wills-mill

For the best twiddly grain for gunstocks you're best digging the root out I suppose as stocks aren't very long you could get away with doing a high felling cut about 18ins to 2ft up from ground level, and then digging and tweaking the rootball out. You've then got the sweep of the major roots running up into the stem to give the curve through the pistol grip.... FIGURED GRADES OF GUNSTOCKS How're things with you guys? Hope you're all well and busy, WW

I'll throw London Plane into the mix as well Stable, amazing colour and figure, machines lovely. Good Sweet chestnut is a treat, even the bad stuff is amusing as it springs a comedy amount and there's nothing to beat a log that cleaves iself explosively as you've got the mill halfway through it. Olive Ash is sensational, what a treat the marbly inner grain is......

It's a great all round bit of timber for shed and workshop studwork, rafters and boarding. It also takes pressure treatment beautifully if you've a local plant.....

James Musthill (Tigerscapes) 07740 487055 has got a Lucas Mill and is based close to Godalming, he loves a nice big log for the reason you mention- minimal movement of the machine. Happy milling. WW

Elm does get a bit fuzzy sometimes. You've gone full blown there It's a bit strange that it's jsut one log- is it the furthest away from the door/ fresh air flow? You can just brush or scrape it off, it doesn't harm the timber in the short term.

Eddie that's brilliant. I feel like you now cover the entire known internet universe- Will/ Herriwullie!

Quicke/ Alo pallet tines with a beak over the top are a lovely compromise

It's a shame Psion never really got going properly. The Series 5 palmtop is still a great little computer* very robust and fantastic run time on a couple of AA batteries..... *unless you're interested in spending your day taking moody emo self portraits for posting on Facebook or playing Angry Birds.....

Looking again there is a licence for fuelwood, BUT it looks as though it only applies for use as fuel on single sites away from the woods. I suppose it's for large mills who will use the slab and bark chip for heating kilns and power generation, or for power stations who will will be launching complete loads of chip into their boilers. Definitely worth talking to the FC.

Just been looking into this, you need to apply for a processing licence from the FC if you are processing Phytophthora affected Larch timber in the woods or at a remote site. There is now a fee involved. Processing Licence http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/ProcessingLicenceJanuary2012GB.pdf/$FILE/ProcessingLicenceJanuary2012GB.pdf I was told that the person to contact at FC Edinburgh is John Morgan (head of Plant Health) not Gavin Snaith whose name is on the form. For information on handling, transport, processing and forms: Forestry Commission - plant health - Phytophthora licensing

It seems almost unbelievable that national notification and action has just got started when 99% of Ash trees have dumped their leaves for the winter

The thing that looks great about these is that you can pass an unlimited length of rope through the puller- it doesn't spool up, it's passed out the back.... If you're felling or rolling logs around for a mill or sculpture it looks absolutely ideal, there's no need to mess about re-rigging all the time. I think the best bet if you want one would be to go direct to Baileys in the States. Bailey's - Maasdam Pow' R-Rope Puller

I asked Wood Mizer HQ and was told that Dave has been away setting up a mill line in Malaysia, so he'll be back...

No prob- It's a document that's worth munching through..... Sawmill work doesn't have the college training system or the work based NPTC type training that most of us woody folk have grown up with. I've certainly not seen that many different static mill setups and it would nice to try and work out how different mills are laid out. I suspect that: Available Building Space and handling kit, Budget, Available Timber, Type of Sawn Timber Produced, Power Supply, Part time/ Full time use are the deciding issues for most rustic/ estate static mills that have to turn out a mixture of produce.

Health and safety in sawmilling http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/priced/hsg172.pdf Looked at as a whole this is quite a handy book, although the safeguards for fully mechanised mills are beyond most of us here I would reckon. We've been puzzling over section 69 (page 15) and the photos at the top of page 16. We're happy that we could relocate the controls for the table travel and that we could extend the shaft for operating the blade guard, but we're not sure how awkward it'll make life when levering timber up to the fence and doing anything other than basic log breakdown and straightening. Has anyone fitted an 'impeding device'/ spacing bar and have you got any comments about how it affects work, accuracy and output...?

Tricky one... lump of pinky burr quartersawn London Plane would blow most people's socks off. Failing that a crazy mindwarp chunk of Yew (if you can live with a conifer). Yew is at it's craziest and most colourful when there's metal in the timber- all sorts of purples and blues going on.....

Le Tonkinois is very nice stuff! We tend to use an oil finish- either Osmo exterior oils or Liberon clear decking oil which works out a fair bit cheaper. If you want a matt treatment that keeps the rain off and slows down moisture loss and timber cracking you should have a play with Thompsons Water Seal.... impressive stuff.

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!