Enthusiastic Amateur

[Medulla]

Hi, I just joined the forum this weekend and already found some very helpful people, thank you. I'm a full-time specialist nurse and help my partner out with his relatively newly-acquired farm on my days off. I've joined for a couple of reasons - primarily because we now have a Doosan excavator and a rotaskip, and neither of us have any experience prior to this of using or maintaining heavy plant and also because we're going to be undertaking various projects over the next few years and I find specialist forums a really useful source of information, as they are generally populated by people who have a wealth of practical knowledge and are happy to share it.
I anticipate that I'll be asking questions much more frequently than I'll be answering them! That being said, I'll try not to ask stupid questions I could easily find the answer to with a bit of Googling.

[Stock]

No such thing as a stupid question.............
We are here to help if we can but remember it's a two way street. You mention specialist nursing my one enquire as to what that is?

Where is the farm located general area only please, gives us an idea of the ground conditions and what type of projects are you planning on under taking............????
My next post will involve some method of torture if you fail to regale us with the appropriate info..............


Is that an all seeing eye of Mordor???

[Medulla]

I do pain management, so there's lots of potential for skills swaps there!

The farm is in Buckinghamshire and the ground has only really just dried out a few weeks ago from the wet winter - we had a four-week build of a large agricultural shed started last November and were only able to get the concrete floor in four weeks ago because it took so long for the ground to be dry enough so the job took seven months to complete in the end. The contractors used our excavator for some of the job and said it was a good buy, but we need to know how to keep it in good condition and what to look out for.

We're planning on doing ditching and there are a couple of dew ponds which we'd like to dig out, renovate and make into one big one. A new lambing shed is needed and I also might pick up a few pointers for renovating an Oxford Allen scythe I bought a few months ago. It's got a four stroke Villiers engine and still runs, but needs a proper overhaul. I suspect that I'll be joining a vintage farm machinery forum for that.

Is that enough info to avoid torture?

[Stock]

Well I was going to record a clip of me singing and doing the gangnam style dance on a loop and every time you logged on you would have to watch it........

Why did the shed take so long??

[Medulla]

First it rained so much the ground was too waterlogged to pour the concrete - the excavation just filled right up. Then it froze. Then it rained again. then it froze again...and repeat, basically. There were a couple of periods where the concrete could have gone in, just, but the contractors just had a massive backlog, as you can imagine, and so we just had to be patient. It's a big shed, 36 x 12 metres, and the ground had to be solid enough to get the lorries in. I'm sure we weren't the only ones waiting - I was talking to one of the contractors and he said he'd not worked for four months because of the conditions.

[Muz]

I also might pick up a few pointers for renovating an Oxford Allen scythe I bought a few months ago. It's got a four stroke Villiers engine and still runs, but needs a proper overhaul. I suspect that I'll be joining a vintage farm machinery forum for that.

Is that enough info to avoid torture?

Well you bought an Allen Oxford .... You're about to discover the true meaning of the word torture ...

[245dlc]

Well I was going to record a clip of me singing and doing the gangnam style dance on a loop and every time you logged on you would have to watch it........

Why did the shed take so long??

I'd pay to see that

[Dan]

Hi, I just joined the forum this weekend and already found some very helpful people, thank you.

Hi & welcome to the forum Medulla

[Dan]

Well you bought an Allen Oxford .... You're about to discover the true meaning of the word torture ...

Ah yes .. 6 foot long vibrating handlebars and a clutch that just doesent give up .. thought you were going to do yours up Muz ?

[Stock]

Ah yes .. 6 foot long vibrating handlebars and a clutch that just doesent give up .. thought you were going to do yours up Muz ?

Did he sell it to someone very far away in Berkshire I wonder.......

[Muz]

Lol guys .. no Ive still got it ... fortunately the blisters have healed too .. but boy .. they were sure big ones. Its the problem of the handlebars reciprocating with the cutter bar .. ... its vibration overload .. I used it for years and persevered with it, the float always stuck on the carb, the guvernor was set too low, the mixture was too lean, the HT lead leaked, everything went wrong with it... a good friend of mine looked at it and tweaked the guvernor and it transformed it ... that thing would whack straight through inch saplings .. it was brutal .. happy but scary memories

[Medulla]

My Allen scythe scares me too, I'm glad I'm not the only one, and mine has a lot of the same problems. The clutch drives me mad. I really like it though - it's got character. Reminds me of a Jack Russell Terrier I used to have who was a real little sod - grumpy, snappy and never stopped running.

[Muz]

Well it climbed over everything in its path .. we used it over rough grounds... so that didnt help, but those 2 foot odd tyres stopped at nothing .. it even used to heave boulders out of the ground.. or stop dead whilst trying, with the damn clutch jammed in ... I even overturned it once and it still wouldnt stop ..