BigRedDog

I run a small framing outfit, haven't bought any since last October due to big jobs taking up whole program, but my two main suppliers were at £20 and £22 ex VAT per cube foot sawn, in W.Sussex and Hants. One supplier is a full size outfit (East Brothers, nr Salisbury) the other cheaper one is a pair of lads in the back of a farm yard with a home made trolley bandsaw. Both top quality stuff. Its amazing how much of a difference really well milled timber makes. Really effects speed of whole job. I'm about to order some more so I'd better find out if its gone up!

I think that'll depend on what Mr V.O.S.A. has to say... If it should never have been on the road then there will be questions to be answered but you'll have to wait and see now.

There are a few different options for starters, but most are pretty boggy all year round now, not under water, but pretty squelchy at this time of year, thats why they're available really. Mainly Sycamore, Ash, Hawthorn, Tramman, some Beech, but its got to be pretty tough to survive. The main problem is wind more than temperature, its costal and pretty gusty. No pests to worry about really, no deer, badgers, maybe some rabits but not many. No grants, its just for fun:thumbup: Spoke to a chap who's done some planting locally today, he said the Alder has done really well round abouts, and was literally just stuck in the ground and left to its own devices. Thanks for your thoughts.

Woops, arbtalk gossip corner! This is better than telly. If the last MOT was a dodgy item then its going to get very serious for someone very quickly. If its that serious then you are doing the right thing I'd say, just don't waste any money on lawyers, the facts are the facts, thats all you need for small claims, though if its a fellow arbtalker I'm sure it won't need to get that far. Bad Luck Fella.

Was it a private sale or dealer? I'm no lawyer but I think the situation is that if the vehicle is sold as "in a roadworthy condition" then it must be so, and the law is on your side. Trouble is 6 months seems like a long time to have taken to realise this. It may be worth going back to seller, and if no joy maybe small claims court, but you will have to prove your case - i.e. have the vehicle indenpendantly deemed unsafe - at which point you've reached a point of no return. I wouldn't throw good money after bad though, sometimes we all have to take a suck. I bought what looked like a lovely family owned 110 defender couple years back, few weeks later the gearbox blew itself to bits and turned out to have had no oil in it. Just had to take it on the chin.

I thought this would be a good place to post my Q's rather than start a new thread, hope thats OK. I'm more used to meeting trees with a chainsaw in my hands, so have very little experience of planting and establishing. All thoughts welcomed. My situation is I've been offered the chance to use a few boggy field corners and margins for some experimental firewood planting. The landowners are life long friends (closer than family acutally) and are fairly enlightened when it comes to leaving little "wildlife areas". The soil is medium to good quality agricultural, however the climate has meant that in recent years certain areas of these fields are becoming increasingly un-workable due to waterlogging. The location is officially classified as an area of extreme exposure and no species can really achive the potential you would expect in the more sheltered areas of the UK. Each pocket will be no more than a couple of acres at most, currently rough grass and starting to reed over at the moment. I'm thinking about Alder which I can get a good locally grown supply of, but Sycamore and Ash also do well locally. The local supplier of Alder is also offering me imported Hazel. Q's. Is the small size of each patch going to effect growth & output? How much / what site preparation would you recomend? Is waterlogging going to be a problem? What about leather jackets in areas not culivated for years? Is it easy to propergate from close by trees? techniques? Prefered planting basic techniques for planting, just spade in hand & drop it in or what? There will be more Q's, but I'll stop here and see how you go:blushing: I'd very much appreciate any info from old hands! Thanks in anticipation. Scamp.

The all important free factor, nothing beats it, get your name on the lot:thumbup: They look a bit like spud crates, should be good for seasoning, handier than the vented bags even as you could tack a sheet of something on the top. congrats on your enterprising fortune.

Good idea me thinks. I own small lots of woodland here and there, so knowing where machines are available and who to contact would be great!

Would you mind posting who the supplier was and how much? These would be very useful for shipping logs, especially if they'd make them on the double sized pallets?

Those figures are frightening! They're actually worse than V8 territory! But you've made me feel much better about driving a "ridiculous yank guzzler" 6.5 td V8 - I can get 26mpg on a motorway run with an LM186 behind me, even fully loaded on the hills round here it doesn't drop much below 20mpg, and never below 15. You've made my night!

I still don't understand I'm afraid, why would you not want something easier to use for the job you want to do? Your truck is a piece of kit no? Surely extendable & removable drop sides, a clean flat deck, separate locker boxes are all going to make your job easier and therefore more efficient? What does what it looks like matter? Its like saying my chainsaw looks nicer with the cover over the bar no?

I buy briquettes off a few different manufacturers, one guy is a small outfit, he's ploughed his entire life savings into a machine doing carboard briqs, they burn nice and slow, not huge heat like the wood ones, good for keeping fire in over night, but yes a lot of ash. £50k for his machine, RUF - one of the best manufacturers, german made. IMO machines working with these sort of pressures need to be well made! Mechanical machines will generally be much more reliable and durable than hydrualic though. Blazers are made with a 40yr old swiss machine! I did find a firm in the US that had made a very paired down machine running off PTO. It looked very effective on you tube! We're talking to CF Neilsen at the moment, definitely the best available, but min £100k for a good set up inc. hammer mill & drying:scared1:

Hi Dan. Had a look at your site, I'd definitely be interested in a ball park figure for an 8ft fixed bed, all ali construction, fully removable drop sides (400 to 500mm deep) to leave a totally clear tray deck, and some good size lockable & water tight ali boxes underneath, cheq plate for these please, I am the only gay in the village you know! If its within your remit a small elec to hydraulic hiab on the back. The chassis rails on my truck are up to it I'm sure there'd be others on here interested to see some numbers? Most of the new breed of jap school bus trucks claim a payload in the region of 1 tonne, are are roughly 120bhp with about 180lb/ft. I put 1 t pallets of briquettes in the back of my truck regularly and its down on the bump stops, 1t doesn't sound much, but when its sitting in your rear view is a lot of weight! I'm putting uprated springs on mine:laugh1: My brother has a hilux and I wouldn't put a full pallet in it. I'd like to know if anyone on here is regularly putting 1t in a L200, hilux or similar? what happens when you get to a hill?

I have to say I actually prefer the look of a well made ali body, I think it shows a bit of pofeshonalisms... Plus a proper drop side unit with maybe a set of box lockers fixed under is always going to be a much more practical vehicle, and practicality always wins for me... someone was correct above, vanity me thinks:biggrin: Personally I'd love a fixed bed drop side with a rear mounted swing or small hiab lift, I've chatted to my local snot welder, but at the prices you've been talking on here I'll send you an email and see what you can come up with. I've been told that becuse the butt on my truck is so rare (fibre glass stepside - chevy 1500ck) it'd be worth maybe 2k on flebay, so I'm well on my way to affording something a lot more useful!

I've only had it happen to me once, but in this case it was an oak frame, delivered and installed exactly as per the signed and engineered spec. The last stage payment was 4.5k, most of which I owed as wages to men. After the second excuse I knew I was getting screwed, after the 4th excuse I asked if they were having money problems as I could wait, but I'd need to know so I could sort out how I was going to pay my bills. They were apparently so offened by this they had decided not to pay. Thats when I snapped. Its OK, I'll take it back I said, it's in the contract all materials are mine till final payment. I wouldn't dare do that, they'd call the police. If I get on that roof with a chainsaw, by the time the police get to me it'll all be firewood. I had my cheque 30mins later. The worst bit of it all was of all the difficult and picky people I have to work for these were the one's I'd least expected it from, such nice people, so happy with the work, over the moon, Jehovas Witness' no less. Getting a reputation for being soft is just as bad for business as getting a rep for being crap I'd say. So long as your work is up to scratch you shouldn't have to deal with this stuff. I have to agree with the other post, I'd put it all back on the lawn and walk away if you have to.

Hey, leave the van out of this, she's a beast! Ex Coast Guard, its been chipped (or was that, it's running on chips - can never remember), pulls like a train! Customers love it, only problem is you can't run old ladies over in it, not unless you finish them off anyway and nobody else sees! Back to the tree... Funny thing is we literally didn't hit ANY roots till the last 6 inches were taken off the bank, and then we only hit maybe 2 or 3 at 2inch size, the other funny thing is it's leaning into the prevailing wind, but yes away from the house. He's planting a lot of coppice so I told him the tree fairy would have somewhere to go, he'll be forgiven!

