Mike Dempsey

Hi Leigh The shop doesnt work yet. Still developing that although hopefully should be up and running in about 3 to 4 weeks time. I prefer woodworking to webworking but my son is more computer savvy than me and I am trying to get him to finish it off for me. Thanks for letting me know. I will get a notice up to say it is not ready. Mike

There is no minimum order for the business cards Mike

Hi Ian Mike is a special industrial machine and cost 13.5k +vat when new. I was lucky to be able to pick it up for 3k. You have to have a very good understanding of graphics software such as corel drawetc which can be a bit of a steep curve to learn. I've been using it for 6 years now and I am still learning. A lot of the work I do for the whisky industry which is fiercely competetive and I cant put up photos on here or my website due to client confidentiality. You can pick up lasers now for about 1k but these are chinese crap and they use their own modified versions of standard graphic software (needless to say that is crap as well) The business cards are 50p each. I make them from local milled beech and they definetly have the wow factor. People hang on to them and pass them around to show their friends because they are so unusual. Apart from the whisky work most of my new clients come from being shown one of my cards. Mike

Hi Ian I use my laser engraver to do engraving on wood. You can take a look at some pics on my website to get a better idea home page Mike

If the Council are happy to stick a TPO on a tree in someone's garden to preserve it, which then may cause the owner additional expenses in its upkeep, then perhaps they should meet this additional expense. Thet may then be a bit more choosy and not take a scattergun approach! As a wee aside I had to argue with a local planning department for 2 days to be allowed to plank an oak tree whick had a tpo on it when it was vertical. It had been winblown for 5 years but because a local developer was wanting to build houses on the land they stuck a tpo on every tree. The planning officer also thought that this applied to horizontal ones as well as the vertical. After I lost my temper with him I asked him for advice as to whether outdoor varnish was better than Danish oil. He then realised how silly he was being and let us mill it.

I think that all european farm subsidies should be phased out completely over a 5 year period. Every family in this country pays a fortune to subsidise this business. The law of market forces should prevail. Some farmers will make a profit and others will go bust. I know of one local farmer not too far away who regularly picks up cheques for over £1million every year. A lot of that is for not producing anything. Think of all the time which would have freed up now they dont have to spend hours and hours filling in all those forms. No forms also means no fraud, and all the farming beaurocrats can be paid off win - win situation. The prices in supermarkets will probably go up but thats good for about half the population who are obese, thereby saving the NHS money as well. If there are no farming subsidies the Government contribution to the EU can therefore be reduced, again win -win situation. Farming is the only business that get subsidised to produce goods and also to not produce goods. How can that by any stretch of the imagination be good for our economy. Sorry about the rant but this is one of my pet hates. BTW I am a Townie who likes the countryside. Mike

How about a koala bear?

Just received my x27 and x11 from ebay Poland today. Good delivery time of 6 days. Only used them for 10 minutes today as I am in the middle of a big job for a client. Both worked really well and I am amazes how light they are. I reckon I could give my mate a race splitting logs and beat him, he has an electric splitter which is pretty slow although it can split at both ends. Forgot to say £83 delivered! Mike

Some outlets I know mark up your prices by 250% which I think is an absolute rip off. It makes your work so expensive that nobody will buy it. Or to keep it at a reasonable retail price they are offering absolute peanuts. I try to persuade shops/galleries to charge a sensible price so that we both make money out of it. If they are not willing to do that then I dont supply them. You are better off setting up a good website and an ecommerce shop. If the items are too big to post like coffee tables/bookcases etc then people will have to come and view them before they commission an item. Trouble is if you are doing wooden turned or carved bowls rather than something unique then there will always be some back garden turner/carver willing to supply them for 'pocket money ' prices. I refuse to compete in that sort of market and that is why I am looking bleary eyed from trying to set up my web shop. It will be worth the effort though as there wont be a middle man to take a large slice of dosh from me! I stopped doing big craft/exhibitions fairs a long time ago as the money wasnt there. I used to pay anything up to £1000 for a stand at some shows but wont do that now at all. Sometimes I will still do a small one just to keep in contact with local makers and use it as a marketing excercise to keep my name out there. Sometimes it can be even more profitable than the bigger shows. Mike

Hi Andrew I can also do you a table. You can check some photos on my website at pensofdistinction.co.uk or go back a couple of months and check out some of them on a previous post on this sub forum. Cheers Mike

Hi Buzz Surprised that no one has suggested that if you are a copper and in to trees why not transfer to the Special Branch for a change of scene. On a more serious note could you not combine working part time to keep the money coming in and studying for a degree in arb/forestry at the same time. Might be difficult for a few years, but after uni you could still start your own business or work as a consultant/freelancer for a few years to gain enough experience or work till you reach the point that you are able to go full time. Mike

Using/hearing a chainsaw is a 'normal' countryside noise in my opinion. I wouldnt worry about upsetting his customers if you are cutting logs for your own stove. There is a compromise though and if you could leave it to say after 11am before you start when most people should be up. It could be worse though, if you had for instance your own chickens and a cockerel! Mike

The log home builders association in the US run training course several times a year. It has long been a dream of mine to build a log cabin and I need to raise a few thou to realise this dream, but I will do it one day. I would certainly do one of their courses first before I would attempt anything like this. I have been a follower of their forum for several years now and some of the members log homes that they have built are amazing. Main problem in this country is the cost of land though. The planning depts. probably would be difficult to get round but I think with the current craze for climate change, sustainability and ecofriendliness etc it wuld be a lot easier to get planning permission now for a log cabin than it would have been 10 to 15 years ago. Mike

