djbobbins

Isn't there an order of risk management that says PPE is last line of defence rather than first? Something like: remove hazard remote working safe systems of work reduce hazard PPE Clearly in a lot of cases removing the hazard isn't possible (anyone make chainsaws with guard rails over the top of the bar?) but as has been said, relying on PPE to keep you safe may prevent a scratch to the face but won't stop a broken neck from being hit on the head by a fast falling 50kg branch. Have a look at this (and the link therein) for a vid on boot testing and also a couple of pics of a guy who'd been wearing steel toe cap boots but had gone through the leather behind the toecap, then also toe, tendon etc... Chainsaw boot test - Tree World

Answered my own question, 5,120kg apparently. So I could have it plated for 7.5 tonnes, carry nearly 2.5 tonnes of wood and drive it on a car licence...

What's the unladen weight of a 4x4 Bedford MJ?

How about this? Have a look at lot 533, gas axe the bottom out, put a couple of skids / rollers on one side and hooks to hang the bag off the bottom, Welcome to MOD Sales Online - Military Vehicles for Sale - Ex MOD Land Rovers for Sale or any farmers out there selling old hay elevators that could be used to fill some sort of above ground hopper system?

To set the scene, I'm not a pro logger or surgeon; just someone with a bit of land that I'm lucky enough to harvest wood from... I have got a 3.2V6 Isuzu Trooper as my current workhorse, as well as a company car from the 9 - 5 (well, maybe more like 6 - 10 some days) job. I saw the following for sale and wondered if anyone has got experience of them. My logic was: one of the reasons for the Trooper was to have something 4x4 for lairy weather, this would provide similar fuel economy probably won't be much worse and in any case I will only do about 1000 miles per year so fuel cost is not a big concern I can drive it on my old-style car licence Doubts are: how onerous are MOT testing and insurance charges? missus might throw a wobbly! Welcome to MOD Sales Online - Military Vehicles for Sale - Ex MOD Land Rovers for Sale - #33670 - LEYLAND DAF 45 / 150 4X4 FLATBED, DIRECT GOVERNMENT SALE Any input appreciated!

I felled a couple of eucs, both about 40'. Split one fairly wet and stacked the other in rings to dry. I was splitting by hand (maul, pair of wedges and a 14lb persuading hammer). The dry stuff split only after a few good thwacks from the sledgehammer... not to be repeated!

Incidentally, I heard somewhere that eucalyptus shouldn't be burned in appliances with short chimneys (i.e. where people might end up inhaling the smoke) because it's hallucinogenic - can anyone back this up or is it an urban myth?!

So when it becomes sonorous? (i.e. sounds a bit like a glockenspiel when hit together?!)

In fact, I tell a lie, just found the webpage again and it says that logs burned in December could have been cut as late as September...

What does anyone work on for a definition of seasoned? I have been burning eucalyptus for a couple of years and - for the bigger stuff in particular - can see a definite improvement in the stuff that is going on the fire now, but was felled and stacked in 2007. I've also got some ash which was only felled about May this summer but appears to burn reasonably well, and a load of alder stacked which has been felled for about 12 months and also burns, but with a bit of reluctance. I was told as a nipper that wood is best between three and five years from felling, but a bit surprised to see a website for a company in Lancashire saying what a hard job it is to produce seasoned logs. The log-ic (get it?) was that wood needed to be felled in about Feb for burning the next winter. So - does my three year assumption work (perhaps better for some woods than others)? Or is 9 months plenty? Will my alder and ash get any better for being air dried for another couple of years?!

The "article" (I won't call it journalism) smacks of someone sat at a PC, doing a bit of a search on the web for stoves and picking out a few photos but knowing nothing about them in practice. Incidentally, when I was actively looking for a stove a while back I was recommended one of these, does anyone have any experience of them? The HCC Super Demon from The Barnatt Millns Group of Companies

Not got much space in the garden so needed to be fairly small - cost me about £70 in timber, plus time and a bit of left over felt & plywood. I was amazed to see 3' x 2'6" x 18", not very sturdy looking "log stores" in a local branch of a national DIY chain for the (reduced) price of £59.99 over the weekend - couldn't believe someone would spend that much on something so, well, naff. Not least 'cos you could buy a 6 x 4 shed for not a great deal more money. Goes to show that you can make something a lot better for your money if prepared to stick a bit of work in.

... it'll probably be cold and will definitely be dark by now! As they say on Blue Peter, here's some I made earlier. No specific reason, just an interested amateur! Taked over the last year or so at home (during the building of the new log store) and at a local piece of woodland I've luckily been offered the chance to tinker on.

I work in an office but have an arrangement to fetch as much firewood as I can use from a local piece of woodland, mainly felled and ringed with a chainsaw then split with a maul. Never really saw the point in sweating on a treadmill when I can be doing something more useful instead... have been thinking about trying to blag my neighbour into helping me do some carrying instead of his current foolish behaviour of going out jogging!! Going back on-topic, splitting with a maul is fine for a couple of hours providing it is ash, oak, or anything else reasonable and knot free. I tried - and eventually succeeded - in doing some eucalyptus, but it was a complete pig!!

Got to love the agricultural approach to life! Not related to cleaning a flue but I do remember lighting a garden incinerator with a splash of unleaded. Worked fine a few times; then I tried it once after the fire had gone out but the incinerator was still warm. It "lit" well, as I'd half expected it to, seeing as I was aware enough to be stood about five feet away and throw the match in. Problem was that it lit with an effing loud crump, blew half the materials all over the yard and left me half deaf and a bit dazed for the next few minutes!

