Big J

Also a bloody pain. C1 + E it would be then.

And if I do, I'm not going to do it in bloody Devon. There is barely a road large enough for a van, let alone an artic! ?

Can I jump straight to class one from B + E?

Oh that's a massive PITA. Looking at a 5t plated 6x6 Sprinter and the prospect of having to site a C1 + E isn't filling me with joy. The daft thing is that the last few weeks I've been on the road in the forestry tractor, sometimes towing 10t behind me!

Haha! Please accept my apologies. I must admit I did think it was coast redwood, but over here we just refer to them all as sequoia generally. Lovely timber.

Quick question Justme, if you have a minute. I have a B+E licence as I took a trailer test maybe 8-9 years ago. If I were to sit a C licence, would the qualification to tow a 3500kg trailer carry over or would I have to resit that? Many thanks.

Sequoia ?

If anyone is in desperate need of throwing an insult, may I suggest going down the Monty Python route? "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!"

I got extra long uprights from Rob. I'm sure they do them for the Panther mills as well. I deeply hate free hand quartering logs. It's very hard work and you end up with an untidy and inaccurate product. Boards with ragged edges don't sell well, and you'll lose at least an inch in board measure from every board when free hand quartered.

Easiest way to quarter a large log is with a chainsaw mill like this: (copy and pasted from the ASHS website, that's me in the left hand photo). That way you can exactly measure the top rail so that the saw enters and exits the log precisely on the pith. You then ratchet strap the log at each end and at the middle and roll it 90 degrees. Get your top rail level again, take off the first ratchet, start your cut and restrap the log once the saw is clear. Take the centre strap off as you approach it with the saw and restrap once you're past. Same with the last strap. Sounds laborious, but it's quite quick. You also end up with 4 perfect quarters.

If possible, it's always worth considering quarter sawing. But... The log needs to be a minimum of 1m in diameter. Ideally larger really You need a log with a central heart. Any tree that has grown with a lean will not work Only quarter saw completely clean logs. Quarter sawn figure through pip or burr just looks odd, and no where near as attractive as flat sawn The benefit of quarter sawing is that you end up with boards that are completely stable. Assuming you've gone through the selection process stipulated above, you'll have boards that do not bend or twist at all through the drying process. You have higher wastage in milling, but much lower wastage in drying and a higher value product. With regards the logs in question, the first log looks very good, the second should be cross cut just below the first collar. There isn't much point milling around that bend. As regards thicknesses, 2.25" is a good one to go with. A nice combination of thick enough for tables, but light enough that it's not going to kill you moving the boards. They'll always sell. Worth considering the drying time with oak as well, as taking it up to 3" will add a year to the financial recovery time for the logs. And finally, if you are going to mill it this season, it needs to be in the next week or two. It's late and it'll warm up soon, and you run the risk of checking in the timber.

As others have said, climate change is less about what we'll do to the Earth in the long term (we've a blip on the Earth's timeline, albeit an obnoxious one). It's essentially self-preservation and continuing on the path we're on will mean by 2100 we won't have a great deal to preserve. I also mourn the loss of biodiversity in our lifetimes. Again, not that the earth won't recover, only that our children and children's children won't see the wealth of natural splendour that we've enjoyed.

Nurse? Nurse?! NURSE??!! He got out again ?

I'm not sure that flying really is that bad when viewed strictly from a C02 point of view. A single flight for me from Bristol to Luxembourg produces 110kg of CO2. Now my van I think on paper does about 250g of CO2 per KM but most of my work is towing on steep hills on mud terrain tyres. So in calculating the CO2 from the MPG drop from the manufacturers figures, I must be doing at least 400g/CO2 per KM. So in reality, I only need to do around 300km in the van to exceed the flight's CO2 output for a single passenger. Even if I drove like an undertaker on super efficient tyres, it would only take 450km to exceed the CO2 from a flight which is much longer. I realise that part of the environmental damage is where the planes put the pollution in the atmosphere, but I don't think flying is as bad as publicised. Couple the 80 litres a week of road diesel usage for my van with the 150 litres a week of red diesel usage and I'm definitely an environmental terrorist!

Probably. The questionnaire is a little simplistic, but quite interesting.

Almost half travel. I don't use trains or buses, don't fly often, but use a lot of fuel for work. With the machines on site, an awful lot of diesel really.

I forgot to check. I'll look again. Probably transport - my works van is terrible on fuel, but I don't fly often

14 tonnes for me. On the point of veganism (or at least reducing meat consumption), it is pretty much the most efficient way of reducing your environmental impact. I was vegan for 8 years in my early 20s, and gave up once I could no longer reconcile forestry work (and the need to shoot squirrels and deer) with my dietary/lifestyle choice. I'm now just a hypocrite that feels that veganism is the healthiest and most environmentally sound choice, but can't face it myself. Having a very, very fast metabolism doesn't help as I lose weight extremely quickly. My wife is vegan, and has been for 15 years now. We've two very bright daughters who are growing like weeds, and went through pregnancy and 2 years of breastfeeding on a vegan diet by proxy. It is definitely the most healthy diet. It is definitely the most environmentally friendly diet. It's just not the most interesting diet! ?

That trailer really is the bogs dollocks. Almost a shame not to have any hydraulics mounted to it. Could be some money in building custom trailers for manual mills with additional hydraulics. They transform band milling.

We used to get £15/t (last year) at the sawmill near Edinburgh for any biomass loaded into a large skip. So this included slabwood, sawdust and bark. They just chucked it all through a shredder. Pure slabwood would be more though.

Assume you're doing the drying on a fairly commercial basis and you had a 30ft x 90ft polytunnel. It's 12ft high, and almost half of a cylinder so has an internal volume of around 720 cubic metres. There are large axial wall fans on eBay that consume 1.1kw and move 14000 cubic metres of air per hour, so you'd have a full change of air every 3 minutes. One fan would easily suffice.

Would a large solar powered fan be productive? It would couple maximum ventilation with the maximum air temperature. There isn't much point ventilating at night in a polytunnel as the air is usually cooler than the dew point (100% RH) so all you'd be doing is pushing fully saturated air through the kiln, potentially even increasing the MC of the timber. Large industrial air movers do use a lot of power though. You'd need a decent solar array.

It's a trade-off between relative humidity and increasing the air temperature to increase the moisture carrying capacity of air. On a hot still day, the ambient RH might only be 50% and you may well get the poly tunnel to 40c inside. However, the air in the polytunnel will quickly become saturated and frankly, it won't matter how hot it gets because air at 100% RH is incapable of stripping any moisture, irrespective of temperature. Contrast this to a blustery, overcast day. You might have an ambient RH of 75% and air temperature of 30c inside the polytunnel. The air movement within the polytunnel will ensure continuous moisture removal. It's important to remember that temperature merely increases the moisture carrying capacity of the air (it doubles every 9c). You have to have air movement to actually strip the moisture.

Minimal or zero tail swing 13-14t, open to suggestions on make.

Ouch! I was looking at £50k maybe for total build cost, so maybe not attainable.