You don't want to know what I charge for logs, it'd make all these lads cry! But its a totally different market, there is no comercial hardwood grown and I have to pay £40 or £50 a cube just to get it here, or £60 a tonne un-processed, the joys of lsland life!

I sell Blazers and a couple of other briquettes, are you making the ones you're talking about Andy? If so £/tonne, I'll take a few pallets to try em? Ply is they best for heat, all that lovely toxic gas!

I'm no expert, but for your info I bought a Stihl MS171 for about £150 over a year ago now as it was all I could afford at the time, and I needed a small saw for shaping and tidying up. I was advised at the time (by the Stihl dealer) that as it was the cheapest model they did it really wasn't up to spec and for a little extra I'd get much more saw with a 181. But I was skint so that was that. Considering its only the DIY cheapy cheap weekend warrior model and I have utterly abused day in day out it on building sites, doing heavy shaping work, demolition, lots of woodland work and pretty much everything you're not supposed to do its proved to be a very tough little saw. I haven't broken it yet and I expected to! I'd definitely get another, pound for pound its earned its keep. I'll hold my tongue on the PPE and Tickets. Good luck & have fun!

Re: The morticers, the Makita is the same as the much older Ryobi design and while they're good the main problem with them is they're bulky and you have to keep clamping them to the beam because of the way the chain runs - length ways. Most framing outfits use Mafell machines, german made, very expensive but worth it. I bought mine second hand off ebay, only the second one on there in two years of looking, luckily hadn't been abused like the ones at the firm I used to work for. The chain runs so that the machine will always pull itself to an adjustable guide rail, you just plunge and go, with a sharp chain and you can really crack on with them. (see pic) So much more powerful, easier and quicker to use than anything else. They also make very nice range of BIG wood working hand power tools, beam planers, portable circular saws (2ft blade for one man to operate can be a bit scary!). Min price for most of there kit new is 2K though, so you've got to need one! In fact the only bit of their kit I don't rate at all is the mobile bandsaw, and the carpenter's chainsaw, so I made my own... At the other end of the scale is my 'brace-o-matic 9000' used for cutting curved wind braces, made with two bits of 4x2 and 2 bits of copper pipe, pushing the saw the wrong way so you can follow the pen line... works a treat. One of my little framing elves made this bench last summer, didn't bother to finish it though as you can see!

This isn't technically in the UK but it was identified at planning and we have permission to remove if we need to. Its going to need a bit of limbing at the least. I just had a look at an old thread with pictures of a big beech even closer, and as I said this building will be able to stand a bit of movment around it, so maybe it should be given a stay. I think if it was my house I'd still be cutting it down, tis Ash after all, so it'll come in handy next winter:thumbup1:

I'll be ordering up some vented bags 1cu and barrow today, it seems like the way forward. I've been running round with small plastic or nets all winter and at least with the barrow bags you basically ensure a better minimum order. Re. Running round the country side, I've been trying to train my regular customers to buy on the same day if they live in the same area. Doesn't always work but if I know I'm going to a particular lane or route where I've got a couple of regulars I'll try and give them a ring the day before to see if they need topping up, it has saved a lot of running out to the same spot again and again, may have helped boost a few sales, I dunno.

An alternative opinion, inerwesting:sneaky2: Compaction is not really much of an issue, you can't tell from the pics really but this site is basically on the side of a mountain, and its pretty much pure limestone shale (spelling?) under a few inch of poor soil, the mini digger was really struggling to cut that hole, which is probably why there aint many roots, very poor soil. The footings are going to be limestone with lime mortar, no concrete or steel on this project, so it can handle a bit of movement, though probably no a tree falling on it. Its about the most exposed site I've ever worked on, there is actually a local word for the wind that comes down this valley, and she's clearly not that well rooted! Thanks for your comments...

Where abouts in RIM was it, and which way did you come back? The last time I was there Al'Q were shooting tourists, a bit more lively than benidorm:laugh1:

Halo There, I'm going down to do a few days thinning next week, a small lot of 45yr Scots and Corsican Pine, not far from Petersfield / Haslemere nr A3 Hants/W.Sussex Border. Anyone know of peeps hiring small crane and grapple tractor, maybe a small trailer short term in this area? It'll help with the tidying up and probably be more efficient than me lugging it all round the dumper! Thanks for any info... Scamp.