I've helped my father fell a few willows, both on his own land and some roadside clearance for a local farmer. We cut it into log-lengths, split and stacked inside an open-ended concrete shed within 3 hours of felling. Seems to be drying out nicely and burns okay in a stove or rayburn. Not tried it in an open firegrate yet though. Not a patch on ash though, or the seasoned eucalyptus I've just started on (felled in summer 2007 and 2008).

I am guessing this has been posted on here many times before but just saw it and was a bit astonished / shocked / scared / filled with laughter (can't decide which): Weekend Woodcutter’s Ultimate V8 Chainsaw You might need to click on the link to the file to get the wmv to play...

Can't be long until someone knocks one up in a shed somewhere... the problem is how to get sufficient pressure of steam to drive a microturbine or a sterling engine from wood I suppose. I've got a welder in the garage; I might have to look into it!

And another thing to bear in mind is that the follow on from the new feed in tariffs on electric generation at home is going to be a "renewable heat incentive" so you might - and I say might 'cos I don't want to end up getting in trouble for telling someone a porky - get paid a bit for producing your own domestic heating from woodchips. It's due to get announced over the summer I think... Renewable Heat Incentive - Department of Energy and Climate Change Watch how the market for woodchip and pellets opens up a year from now!

Heating oil is about 40MJ per litre, so 1000 litres = 40GJ, or 11,100 kWh. I'm on oil myself and haven't bought gas for about three years but I'm guessing it's about 3p / kWh, plus CCL at about 0.16p or so, plus 5% VAT. Based on those prices, the 8m3 of wood is replacing £368 worth of gas. As a sanity check, dry ash weighs about 675kg per m3, and is meant to have a calorific value of 4.1 kWh per kilo. Softwood is about 400kg per m3 and has a CV of 2.6 kWh per kilo. The 8m3 of woodchip if dry softwood, would therefore work out at 8,500 kWh. So in effect, the sanity check rings true and the numbers sound about right.

Myself and a local landowner have come to an arrangement - there is a load of alder needing felling and something done with it. We have both got open fires / woodburners, but the quantity of wood is too much - fires could be kept lit for years on end with all the standing timber in the area that needs to be cleared, let alone the 12 acres of mature woodland. Some of the standing stuff needing to be cleared is about 16"+ diameter at the base and 40-odd foot or so of straight(ish) trunk. I'm not into the idea of making / selling charcoal (although might think about that as a way to make good use of the brash), and know that the alder will need to dry thoroughly before it can be used as firewood. What I was wondering is - apart from firewood and charcoal, is there any market for green alder? If so, what? Any indications on the what the wood might be worth at farm gate (central Warwickshire) would be appreciated, as otherwise it's going to be getting cut into 9" lengths and stacked for logs!

Still can't believe you've not had a line of people waiting to take this off your hands!

Out of interest, since I'm guessing you've got more experience of US purchase taxes than I have (!) can you confirm an assumption of mine? I'm guessing that the price shown here: STIHL USA - Online Dealer Website of $299.95 for the saw with 16" bar is the price I'd pay to leave the store with saw in my hand. Is that correct or are there additional purchase taxes to pay? If the prices on the web are "real" then even including UK import tax, VAT and an estimated $40 to ship the item to the UK, it is still (no pun intended) £80 / nearly $130 dollars to source the saw in the US and have it shipped. Out of interest the duty and VAT applies even if the item is a gift shipped into the UK, but not if it is bought into the UK in person by someone as a gift.

The point I was trying to make is that I can't go on the web and buy a Stihl saw from a US seller and have it shipped to the UK. Controlling distribution in this way is one of the key features of maintaining price discrimination. "- The firm must be able to prevent or limit the resale of the goods or services in question by consumers paying the lower price to those who pay the higher price. In some cases, resale is impossible due to transaction costs (e.g., transport costs from high to low price areas), while in others firms adopt contractual or other measures to prevent arbitrage between consumers (e.g., prohibition of resale as part of terms of sale)." Basically I'm peeved 'cos I feel like I'm getting overcharged for something, even though a commonsense part of me is still telling me it should be better value for money than two cheap saws. Could be worse though, I checked the prices of a couple of places in France (am going on hol in a few weeks and wondered whether it'd be better to buy over there) and they are even more expensive than in the UK. Sacre bleu!

For what it's worth - my cynical interpretation of the situation would be that it is the company explioting the way it has set up its distributor network: - Stihl knows that it is a premium product and that dealer's don't want to not be able to sell Stihl. - The company therefore demands that sales have to be made in person by a dealer (also helps Stihl look good from a H&S point of view; like they are ensuring a thorough handover of product) - This means that remote selling is impossible, since as soon as Stihl find out someone is doing it that seller will get "excommunicated" - Therefore Stihl can set a higher price in any market which it thinks will pay that price. I can't believe the products are that much different - if at all - in quality or cost of manufacture. Sure, there will be a difference in purchase taxes, which might make up say 20% of shelf price, but would not explain the difference between UK and US prices. Put it this way - if I was running Stihl and saw that the same product I had to charge £350 for in the UK, but under £200 in the US, I'd be wondering how much it cost to ship a containerload of saws across the Atlantic. (Answer = a hell of a lot less than £150 per saw!)