Mike Dempsey

As this work is on council property the manager is covering his back. The area does get coned off, I use hazard lights and drive at 5mph. I dont even drive on their lovely grass and stick to the roads. There are a load of interfering busibodies who would phone the council and the manager has to be careful. I dont want to spoil an ongoing arrangement as there are some really good trees down with easy access, and usually I have to park away from the tree and struggle to get the boards back to the van. I have always worked in a professional manner when milling on someone else's property as I dont want to be told not to bother coming back as we think you are a cowboy! I know that milling is the safest way of using a chainsaw with 90 percent of the chain being buried in the log at any one time and as yet have never had a chain snap. The simplest and cheapest of insurance should do me I hope. Only trouble is I think that a lot of insurance companies will have a minimum price of a few hundred quid and I would be covered for felling etc when I wont be doing anything like that

I have the opportunity to plank up some trees in a local park and have been asked to get public liability insurance for this. All the trees are windblown and on the deck. I have my basic saw certs and have 15 years experience of milling with the Alaskan Mill. Has anyone else gone down the route of getting PLI and which company did you use. I am asking here because I thought more people would see the thread instead of putting it in the insurance sub forum. Mike

Not wanting to leave out our Celtic cousins in Wales......

I wouldnt be happy either selling or buying that timber. Might get away with selling it for non structural outdoor work but not high quality furniture etc.

The fuel spout on my Stihl combi can has stuck from day one!

Leylandi will last for years as it is so full of resin. Its not too soft either. This main quality is also one of its downfalls as well though. Could see a few complaints from parents as their kids get the resin over thier school clothes. If it was kiln dried that would set the resin and help stop it weeping. Cant comment on the wellingtonia as I havent milled and used any. Mike

I would complain to Gumtree and ask that they put your advert back up. By mentioning the make and model no of an item and showing photos of their logo is not a breach of their intellectual property rights. If you were selling a fake saw which had husky stickers on it, then this would be a breach of IP rights. I think someone in Husky is being over- zealous and maybe trying to make a name for themself. Either that ir they dont know their own saws

I planked up a 24" dia birch a few years ago that was windblown. Lovely colours and it dried really well. Made a lot of furniture from it and reasonably light. I laser engraved a lot of small items over a couple of years. I would certainly mill up any more decent sized ones again. Go for it

I have just added a deer to the collection but if you are going back there soon I am sure I could find a pig!

Hi Nigel, got the deer at last!

Your average member of the public both here and in the US would be astonished by just how much of their country is owned by the Arabs, Chinese and Russians. They have massive amounts of money to spend and have been hoovering up companies, land and infrastructure over the last few years. If the oil markets were to change from using dollars to another currency the Yanks would be in serious trouble. The debt in Britain is mounting every day, under the Tories it is still going up but maybe not as fast as it was/would under Labour. People get confused of the difference between the annual deficit and debt and it suits the politicians to keep this muddy. If we ran our businesses in the same way as politicians run the country we would all be living in hostels for the homeless and signing on the dole and queuing up at foodbanks. The American Gov suing non-American companies for billions has been going on for several years now and the judicial system is so corruptly skewed in favour of the plaintiff winning, no matter how ludicrous the case or lacking in hard evidence, there is no way that VW will come out of this one without having £20 billion or so taken from their wallet. In comparison any American company caught up in these legal proceedings have had tiny fines imposed in comparison and let off really lightly. Whilst I am not saying what VW did was ok (and any other car companies that are doing the same) the US are being hypocritical here as some of us are old enough to remember Bhopal and also the Exxon Valdeez to name but 2. I am sure there are others!

I have an ad on gumtree for my Husky 281xp at the moment and not had any problems with it. I have used the word Husqvarna several times. How else are you going to accurately describe an item unless you use the manufacturer's name?

The yanks are skint bigstyle and are looking for foreign companies to fill their empty coffers! VW will be near bankrupted by the time their finished with them. Everyone and anyone will be encouraged to sue them free of charge in multiple class suits and if VW want to sell cars in the US in the future they will have to bend over and take it.

