wills-mill

The Bushnell 5mp camera is very good, amazing battery life. You've got to be careful with the infrared cameras as the 'flash' is visible as a red glow if you site the camera at eye level.... Spotted this one recently- photos straight to your phone! Stealth trail Cameras and scouting Camera, wildlife and game cameras

Ta The shingling is not my work! On the previous post the top photo is 'plain sawn' (not tapered) chestnut shingles. I imagine that the only time you would encounter issues with plain vs taper is on a very exposed and windy site as (apparently) the taper sawn shingles are less prone to lifting. I've no experience of it myself, haven't really seen how they behave on many different buildings, but that's certainly what I was told by Tino Rawnsley who has much more experience of shingles and lives in hellish windy Cornwall. Maybe the most sensible thing to do if you are concerned either by wind firmness, cupping and warping is use a relatively short and narrow shingle- the amount exposed to weather and sunshine is lessened and I suppose everything should be more stable and better behaved, even though you increase the amount of work and cost in battening and fixing. The middle shows the chainsaw block cutting rig with Western Red that's too small and has too much sap to really give viable blocks. The bottom photo shows better blocks, I was trying to bias the milling so that there's a sappy face on the side of the block which you're unable to mill into shingles- it's 'wasted' as it's left clamped to the shingle cutting jig. That way you get the maximum amount of heartwood available to you. Timmy- I'm a bit confused by what you're after. You say you're looking for someone with a mill, but you also say that you don't want to get someone in? Below should be photos of- Sawn cedar shingles ready for fitting at Pestalozzi children's Village in E Sussex Sawn cedar being fitted to a compost loo building.... Cleft chestnut shingles bundled ready for fitting to 'Speckled Wood' which is a new roundwood framed accomodation building for the Natioanl Trust team at Haslemere. It's a fairly epic and very well planned project, you can read up all about it at 2011 August Speckled Wood

NFU are usually happy to have part payment in chutney, viccy sponge cake, logs, sloe gin, porky products and othe rural bartering goods

The time consuming bit (when producing tapered sawn shingles) is probably getting really prime blocks cut and ready for clamping to the shingle cutting jig. You need pretty sizeable logs, and you'll always have to leave a chunk of each block unsawn as you don't want to launch the saw into the clamping mechanism. You've got to reject any shingles with more than a hair of sapwood on them, it just won't do the job on the roof. The first time I did WR Cedar shingles, I shot myself in the foot with tree size, luckily was able to find some bigger logs at short notice. In the end after mucking about with logs, jig making etc etc we did finally get to the point where we could cut about 1000 shingles in a morning, but that didn't account for the preliminary block milling and cross cutting to length. I think most small producers in the UK probably cut a 4in width shingle- this is about the largest that a normal 240v crosscut saw will cut. Any bigger and you get into three phase Wadkin crosscuts and the like, or (like I did) making up chainsaw powered crosscut jigs. Not as neat and a bit furry ended, which is something to be avoided really. But the last milling I did for shingles was for a set of chestnut shingles that were specified as not taper sawn; ie- short sections of parallel plank 4 x 3/4in, cut on the mill and then cut on site prior to fitting at 12in length and any defects cut out. At the milling end of things it seemed to involve a lot less operations, I also felt I could use smaller logs with slightly more bows and curves..... very handy for chestnut coppice.

It could be a hilarious mixture of brittle, squidgy, wormy and spalty.... Undoubtedly beautiful in the right circumstances, but also could be murky/grey and horrible. Crosscut, then decide

It's very variable..... If it's you and the saw operator, you're hand loading, doing a bit of crosscutting, board moving and log selection, cutting different timbers and different sizes, cutting stickers and bearers, you're leaving a reasonably tidy site and you can knock out 100 cubic ft in a day then you're doing really well in the real world. If your sawyer can get straight in and set up, and you can get the timber on and off the saw quickly then that helps. The size of board you are cutting makes a big difference, for instance if you're desperate to have loads of wide 3/4" cladding boards then the sawyer has to take a lot of slow and steady cuts to get through each log. On the other hand, if you're cutting big beams out of sound, straight logs the tonnage/ cubeage (err?) looks very impressive but not many cuts have been done. Another couple of things thing that will slow the job down: logs with branch stubs and knobbles that haven't been flattened off Nerg Nail Fred The Flint Big posts and beams to lift around by hand Uneven ground and cramped sites

Mr Dave at Sawmill Services has one that he uses for proper demo's... He's a lovely chap and probably thr best to talk to. I think that you'd find ways around the lack of hydraulics, especially as you've got the means to load logs your self Home

Marv. Oak is a very womanly beast indeed- As long you don't rush her, pester her to choose a pair of shoes and slap her makeup on, she scrubs up a treat!

Very cool, good effort! I read something on the 'net from a chap who was insulating his retort or oil drum to keep things even more efficient....

Why the rush to get it straight in the kiln? I don't think most firms would wang 3in green Oak into a kiln.... More like- Milled Winter 2010, stack in the shade with 1/2in sticks to keep the drying gentle. Apply weight or strap up with Cordstrap and re-tension every few months. Leave all of 2011 and think about kilning maybe at end of 2012? Cedar etc- stack between 3/4in sticks, dries like a nutter, bob's yer duncle.

