wills-mill

Brilliant, talk to Clare Prosser. Always excellent service, lots of fabric choice and very helpful. They have all sorts of standard sized heavy duty tarps on the website, well worth the money. I made up a canopy for a firewood processor this year with one of their market stall stripey jobs, it's quite a nice light and airy place to be. 2 different A-frame jobs below. W

What's the surface of the wheels on your mill? Is it V-belts in a groove like a Woodmizer, or rubber bonded on to steel. There may be grot built up under the V-belt or the surface may be deformed? Can you give us an idea of when the bands jump off? before, during, after cut?

£5 million PL and £10 million EL is under £900 per annum with one of the suppliers mentioned above £1 million public liability would bring that down I would imagine.

Do Guilliets use a set of weights to strain the band? That's how Stenners do it....

Sawing softwoods is much harder for the saw IMO. Clogging dust, naughty sap, rings of rock hard resinous knots, cheeky band squeezing Larch- it all goes on and makes much more work for the band. I think there's a bit of difference in the use of the word 'tension': Winding the blade up tight between the wheels was usually known as 'straining' the blade for big old bandmills. Stretching and setting the body of the blade (on the saw doctors bench) so that it tracks well and holds the teeth tight and straight when put on a crowned wheel is/was called tensioning. Again, I've only fairly limited wide band experience, but we did notice (when strapping the bands up to go for sharpening) that some of the bands that seemed to have decent teeth but still messed around would not sit nice and flat on the floor when taken off the saw. When they were sat with the width of the band flat on the floor, there are definitely some bands that undulated up and down off the floor and had floppy sections. We've just moved house and everything's boxed up, but I'll try and scan some bits out of this book: The Art of Saw Doctoring Wide Bandsaws by Simmonds a - AbeBooks It's good some good explanations of some of the things that go into manually looking after bands, even though the author admits that there are plenty of different opinions and ways to do things. It at least taught me that I never want to try and do my own wide bands.

I've just spotted that Uncle Gruber has got some lovely blocks, decent loads and sized for smaller winch cables 'Umlenkrolle' is the magic word- Suchergebnisse für: 'umlenkrolle' - Grube KG http://www.grube.de/nordforest-pulley-sr-fs16-160-kn-16-t-payload-44-306.html

It's all a bit of a dark art, nothing is very obvious with wide bands as far as I can tell. I have found (in my limited experience) that having really good tight scrapers, oiling pads and brushes rubbing on the wheels stops grots and dust building up on the bands (which then causes tightness at the guides and heat/distortion). As far as I remember, Stenner recommend a fag paper clearance for guides that are just hardwood blocks, and lightly touching for Chaco blocks, which are a hard black plastic material. Are you cutting any different timber to normal, anything that might have picked up dust when stacked beside a farm track or road, or grown in a different wood on different soils? I'm always suspicious of resinous softwoods that have been sat around and have a load of ooze on the endgrain- it picks up abrasive dust so easily.

OK, fair enough I see where you are coming from. It's easy cutting without any real complication, with timber that isn't likely to be defective <cough, Oak> Larch and Doug aren't far off that cost down this way, and we've done plenty of jobs where we charge £4 a ft3 per ft produced out on site, so it stacks up. It looks like you manage to sell decent quantities of your hardwoods at a time, which is great. It's all too easy to spend hours dismantling the yard for someone to spend £20 (although I'm sure you get that as well!). W

That is super cheap! Sounds like £7 a cubic ft- I'm nosey enough to ask if that is a viable local price for you, Big J? I'm also presuming that the customer has to order enough for overlap, rather than you including it in the price?