We used to use chinagraph pencils in the RAF years ago for marking on glass or plastic. I've no doubt they would mark other wet or slippy surfaces such as timber. Still widely available. Mike

I've had my husky 281 for a couple of years now. It was an ex army surplus purchase and although only a few years old, it only had probably less than a couple of hours use. The difficulty with it is that the compression seems too much and it is quite difficult to pull the start cord without jerking up the saw. Most times I have to place the saw in front of me and put the front of both my feet in the back of the handle to keep it on the ground when starting this. Now I know about having good compression etc but this actually seems like too much compression! This is the third husky that I have had and definetly the most difficult to start. My mate has the same one but as he is a six foot six ex marine he doesnt have any problems. Is there anything I can do about it to ease it up or do I have to just live with it? Mike

Hi Atkinson Walker in Sheffield will do up to a metre in dia for sawmill blades Mike

Hi David You have a pm Mike

I wouldnt like the job of being a window cleaner on that building!scared1:

with a very expensive laser worth about 18K. Obviously connected to a computer, using Corel draw to work on images, exported to the laser engraver software, and then fed to lasser via fibre optic cables. Plain words etc can be directly worked in the engraving software and fed to the laser. I can engrave up to 1000dpi in a variety of materials, but wood is the best and I normally engrave at 300dpi in wood. Although I can onlyengrave a max size of about 200 square I have made a variety of jigs whereby I can do that size in the middle of a larger piece of timber etc. Its a pretty cool toy which soon paid for itself and it is definetly far superior to the cheap chinese rubbish which is available now. Its also the only method to engrave on timber as there is a colour differential between engraved wood and wood which hasnt been touched (as opposed to cnc routing) and you can also do sharp edges with a laser which you cant do with a cnc router. The photograph below is of the laser actually engraving one of the images. The small yellow dots are the laser hitting the wood and burning it

I recently made these 3 tables from a yew I milled about 3 years ago. They are for a mate's wife's 40th birthday present. She is a musician and her instrument is the clarinet. I laser engraved 3 pictures and a birthday greeting on the sides of the legs. The 2 small tables fit under the larger table and will be placed between their armchairs. As his wife is 40, I looked for a 1972 coin to inset in resin, plugging a 50mm dia hole in one of the planks. Buying one was harder than I thought, as decimalisation was in 1971 and the only coins minted that year were for collectors sets. However I managed to get a 10p piece on Ebay and duly set in in the resin. The resin dried a little cloudy but the date can still be seen on it. The last photo is of the three tables next to the tree stump where the yew once grew. He gave her the tables early and I believe they were very well received, and he wont now have to spend his days off getting dragged around Ikea etc looking for coffee tables!

my 268 ws nicked from the back of my car last September. It was a brilliant saw and I really miss it because it was light and plenty of welly. I used it for milling smaller logs up to about 22 inches in dia including beech and oak! Mike

Hi No snow around here yet in Fife. The kids are really fed up as they havent had any days off school unlike the last 2 years. In fact it is so mild at present there are clouds of midges flying around and my rhubarb is looking good! Mike

Thats a cracking log arch you've made JPH. Unfortunately I dont know any farmers or have access to a tractor so I think we will be heading down the homemade route. The both of us are pretty good at welding and my workshop has a big welding factory nearby so if the dont have what we need in their skip I will buy it off them. Their prices are pretty good and they can cut to good tolerances as well. I know this log arch is going to have to be heavy duty and we will probably over engineer it in the end. We just want to lift up the front of the log and then drag it out with the landy. We dont have too far to go so hopefully we can drag them out in the morning and get them lifted in the afternoon Mike

As my mate lives about 20 miles away, by the time he pays for diesel, oil and petrol for the saws, chains etc it will be as cheap making a log arch as we have most of the parts, and taking them to a sawmill in a hiab. Using the alaskan mill for about 6 working days will be very hard work. My cabinet making/ laser engraving business is getting very busy just now and its ironic because I am needing to use a lot of oak for several projects and I dont have enough at present. Getting the trees to the sawmill will save a lot of time. The log arch will be used in another job as well where we have several oak, ash and beech to do. Mike

Hi Me and a mate have the opportunity of acquiring 3 large oaks soona and because each of them are over 3' in dia have decided to get them to a sawmill instead of using the alaskan mill set up we have. They are approx 75m from the road side. Althought the ground has a decent wide track to them it will still be too soft for the hiab when loaded up with the 9 logs at 8' lengths. My mate has a landy and we were wondering does anyone sell log arches in the uk or have access to plans. We have drawings of one model are are just looikg to see if anything else is out there to compare them with. I know TCF engineering make them but at £675 or thereabouts for one which will take a 28'' dia log isnt big enough. I know he makes them to order but I think it might be hitt the 1k mark . Our one has to be able to take a 40'' log minimum. We have a lot of the bits already and will just have to buy the steel in for the job. We only plan to lift up the front of the log and skid it out the short distance to the hiab and then off to the mill. Any one got any comments or advice or do we sound like a couple of idiots. PS I ran out of chain oil last week and due to the literally 1000's of trees which came down in the Tuesday gales only one local dealer had any left. I had to pay £13 for 2 single litre bottles of oregon oil. Is this a record or can anyone beat it!!!!! cheers Mike