wills-mill

Exactly. I reckon the willow won't care whether the cuts are neat and tidy. Trees react to pruning in the same way they react to grazing. They haven't changed their ways since the dinosaurs (or at least woolly mammoths) were giving them a munch so they're not really fussed if some herbert in a digger is causing a tiny bit of carnage and removing next year's leaf area over any other type of damage.

There's a firm called 'PLG loaders' that are based out East, either Lincolnshire or Norfolk I think. Weidemann's seem to be the weapon of choice for Bernard Matthews and the other turkey barons.....

http://www.retrobrick.com/ How about these boys...... Robust phones with buttons for stubby outdoor fingers, real aerials for decent reception, big batteries and small screens for massive life between charging Cheap too.

[ame]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lNYl3ecihEY[/ame] [ame]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=J9sRxWvXHTk[/ame] Ouch.....

Citroen C15D van, loads of room Then a tired but tough as nails Vauxhall (Isuzu) 4x4 pickup- lower slung than most, and gutless for towing but a sweet truck. The Vauxhall and Chevvy's are still around, a good way to get a cheap Japanese truck

Lamberhurst- They're not keen to get involved in scrappy old Italian tractors (don't blame them really) They've told me to sort it out with Lomardini who want about £400. They did give me a Bosch part number which my local auto electrical wizard sourced a similar model, but that didn't fit, so somebody's made a mistake. Ebay- if the Bosch number doesn't work?? It's a Bosch 0001363113 http://www.woodauto.com/Unit.aspx?Man=BOSCH&Ref=0001363113 Like that but cheaper I really need to find a second hand lump from a dead machine Edit: the motor is an LDA 673

Thine hound shall not scoff the sarnies of another http://www1.br.cc.va.us/murray/Arboriculture/tree_climbing/r_r_rope.htm

Got to dry the wood first so it doesn't mould and compost in the bag, then soak for an hour before cooking to stop the chip turning into a towering inferno. Did you ever see the 'Jack Daniels' branded chips in Tesco, allegedly made from their old oak barrels. I always reckoned it was joinery offcuts and a splosh of Tesco value whisky for flavour Not bad for 6 quid for half a cereal packet!

Apologies for discriminating against the hard of spelling.

"Welcome sexyamateurs" Spamtastic I assume?

It's got to depend on your soil really..... Hazel and hornbeam don't mind a heavy cold damp clay. Alder loves wet patches where springs and fresh water flow out of hillsides. Willow will sit on stagnant plop. Chestnut won't grow on damp at all, it will struggle on anything other than really free draining sandy soils. Ash is pretty good all round, and Sycamore would be pretty bomb proof as well. As a timber, Alder dries extremely quickly, but I reckon you need to split soon after cutting or it'll turn to mush and cardboard like birch tends to

Tea Bacon Sarnie Tax Refund

I've saved a very rough Ferrari 4x4 pivot steer tractor from the scrapheap, but a few parts have been robbed off..... I want to get hold of a second hand starter just see if we can get if fired up, and then it'd be worth bothering to tidy up the other problems. I've got a photo of the starter on an almost identical Ferrari of the same age, the engine is a 3 cyl Lombardini aircooled LDA 573 I think....

http://www.thehds.com/events/walker.html

There was a guy who spent years of his life in heavy duty old diving kit, shuffling round in the flooded crypts under Salisbury Cathedral, setting sacks of cement in zero visibility to underpin/ prop up the foundations. A statue was erected for him after he died.... sadly the wrong photo got to the sculptor and so it's not his face very sad. Edit: cobblers! It's Winchester Cathedral, not Salisbury http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19961004/ai_n14087492

This is quite handy as well: Smallwoods magazine has had some very good articles on woodland workshops and buildings over the last couple of years. http://www.smallwoods.org.uk/200_Planning-Legislation-Article.asp

http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/planningandbuilding/farmersguide Quite a useful starter for anyone looking at building for machinery storage or fuelwood or other basic processing. The regs for forestry buildings are slightly different to ag buildings (you're allowed to go large with forestry) and for both categories a lot of buildings are allowed under 'Permitted Development' rights, which is dealt with by notifying the local authority of your intentions but not having to obtain a full planning permission. W

Apologies for de-railing the thread!