No one going to go for sycamore then.....?

Wouter is the Belgian guy who runs Vartago- I was hoping to catch up with him at the recent APF show, but they couldn't make it over sadly. I've always fancied a posh timber arch or two, the homemade one is a bit heavy..

Very sad looking probably still working OK, but a very specific tool for breaking down chunks for pallets, flooring, fencing slats etc.... [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKhQh4YhHxU]YouTube - ‪Wood-Mizer HR120 Horizontal Resaw‬‏[/ame] Two heads means that you would get 2 sawn boards per pass, but you'd still need to break things down to start with....... Or go for broke and chop the machine up and make a small mill! (or two!)

Hard buggers, what a life..... I wonder if this photo is a log that was felled decades before then salvaged.... Looks like the photo's taken in the 1960's? I know that a lot of the Cedar shingle firms on the West Coast rely on folks finding fallen and misfelled trees and salvaging chunks to process for shingles.

Measure up the wheels, then Stenner will be happy... no doubt there's a rule of thumb for blade speed, might be a bit different for the newer pitless resaws, but the old growlers like the Stenner VHMs and Robinson EFT are probably all the same. Brushcutter- the motor rpm will be there to suit the electric motor no doubt (1500rpm to 2000rpm?), then the revs will be geared down through the belting to give a much slower rev at the wheels. A 3ft diameter wheel will travel a blade 9.425 ft every time it rotates, so you'd end up with a blade speed of 14,000ft per min or 235 ft per sec if the wheels were driven directly at 1500rpm motor speed. That's 72.5 metres a sec, which makes a chainsaw look pretty lazy.... Stenner or one of the woodworking firms like Daltons would know what's required

Too true, it's a bit of a shame to knock out narrow boards from a log with such lovely sweeping grain. Very smart tree, once again we should take our hats of to our forefathers who planted and cherished the old girl

The blades are made up of saw strip cut from a reel and welded, so no need to worry about the size that your blade ends up.... Although it's obviously easier and cheaper for blade firms to make up a dozen or so bands at a particular spec. I can't remember what blade speed is best, I think it differs slightly for narrow band mills (1 1/4 to 1 1/2in mills) and big old wide bands (3in upwards). Probably best to talk to Stenner, they are a helpful bunch, they will be able to give you an idea what the resaw ran at, it's best to stick to that I would think. Tooth pattern (spacing) seems to be governed by the feed speed you want to work at* and the width of timber you are likely to cut. What varies for differing density of timber is the tooth shape (profile) and mainly the hook angle- the hook is more pronounced for softer timbers and lessened for harder or mor difficult, but the feed speed then usually has to drop. On Wood Mizer machines I think they run something like 10 degress forward hook for softwoods, 8 deg for all round and 7 degrees for hard timbers and frozen logs.... *and that is governed by: a) power available b) thickness and rigidity of the blade c) quality of finish wanted

Graft failure? Was it an ornamental beech?

I assume that overbark dimensions will suit anyone running a harvester... the head's running on the bark and getting a readout from that. Or am I missing something

J A Gadd Ltd. Station Road Industrial Estate Cheltenham GL54 2EN Tel: 01451-820334 Gadd's make the Spencer/ Stihl tapes with lots of screws in a ring around the outside.

Would you be happy to have timber from bandsaw fiddlers on Treet? Have you got yourself on the wood producers map at UKWorkshop - The Site For Woodworkers ? They're quite a nice bunch... The photos of your finished furniture are great- lovely lines and good scale without being too 'Stonehenge' It's nice to see furniture well dressed in a nicely lit indoor setting, and you don't have the worries of lugging it around all the time and doing damage in the process. We've always found that shows are harder work than you first think, and strangely have usually found that people will love a certain piece but would like one that's similar but actually a bit different, so usually more or less impossible with the remaining timber.... Perhaps it's easier not having the person who does the making on hand! Ebay has been OK using the classified advert system so things stay on for 30 days at a fixed price. It worked well for a big sawn timber clear out a couple of years back as well- I showed pictures of the timber stacks and some samples of cleaned up and oiled timber alongside the description and ran the adverts with a cubic ft price at the heading. To help move things in bulk, I think I put that there'd be a 15% discount if buying over 15cu/ft... As with most things on the internet, good description and photos are so important.

Well done- what a bit of pond life.....

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLhYbbpwtXw]YouTube - Coleman Sportster Stove - www.simplyhike.co.uk[/ame] Coleman Sportster... lovely job, very robust and cheap to run and much more powerful than gas jobbies Having said that we did play with turbo-blasting the site offcut burner in the bitterer days of winter Bearing in mind that's a 5 pint kettle on a lorry wheel.....

That's very cool- I'd love a bit of shafting and belting in the shed!

I think you're going to have to make more up..... maybe a whole set- 'Tea Drinking' 'Arse Scratching' 'Skiving' 'Flat Out' 'Tree Murder'