. Took the bar and chain off and cleaned there as well. So far so good.
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That tree was healthy- no sign of red rot. I had a few tops come off, but there were obvious reasons.
I think this tree got whacked by another tree earlier in the process of clearing. On the right side of the photo, there is a longer section with an old wound of removed the bark almost its entire length. And then in the back are the shards that were the section between that and the remaining trunk left standing. So I suspect there was an internal separation/weakening caused by that impact and the wind just hit it the right way one too many times, and that section came apart.
But yeah, I don't think this is the last tree to go down, but I hope we're close to the end.
We felt another boom during the height of the storm, but I haven't located the tree it came from. We'll go on a walk tomorrow morning and see what surprises are in the forest. Sometimes these things go down so perfectly you'd think they were placed there. And then other times it looks like they went down spinning like a propeller, taking out with anything and everything. Tree pinball.
I just hope I am never underneath when one comes down. That pine was not thick but the lower several of the sections I had to roll with the peavey to get them out of the way. Amazing how heavy a tree can be.
We get lightning often, with sometimes spectacular results: a 100' pine turned into matchsticks when struck. Water becomes steam and kablooie.