Is your Guilliet a big old machine- does it run with wide bands with swaged teeth? They are much more complex to get right than a narrow band, I suspect that you're right to be worried about the tensioning, a few otherideas below: Have they been ground heavily so that they all have a serious burr on one side of the teeth? Are your guide blocks set nice and tight, wheels are clean and scrapers and oilers working well? Are you tracking the blade out from the wheel too far or even too close to the wheel so the teeth are getting hammered out of shape? I do get the feeling that hands-on saw doctoring has given way to more automated tackle that is run by operatives who do not understand sawing so well. My experience is that it's fairly easy to find someone to put on a good tooth edge and setup, but if it comes to crack repairs and work tensioning the body of the blade then you can be in difficulty. I noticed that BSW in Scotland are taking on saw doctoring apprentices. Good on 'em!

Landwirt is an Austrian farm and forest technical site, their videos are always a good watch for different ways of doing things and Euro techniques, lots of mountainside and small equipment work as well as the big stuff. My German is pretty much non existent, if you've any questions perhaps someone with a bit more knowledge will step in: Anti rollover system for radio controlled winching Tractor winch test procedure 6 ton range Interesting front mount crane (uses loader frame) and rear winch Ditch grinder/ cleaner Biofuel day with crackers and nippers and chippers and some nice bandtracks for rubber ducks Stunning skyline and processor combo

Morning all. Does the National Trust still require £5 million PL from contractors? It hasn't gone up has it?

You have to narrow your eyes a bit, just like Clint Eastwood. Then they get the message.

Sounds fair enough, as long as we can have it in writing I need to come and see you at some point soon Jim, so I'll see what you've got available.

Specifically- It will rot off and snap like a carrot within a year. Specifically, the swinging gym member will plummet to the floor and be walloped by the descending Hornbeam. If you have plenty of it, you might be best selling it for lovely firewood and/or swapping some hornbeam for Sweet Chestnut posts. Which will not follow the same rot + plummet curve.

I suppose the question we should be asking is "what's the WLL of 13mm wire rope" then go from there. EDIT: Mainco Wire Ropes Ltd, Wire Rope Specialists | MWR - Wire rope breaking load tables That gives a SWL of 2 tonnes ish. For lifting/hoisting (rated at a fifth of the breaking strain). Any idea what that is stretched out to for plain old dragging? This problem is going to run and run.

Thanks Jon I've just done the sensible thing and had a search around- found this little lot- http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/general-chat/56220-snatch-block-winch-how-large-do-i-need-2.html

Evening all, What sort of loading factor are forestry winches rated at? A '6 tonne' winch is not a lifting tool capable of lifting 6 tonne, so what do you do when it comes sizing snatch blocks, which are usually rated as per lifting gear? Heaviest usage for a forestry winch would be using a snatch block attached to the load and the end of the winch line brought back to anchor point near to tractor- so doubling the line pull I believe at the snatch block. I've been looking at an 8 tonne forestry winch, but how necessary is it to use a rated lifting snatch block with a 16 tonne WLL? The winches seem to use a 12 or 13mm wire rope, and the snatch blocks (for 'just' 8t) are on 16 to 19mm rope or above. The 15t block in the link below is for 19 to 22mm wire rope. Is it all academic? Is tractor stability the biggest limiting factor? http://www.liftingsafety.co.uk/product/heavy-duty-rigging-snatch-block-2808.html

I was beaten to that magic word- 'internship'

Sticky suckers that's for sure. I've had a session milling Grandis recently for some workshop studwork and cladding. Pretty decent stuff if it's not too knotty.

Well done, all very tidy and jolly! That beacon on the winch tractor goes round reeeallly slowly

There are some weird categories, all are very American.... Sorry, I can't help- is there one for a fuel supplier or merchant?

Well, it's got Husqvarna cast into the bottom, so to show off to your dinner guests, all you have to do is flip it over and dump your stew on the table The only bit of cooking designer bling I've got is a Jotul cast frying pan that was in a big rusty heap at the Great Dorset Steam Fair. Proper job.

For the Husky dude with everything, the ultimate accessory- Vintage Husqvarna Gh8 Large Cast Iron Oval Pot Made In Sweden Like Le Cresuet | eBay Bit dear I reckon, but just the right colour!

Sounds good, ASHS attitude and approach is refreshing. We could do with a small mills organisation down here.