If someone is looking for a finished thickness of 19 mm I would sell them 50mm thick wood so they could resaw it or I can do it for them. I dont really want a workshop full of 5 or 6 different sizes. The biggest size I cut is 65mm and that is in oak for a customer who I make plinths for every year. I also do doug fir in that size for the Ecodecs as it dries pretty quick and is reasonably light. As I get older I have noticed that timber is getting heavier so my planks tend to be a bit thinner. I only use an alaskan mill and plank on site. I have to be able to shift the wood on its own and if I am not reasonably close to my van, sometimes it not as thick as I would like it to be.

The market for green timber, apart from oak timber house builders, is probably pretty small. I have a kiln and kiln dry all my timber. I am limited to planks of 2.3m long for kilning. You have to make contact with local cabinet makers, preferably one person businesses who dont have a lot of room to store timber. Find out the thickesses they want. No point in planking it at 40mm for example if they are using a lot of 25mm timber to plane down to 20mm. There is too much wastage there that they dont want to pay for. I plank at 35mm and 55mm normally for myself which minimises any waste for me. I dont go out of my way to sell any timber but occassionally get requests for timber. There are also a lot of hobby woodworkers out there who dont have the time or confidence to go around the big yards and would welcome the opportunity to be shown a smaller collection of planks. Some of them might not have the facilities to plane up bigger boards so if you can offer additional facilities such as this you might be able to service a niche but reasonably big market. The unique selling point of selling local timbers where you can tell someone the exact spot a plank of wood came from is not to be underestimated either. Even better is if you can tell them who planted it and how old the tree was when it was felled. This adds up to a story the cabinet maker can tell his customer which helps him to sell the end piece of furniture or if its for their own house when he is selling it. I know a lot of guys who work in their garage/home workshop but equally I dont know how many more there are out there either which is a potential market which I have yet to tap into should I wish to seriously get into selling my timber.

Hi Beachbum, yes it is using a laser engraver/cutter. All the ecodecs are made from sustainable douglas fir which was windblown on Woodland Trust Scotland woods and was milled and dried by myself.

Hi Nigel, not got the deer done yet but I have got a Scottish thistle hot off the laser

I have had a few enquiries recently from some members regarding the Ecodec Christmas tree hangers I made last year, if I sell them wholesale for selling on at craft fairs. I do sell them them wholesale is the answer and can supply them in large quantities if required as I have been quite busy over the last few months. I dont have a minimum order and I am happy to post them out. I am now up to about 13 different designs and hope to add another couple of deigns later on this month. to keep the process as simple as possible I have made a pdf order form which can be emailed out and filled in and returned to me with the quantities required. I have included some photos below and the full range of photos is on my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Pens-of-Distinction-188239997887594/timeline/?ref=hl If anyone is interested please feel free to pm me or contact me [email protected] Mike

I have cut up corsican pine which grew near a beach. It was so full of sand we had to resharpen after a couple of 8' planks. Combine the sand and metal with greenheart's toughness and you have one very expensive and slow job. The only way to do it is to charge by the hour and get him to supply the chains. By the end of the job he will wish that he hadnt bought the pier.

I started off milling with a mate using his saw. Cant remember which one is was now but I think it was a 20" bar on it. Bought a Husky 281XP a few years ago and used it for logs up to about 20" in diameter with a 28" bar. It is an ex army saw and at 81cc is fine for a lot of trees. Now got a 660 with a 36" bar and an 880 with a 48" bar. I can use the 660 on my own no problem but wouldnt use the 880 on my own. You also have to remember that the wider the tree, the heavier the plank is. If you can park very close to it, no problem, but if you have to haul planks some distance on your own it rapidly becomes back breaking. Ps the husky 281xp is up for sale in arbtrader just now

Lumps of firewood will spoil the airflow you need to get the boards evenly dried. Good airflow around the boards is key. For cabinet making I woul try and hit 9% max as you would be surprised just how much wood moves from 15% down to about 8 % if someone is putting furniture in a centrall heated house.

Just stuck my Husky 281xp up on Arbtrader if anyone is looking for a decent size saw. Having 2 kids start uni at the same time and a big repair bill in for the van, somethings gotta go unfortunately Mike

looks like some serious insurance premiums. The log factor is very low though!

I think thats a good idea Ted and should be introduced asap. Whilst they are at it, the Gov. could also end all the subsidies to the renewable energy industry and save us all a few quid.

Would anyone actually own up to knowing him or worse, even being related to him:lol: