Mike Dempsey

You are basically looking for a whitish wood which isn't brittle as you don't want them breaking easily. I have milled up a couple of poplar into 20mm thick planks and ripped them into 25mm wide strips. I keep a variety of lengths handy depending on what width of plank I am drying in the kiln. I discard any with large knots in them as they deform in the kiln. I haven't had any sticker stain from them on sycamore or any other wood and I have used them several times.

The important bit here is her self belief and can-do attitude will have soared and will stand her in good stead for the rest of her life. Tackling things which are easy doesn't broaden the horizons half as much as when she has knowledge and skills gaps to conquer. The coracle will be a testament to her achievement for a long time to come and she may wish to make improvements to it with a bit of encouragement. The hardest bit for you Daniel would have been standing back and letting her do it!

Its also possible that the neighbour is scared to get a quote as they haven't got a lot of money to spend on this kind of job and doesn't like to admit it. A friendly word with them and the offer to pay for the work might work wonders. I would add a caveat into any deal is that they must be taken out and not trimmed as you will be back in the same situation in a few years time. Mike

In any business in order to survive and make progress, you use the best tools and machinery available. If you don't then you stand a good chance of being undercut by your rivals and not making much money. I don't equate my work to tat and its not been called that to the best of my knowledge. I also don't sell to garden centres or other retail outlets who knock it out as cheap as possible. I regularly make wooden items to go along with bottles of malt which sell at £10k or more. It is well designed and well made, it has to be as the standards of my customers are very high. I regularly work with award winning design companies from around the UK and have been involved with projects that have won worldwide design awards. My biggest whisky company customer has been using me for about ten years now and I have carried out about 15 different projects for them. You don't get that by making tat. I am not knocking people who only use handtools btw. Most of the people using handtools are in a very small niche market with customers who are willing and able to pay top prices. There are also a lot of guys working away in garden sheds only using handtools as a deliberate choice, producing very high quality work for friends and family. If they tried to get their full time employment rate per hour for the amount of hours spent on the work, it would never sell!

I am a designer/cabinet maker by trade and have been self employed now for 16 years. I still use some hand tools and also state of the art technology as in my laser and cnc router. Most of my work is in designing and making wooden boxes for the whisky industry. In order to be competitive within a global market I have to use the best tools and machinery available in order to speed up the process. Quite often I am making 300 to 400 of the same item and this also helps to take away the drudgery as well. This also includes spending 70 quid or so on an individual forstner bit which most woodworkers on here would be reluctant to spend. The vast majority of people using only hand tools are making items as a hobby or are in a very small niche, high end market which can stand high prices as the end customer understands that it is totally hand made. Would you be willing to pay £80k for a Ford Fiesta because it was hand made or are you happy to take advantage of new technology which reduces the price to about£10k or so. To criticize someone for wanting to earn a living is unfair and below the belt in my opinion. I haven't seen anywhere that Stefan has said he will use new technology to make wooden items and pass them off as handmade. The other aspect of using new technology is that is it a lot more than press a couple of buttons and out pops the finished item ten minutes later. The learning curve for designing software can be very steep and complicated. No matter how expensive the machine is, it you cant use the software you have just bought a large and expensive paperweight!

Back at work in the spray booth. Just got 300 coasters to spray lacquer both sides. It was too hot during the day and the lacquer was drying too fast before it got a chance to flow properly. Hopefully home before midnight!

Hate to have to pay the leccy bill for that saw after a couple of months work!

What disappoints me most is the appallingly low standard of the various party's candidates. Lack of intelligence, downright loonies, corrupt, nepotism, lack of integrity, etc are just some of the descriptions I would give them. Its a sad day to think that these are the kind of people who will be dealing with major topics such as brexit, terrorism and the NHS.

I 53 years old and have never missed a vote of any description since I was old enough. I can honestly say that I have never been so put off by the candidates/parties/ leaders available in all my days. Its definitely the worst selection in my memory. As I live in Scotland I also have the SNP as a possible choice and they are just as bad. I am normally a decisive kind of person and find it easy to make my mind up on issues that effect me, but not this time. This might be the first time that I write "they are all a bunch of ar**wholes on my ballot paper instead of ticking a box. The only party who would get my vote would be the one who would grow a pair of balls and put the country first instead of their mates. Cant see that happening any time soon!

About the only thing that has the least effect on changing the colour of white woods such as sycamore, ash and lime is water based lacquer. Even then your sycamore will not last long outside. It will get mildew/black dot after the first winter and then its downhill from there. Mike

or in my experience, for free, and delivered as well

The other aspect to this apart from the splitting is mould growth. Damp timber put into a warm atmosphere without much air movement will lead to mould growth which wont be very healthy with your daughter being in close proximity to it for several hours every day. Even more so if there is any spalting. Wipe it down with a borax solution regularly as this will help to minimise it but the chances are it will lead to a lot of unsitely mould marks/discolouration. Don't put any finish on it either as this will just trap any moisture and eventually lead to the wood starting to rot. Eventually it will dry out and stop moving. The best thing to do is wait and let it dry out or get it kiln dried if possible. Mike

I'm Mike not Mick!

Just make sure the ends are well sealed. Cherry is one of the worst woods for splitting.

I love using beech in the workshop, especially if the item I make is to be laser engraved. The wooden business cards I make are normally either beech or sycamore and due to its tight grain the engravings come out brilliant compared to a lot of other woods. Mike

The only problem with the pricing is that vat is not charged on food.

A lot of the wood turners do it for making brightly coloured / unusual pen blanks. You need quite a lot of vacuum to penetrate the resin deep enough into the wood so that when its turned the colour is still present. The blanks also weigh three or four times their weight as well, so that factor has to be taken into account in the furniture etc you would be making with it. Another thing to consider would be the effect on the cutting edge of tooling and the not so very nice dust that would come off it. That said, I would think that a big table top would look pretty spectacular as well as being pretty well bomb proof as any spillages would just lie on the top surface and not penetrate it. Mike

Here's another thought. If a planning department passed on details of TPO application to fell or have work on it, wouldn't it then be a breach of the Data Protection Act. After all it includes the name and address of the applicant etc which they are then passing on to a third party (because the arb squad aren't in the planning dept) Just a thought and maybe worth following through! Mike

That's a very strange kind of grant setup, if that's what it is. Up here in Scotland the only ones handling grants are public bodies like Business Gateway and Scottish Enterprise. If you were successful in getting a grant from them it would be a percentage of the overall expenditure and paid retrospectively to your bank account when you had sent them the invoice. It would also only pay out for specific items which were mentioned in the grant application form and approved by them. This really smells fishy and I would avoid it. Don't say you haven't been warned!

woodsmoke.3sc.net/files/UK_PM25_pollution_extracts_of_supporting_documents.pdf Just came across it in the readers comments on an article regarding diesel pollution. Mike

Cant help thinking it would be very noisy!

If you can its worth having a practice shot on a low value timber such as a pine to give you some experience before you tackle something such as a cherry. Mike

It would be fair if the Gov paid all self employed people 5 weeks holiday pay (and public holidays as well for that matter) say at an average of their weekly pay, per year and sick pay as well. Health service staff and local and central Gov staff all get 6 months full and 6 months half pay after 5 years of employment. Even after all the cut backs of the last few years there are still tens of thousands chair shiners surplus to requirements. They have no concept with regards to the risks or difficulties and stress of genuine self employed people. I blame the BBC for all this as their dodgy contracts allowed a lot of their high earners to wriggle out of their tax obligations with none of the genuine risks/stress of real self employment. Why it took the tax man so long to discover this we will never know! Mike

I use an Alaskan mill and about 6 years ago planked up a big doug fir for my garden fence. The posts were 5 inches square and the planks were 1.25 inches thick. The fence stands 8' tall and has now turned all silvery. Looks really good and is the only one in the street that doesn't move in the gales. My wife wanted to stain it some kind of blue colour a few years ago but I wouldn't let her because it would then have to be done every couple of years. I am very happy with it and the lack of maintenance that is required. I am sure it will outlast me np problem and I am only 53 years young! Mike

I'm just over the bridge in Glenrothes so if I am available I will come as well. Mike