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Thinking about doing a chainsaw training course but not sure which todo...
It's hard for me to get too much time off in the week so I was keen to do the 2 day course but I'd ideally be wanting to fell fairly large trees on my own land (for personal use) and it sounds like the longer course would be more suited?
Any instructors or people with experience about? do I need to do the course? Would I learn enough from a professional coming to the land and showing me for a day not to chop my bollocks off?
Thanks
Alex
Depends on your practicality, I've worked with trained and certified operators that I wouldn't stand too near and seen less experienced people do a better job.
Worth getting some proper instruction on how to maintain, highlight danger areas and safe approach. Just need to find a source you can trust, which is often a trainer. No need for you to be assessed if doing it for yourself.
I have just signed up for the two day course alexxx, doing it in September so will let you know.
Am in a similar situation to you, have some land, never used a saw before and want to maintain land/prep firewood.
I spent just over 4 years in the forestry industry, these guys are the best in the business:
Training can be expensive if it's good but as said above, on your own land you don't need the assessment.
Cutting firewood you just need some maintenance training and cross cutting etc. not too much to go wrong with some simple technique and tuition if you're practically minded.
Felling trees is the really dangerous bit. If it's large trees there's plenty of potential for things to go wrong very quickly. It's not generally the chainsaw that gets you but something falling on your head, shoulder, arm, back etc.
A fairly small dead branch dislodged from a height can seriously injure or kill you. I've known very experienced operators with updated training, good equipment and a lot of skill get whacked by things like falling deadwood, pinned scrub etc after Doug the same thing day in day out for yrs.
Unfortunately I think even with training it's the time afterwards where you learn the most usually under the watchful eye of an experienced mentor who can answer the questions you have and point you in the right direction.
It's really a big ask to pick up skills on a week long course and then not use them day in day out and remember them when you next need them.
See if you can get someone friendly in to give you some pointers and watch you after the training in exchange for some free wood or some other barter.
It might be helpful if they felled the trees and took the tension out of them for you and you just learnt how to use the saw on the crosscut ting of the logs.
Thanks guys - wise words. The hw place is one of the option of where I was going to go for training so I think I'll do that!
Also try your local agricultural college thats where i tried some cheaper courses at weekends just waiting for a date