All in quite different situations: Pic 1- The guy doing the ripping had done the treework for the timber and has been a very good mate to me over the years. Sadly the tree had been topped and messed about with over the years, and was in a bad way. I helped him out with the milling in return for a percentage of the timber. With the treework+milling +handling +transport +stacking he's out of pocket but the timber was magnificent, as good as you could hope for in a relatively domestic tree. (End product: planking for joinery and some big chunky slabs and lumps for coffee tables, benches etc) Pic 2- That's me in the helmet, the saw's mounted on a Logosol 'Big Mill' rail system. This was a job for a customer who had had a huge oak very close to the house felled. He wanted to floor a big sitting room in the house, we cut out enough timber to do the whole of the downstairs of there very large house. A very satisfying job (few more pics below, including an old file that had been banged into the tree ) (End rpoduct: flooring and posts and beams for a complete garden building) Pic 3- A very large London Plane in a square in Knightsbridge, W London. Pretty serious white and brown rots in the base, had to come out.... Was asked in to do the milling by the firm that was doing the takedown. At the end of the milling, the boss man reckoned we'd saved him money over standing there ringing it up, as well a saving of about 2 Transit loads of sawdust and sweepings, AND he's got a lovely collection of Lacewood boards tucked away for a rainy day. (End product: planking for joinery and flooring, chunks for bowl blanks and turning) The mechanics of it are quite simple compared to chainsaw cutting- 45hp of Kubota diesel driving a bandsaw blade about 2mm thick vs about 8hp of chainsaw driving a chain that's nibbling out about 8 to 10mm waste! At the end of the day I reckon the Woodmizer's got through less fuel as well

The smaller mills tend to be the ones that were set up to take big individual butts cut to different specs with a sawyer's eye and experience, and the big mills are there to blast through almost identical softwood product with decisions taken by the milliecond by computer. Both are impressive! Speaking as a local mobile sawmill that's the kind of wise advice that should be spread about a bit more We manage to get through 5 and 6ft butts after quartering them up with a big saw and a ripping chain.

One of our local rangers had 8 tonne disappear overnight (from Holmbury area of the Surrey Hills) and I think 80* tonnes of good cord disappeared from a site on the South Downs in West Sussex *(yes eighty)

It's interesting now that the high tech softwood only mills want timber to a very tight spec, so there seems to be a lot of oversized timber in small quantities that they physically can't process (even though they wouldn't want to). I think that's the sort of situations most people on this board will face- having a relatively small bunch of an 'odd' species of timber. Very time consuming to deal with- you really need to find an end product or an end user and then work out where and how they get their timber..... W

I think everyone got excited about timber prices with the global price squirting up over last year, but I would imagine things are dying on their arse right now If you are milling then I think it's reasonable to look at about £1.50 to maybe £2.50 per cubic ft for standing Oak with good access at what's usually called fencing grade, but is basically small timber frame building grade. The fact that the trees may be local to you and the owners are on your side can make it worth more (or more useful) to you than you imagine..... From a small mill's point of view, it's nice to sink money into a larger number of smaller trees than a smaller number of large trees. If you buy 4 big trees and one is a nightmare you have chucked a lot of money away instantly, but if you have one or two dodgy trees among 30 others it's not so bad Softwood- B Bob- found a price of £12.78 m/3. standing,but it wasnt clear if was softwood or broadleaved ??????? I would think that was standing softwood on a large scale. That works out as £0.36 per cubic ft (35 cu/ft to 1cu/m), so may even be for pulp or bars rather than sawlogs, you'd have to get confirmation from some of the softwood boys on here. For what it's worth I'd hazard that most chunky sawable softwood used round here (SE England) on mobile or estate mills would go for 80p to £1.50 per cubic ft depending on species, so nice Larch, Douglas and maybe Western Red at the top end. But it's quite a bespoke thing, and I'd rather pay more for having the convenience of wood available locally with room to mill alongside when an order comes in. I may be miles off the mark for other areas and people's experiences on a larger scale, but it'd be nice if more people piped up and chipped in. As someone else said, I can look at barley, pig and potato prices any day of the week. Presentation and timber sales- Having come into timber from an arb background, I understand that at no point in ALL arb courses are even the very basics of timber layout, handling, crosscutting and felling for timber quality discussed. As a mobile sawyer I regularly cut timber for people who have ruined the value of their own trees with careless cutting and storage. All I can do is make the best that can be made from the available trees. Sadly, it is primarily because the timber industry does not help itself in advertising or making available any information to the majority of people at the chopping edge.

Really? I've never managed to get one out of the dealers, I obviously don't get through enough saws They seem to hold them in the back office for special scrutiny......

I've seen an evil farm-made splitting maul- a lump of axe head welded onto the face of a massive sledgehammer. A farmer near me uses it for 2ft long pub logs, the whole place shakes as he throws it around