wills-mill

Just wondering what your thoughts are on some of the commercially available Oak sleepers that are doing the rounds. Mainly regarding what species they are... I've seen some in fencing yards recently that really don't look much like Q robur and I think are European (possibly from high altitude, dry climate, Turkey Oak a possibility??). Others have definitely been called Canadian Oak, so wondering if they are an American White or Red Oak....? Admittedly they are a cheap bulk product sold to be plopped into place for planters and retaining walls, but I wonder how some of them are going to last long term. Any experiences and thoughts?

This setup? forestry chainsaw attachment mortice machine post and rail logging fencing | eBay

Time for a bit of panic buying J?

Awesome Hi there yourself! I'm based on the outer fringes of Knepp if you want to drop by for a cuppa and a mooch.... The Floral Fringe is a great little show

It might be best to winkle out UK suppliers, just in case we return to the sunlit happiness of independence and self governance

We've been sanding up our old lumps of Monty Pine and giving them a couple of licks of Teak Oil. As Rob mentioned, the sap pockets are still oozing. It looks quite cheery and pleasant stuff.... I definitely milled it 11 years back, as we still had the old Mizer (the 'new' one is now 10 years old), so as a bit of timber it's done very well as it has mainly been neglected in a couple of yards without much cover over the timber.

Morning all.... I'm feeling a bit embarrassed- I bought a really lovely Woodlouse (with steel legs and and antennae, carved from Sweet Chestnut) when we visited Weird and Wonderful Wood a few weeks back. The place was packed and to my shame I didn't get the details of the folks who made him. Does anyone in Suffolk know who his parents are? He came with me to a show as the business mascot, and he was the most popular thing on the stand!

The West Sussex turners club is very good, they've got quite a setup at Amberley museum. Other half's dad is a member and in Horsham, I can ask him who's best to give you some tips and a session on your lathe if you like.

Homewoods in Haslemere? They make loads... Fencing|Gate Automation|Haslemere. If you only want 4ft paling or less then you're laughing, it would go straight on a 1.2m pallet and over to Sweden for quite a reasonable cost I imagine.

My first job was a placement in your neck of the woods with Wessex Tree Surgeons. In some places Monterey pine (and Maccy cypress) seemed to be the only tree I remember that there was something about the pines that gave weird results with an ultrasound decay detection gadget. Probably that sap.....

9 x 25 x 3 / 144= 4.6875 cubic ft. 0.133 cu/m Are boards of this size rare in Belgium? For artistic table tops, I would think that anywhere from £15 to £30 per cubic ft depending on friendliness of buyer, moisture content of the wood and general trouble factor....

There's not a huge amount of folk asking for Monty, so there might be trouble selling normal dimension timber, but if you can make something out of it or supply wide slabs, then go for it. It's hellishly sticky when freshly cut (especially now in the summer), it does settle down a bit, but you have to be careful if thinking of furniture. It doesn't seem to go blue and gooey like Corsican/Austrian Nigra- I'm tinkering with some big sawn beams of it that I milled 10 or 11 years back, they've been outside and not well covered and it's still sound and happy.

It's all worth a go! I've got to pull my finger out and get my Pattern Mill powered up and aligned. It will be just the weapon for jobs like wine racks (video from the day we dragged the old dear out of a closed pattern makers workshop) [ame] [/ame]

We've had a bit of a chat about indoor wood block flooring on the Canadian Woodworking vintage forum (lots of Wadkin hot rodding going on in Canada!) https://forum.canadianwoodworking.com/forum/tools/power-tools/vintage-power-tools/52432-wood-block-flooring You mentioning the Portek reminds me that I've got some photos of a gadget I fabricated to cut shingle blocks to length in the woods. The saw was bolted to one of Logosol's mounts (attaches to the bar cover nuts) and then attached to a pivot on the frame.

Holesaws are grim to use in damp timber and not much fun in thick timber anyway. I had to make a few big holes with a good quality holesaw in green Oak and the dust and shavings just gummed the thing up constantly....

