The All New Chipper Course... Has it gone legislation mad?

Running through the new Level 2 Award in Safe Use of Manually Fed Woodchippers course today (why do all the new qualifications have to have such long titles?), it struck just how much has changed from the 'old' chippers certificate. The new one is much better written, more logical and covers all the salient points - but legislation... getting the candidate to remember information on five different regulations on a one day short course is a bit much!

Or is it? We all know it's important to maintain health and safety standards - we work in a dangerous industry after all, and stupid 'mistakes' are still being made such as this example where a worker lost an arm in a chipper, and this example of an unsupervised and untrained teenager operating a chipper who lost his toes after pushing the brash into it. These aren't accidents from decades ago either... how is it there is still such ignorance about the law surrounding this equipment?

All of the new Level 2 Awards have a common thread through them - risk assessment, emergency planning, and legislation - and I think that's a good thing, but why does the Level 2 Woodchippers talk about the following NINE regulations...

• Management of Health & Safety At Work Act '99
• Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations '98
• Control of Vibration at Work Regulations '05
• Personal Protective Equipment Regulations '92
• Manual Handling Operations Regulations '92
• Noise at Work Regulations '89
• COSHH
• "Countryside and Wildlife Act '81" (shouldn't that be the Wildlife and Countryside Act anyway?
• RIDDOR

...when the Level 2 chainsaw maintenance and crosscutting only has:

• Health & Safety at Work Act
• PUWER
• AFAG guides (no mention of INDG317: Chainsaws At Work or the FISA guides which have taken over from some of the formally relevant AFAG guides)

No mention of RIDDOR there... and no mention of the PPE regulations either... or the manual handling regs, control of vibration, noise at work, or COSHH for that matter! All of which apply equally to using chainsaws as much as using the chipper.

Perhaps City & Guilds NPTC should consider separating out the legislative stuff and running it as a distinct assessment? Then enforcing refresher training on this.

What do you think?

Need a chainsaw trainer?

Apologies again for not putting up more posts - especially as we now have the new NPTC units to deliver. With the ending of the old CSnn units, and the creation of the new Level 2 and Level 3 Awards which came into force back in June, there have been some changes to the training. So, here on DriveLink we'll be taking a look at some of those changes, and also a 'new' felling cut that has appeared in the L2 Award in Felling and Processing Small Trees (was CS31).

But first, one of the reasons why I've not been posting on here is that I left my job as Forestry & Arboriculture Short Course Manager at Sparsholt College to go out on my own. At the time, I was busy with woodfuel and the wood heat industry, as well as continuing to deliver some training at Sparsholt.

This post then, is just to let you know that if you require a contract chainsaw trainer, please do get in touch with me directly on 0790 067 7715 or via the contact form to the right.

My experience:

I spent 8 years managing and delivering forestry and arboriculture short courses at Sparsholt College:

• CS30 / L2 Award in Chainsaw Maintenance & Cross-Cutting
• CS31 / L2 Award in Felling and Processing of Trees up to 380mm.
• CS32 / L3 Award in Felling and Processing of Trees over 380mm
• CS38 / L2 Award in Tree Climbing & Aerial Rescue
• CS39 / L3 Award in Aerial Cutting of Tress
• as well as stump grinding, woodchipper operations and MEWP operations.

I'm also a qualified teacher and mentor, holding QTLS, Cert. Ed. Certificated Mentor, BA(Hons) in Post Compulsory Education & Training, an NVQ assessor (A1), and a member of the Institute for Learning (M.IfL) and Associate Member of the Institute of Equality and Diversity Practitioners.

I have an excellent reputation for training, and believe in providing inclusive training to help everyone achieve their goals.

Contact me via the form on the right, or call me on 0790 067 7715 to discuss your training requirements.

Name Your Chain...

Until now, I've tried to keep it as unconfusing as I can - but I'll forgive you if you lose it a bit on this one. It's not(?) hard, it's just that each manufacturer has it's own terminology and that leads to confusion.

So, let's take a look, after the jump, at what all these odd terms that we find on the filing tables mean...

Whilst we were looking at the Oregon filing table did you notice that they didn't refer to the cutter profiles using the same names as we used earlier? No? Look again.

Let's take a look at the list below to see our naming convention, along with Oregon's (in red) and Stihl's (in green):

• Chisel: Round Ground Chisel: Super


• Semi-chisel: Micro Chisel: Micro


• Chipper: Chipper: Standard

Stihl also refer to their cutters as normal height and low profile, for which they use the terms "Rapid" and "Micro" respectively.

Chain components...

The chain you use for sawing will be made up of just a few components - but those components have a bearing on what the chain will be best suited to, and how safe it is.

Although there are many different types of chain, made for particular applications such as rip-cutting, cross-cutting, metal cutting, chains (for the moment at least) can be divided in to standard chains and safety chains.

A standard chain has the following components:

• Cutter: this, as the name may suggest, cuts the timber - but it also regulates how much timber is cut.


• Tie-Strap and Rivets: these hold the components together and the chain gets its flexibility from the use of rivets, in the same way a bicycle chain does.


• Drive Link: this performs several functions as it transfers drive from the engine, cleans the guide bar groove as the chain rotates and carries the oil to lubricate the chain and bar. This link must match the bar in use as several different sizes of chain are available.

The components above form a standard chain, but there is an additional chain component that can add to the safety of this item by smoothing out the cutting action, reducing vibration (and therefore whitefinger) and reducing the chance of kickback. This component is called a Guard Link and is really a modified drive link. This link has a sloping top, and it's position in front of and alongside the cutter helps the lift the wood up to the cutting edge.

Cutters come in a variety of profiles, which are best suited to particular applications and each has it's own advantage and disadvantage.

• The chisel profile is good for use in softwoods and it has a fast cutting action to slice through the timbers. This cutter profile is prone to dulling quickly and is therefore less durable than other types of cutter.


• At the other end of the extreme is the chipper profile, which is ideal for hardwoods, but has a slower cutting action. However, the advantage of this cutter is that it is more durable than the other types - and that potentially means less sharpening :-)


• In between these two types is the semi-chisel profile - this is a good all-rounder balancing the speed of cut of the chisel, with the durability of the chipper.

Next post... pitch and gauge.