There shouldn't be too many issues with the sawhead, but you will need someone to get the bands tidy and up to scratch. The newer Forestor machines are imported machines (made by Pilous in ? ) so there is a cut off point between knowledge and spares between old UK machines and the newer ones. I think all the 900 vertical saws were UK made, and the 150 models as well. West Tec are pretty switched on with them for any technical issues. Westtec Forestry and this page http://www.westtec.co.uk/Forestor.htm

I don't particularly bother with end sealing. It's so rare that someone wants the exact length of a board, and there's always wastage or a certain amount ignored on measuring and pricing, so on most timber it's not justified. I certainly wouldn't be making a choice of sealant on colour, I've been to places where they will use any gloss paint they can lay their hands on- the yard ends up looking very pretty with different coloured pack ends. One thing I do is to cover stack ends that are facing south, direct sun is brutal. About 6 weeks ago I milled out and stacked a really big cherry, they are often very lively spiral grained feckers, sometimes it's obvious and sometimes not. Anything lively and I tend to make sure that the boards are only half the tree width. I find it's not worth the grief to cut through-and-through just to end up with a load of cupped or heavily split boards. (I was going to put some pics up, but they're on a memory card that I've managed to crack foolish boy)

There are some lovely jobs in that original link, it's a great looking product- Portfolio | Endgrain The maddest endgrain block floor I've seen is in the photos from the Wadkin factory in Leicester. Since closing down the moisture has got to the blocks, so they've swelled and large sections of the floor have erupted Wadkin machinery, Leicester - July 2014

Sorry, didn't make it clear. Cordstrap strapping is plastic, but the clips used are metal, so the strapping is easy to cut and drag out and the slab stays the same length. The system is great for sawn timber packs because the strapping can be re-tensioned when the wood shrinks back and the strapping goes slack. It looks like the deal with the estate might not be a goer. I'm going to talk to a couple of local contractors first, but it might be available if anyone's keen.

Cunning..... [ame] [/ame]

Thanks for all the input. I don't think there's going to be a chance to weigh it all as it's going to be tractor and trailered across the estate. Thanks for the ideas about moisture vs bark content Cornish, I suppose there's a bit more ash produced at the end, but not a major headache. As far as the strapping goes, I don't think the chipper that's due in is big enough to do full bundles, and I tend to use Cordstrap with steel buckles, so they'll have to come off anyway. I'll weigh a couple of wet and dry slab packs to see what's going on. A stack of sawn Lawsons and leylandii boards dropped 40 kilos in less than 24 hours this week- 570kg to 530kg, quite impressive.

Better copy here... [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lz5sRR4-VQ[/ame] It looks like E Beaver and Sons of Kempshott are still trading. The attitudes have gone full circle, the narrator in the film says the word "scrub" when decribing coppice in the same way that many conservationists now say the words "softwood" or "conifer"

Lee, if Wood Mizer can't help then try either: Bill Witten of E Witten and Son (Henfield) 01273 491373 London Saw Company (Rainham) 01708 550601 Bill is probably best for small bands and tools, and London Saw do a lot of big bands for the larger mills. Both of them have a van running around collecting one week and dropping off the next. Sorry I've not been in touch about getting your lads up to speed on the mill. Last few months have been fairly crazy!

Red kern sounded to me like a German technical term. So much immaculate Beech comes over from the Continent. One Google search and voila! https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=rotkern+bei+der+buche&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=705&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjHprjGl6rMAhVsIMAKHeLiDq0Q_AUICCgD I can see the parallel with Olive Ash definitely. Some end users wouldn't be keen and it might not be the most solid of timber a few decades down the line.... Does anyone have experience of steam bending Olive Ash, would the heart be more or less bendy?

I'm looking for ideas and experiences from chipping slabwood. I mill on a site rented from an estate who have a chip boiler, and we're keen to make use of my slab in their boiler. We're curious to know what sort of volume reduction will occur when the stacks are chipped, so we're going to measure up and have a trial blitz later this year, but in the meantime I'd like to pick your collective brains. The slab is usually straight and tidy Chestnut, Douglas, Larch, Cedar and I like to bundle up fairly tightly and neatly to help with transport, so there's not a massive amount of air gap. Is there any difference in price for this sort of material when compared with round softwood, and how would people normally measure and price? For fuelwood I always reckon that sale by volume makes sense- surely better than tonnage rates when anyone with superior dry timber is penalised financially for having a lack of water. I keep meaning to sling a few bundles onto my pallet truck (which has a weighcell) and see what the bundles weigh and how fast the weight drops away....