Big J

I understand your point, but I've honestly not noticed any issues with performance over summer and very little of the UK gets the kind of temperature that would cause issues. Regarding wear, as I mentioned earlier, I should get 45-50k out of the van tyres. The car tyres are down at 2mm, and they have been on since it was new (16k miles ago). 16k out of a set of tyres costing £500 is not good economy.

With all season I cannot see that there is any disadvantage. I think I'll get 45-50k out of mine on my van, and whereas my van was driving around on 2 inches of snow this morning like it wasn't there, the car (with the tyres that it came with, that are imminently due to be replaced and my all season are winging their way from Germany) couldn't really move. It took me 10 minutes of wiggling and sliding to get it up the (150m) drive to our house. The van just went straight up. Given that they seem to wear the same, they grip well under normal conditions and don't cost any more, why wouldn't you want tyres that mean you can safely stop and change direction if there is snow or ice on the road? Even in the south of the UK there are times when that is the case, and they grip better at lower temperatures even if there isn't snow or ice.

I've started a petition to encourage the government to legislate to improve the availability of winter and all season tyres. This would be coupled with their mandatory usage over the colder months. https://www.change.org/p/uk-parliament-all-tyres-sold-in-the-uk-must-be-all-season/nftexp/ex43/control/174691789?recruiter=174691789&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_for_starters_page.nafta_milestone_share_ask_1.72_hour_ask&utm_content=ex43%3Acontrol The difference in grip between summer and all season tyres on ice and snow is enormous. Any vehicle on summer tyres in the snow is fundamentally unsafe. If you feel the same and would like to improve road safety in a way that costs nothing (all season tyres cost no more than summer tyres), please sign my petition!

By all means! It's broad and inclusive club!

What do you call a native American suffering from hair loss? Apache. Sorry, that was one I made up. You know you're truly part of the 'Dad' community when you start thinking of awful jokes yourself

Ha! Not quite. I'm back at the gym after 9 years off, but I'll never attain anything better than BOBFOC (Body Off Baywatch, Face Off Crimewatch). I appreciate that everyones metabolism is different, but my experiences of gaining weight were as follows. Aged 19 I decided to bulk up. I was 77kg and 6ft 8". I looked like a Holocaust survivor (I was as fit as a flea, and had competed nationally at Taekwondo, but was very much the proverbial string bean). So I forced myself to eat like a horse, lifted some weights and 4 years later weighed 131kg and was quite a lot stronger. The issue was that I more or less knocked out my digestive system (vomiting, retching, nausea almost constantly). It's always taken me a lot of effort to gain weight, and I find it almost impossible to overeat unless there is a stimulus (ie, I've been to the gym, hard day at work, long walk etc). I just can't fathom how a majority of the population is now overweight. It's boggling and frankly disgusting. How many photos from the 1940s do you see with scores of overweight people? It's simply a case of oversupply and endless temptation, coupled with an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and lack of willpower. We are nevertheless our own masters, to a greater or lesser extent and we control how much we eat and how much we exercise.

Nothing wrong with being fattist in my mind. For 98% of people who are obese, it is their own fault. They are eating too much and moving too little. It's a really, really simple energy in, energy out equation. I don't understand how when people notice themselves gaining more and more weight they don't do something about it? Gaining useless weight (I use that term to refer to fat, rather than muscle) makes every aspect of life more difficult, increases the health risks exponentially in so many areas, and must cost a fortune in replacing clothes etc. Surely eating a little less is simpler? That our climate has been raised I think is valid. We do have uniquely poor weather compared to much of Europe, which won't help anyone's desire to get outside and get fit. I'd stick my neck out and say it's a class issue to a certain extent as well. We were at a friends kid's birthday party earlier in the month (outdoor scootering and biking and then food cooked on a campfire - for three year olds and the weather was actually kind to us!) and out of about 20 odd parents who were mostly from the local private nursery and climber friends, there was not one person I'd even describe as overweight. I'd describe myself as (skilled working) middle class and I can only think of a couple of friends who struggle with their weight. I'm not saying that I choose my friends on the basis of their weight, but rather as an observation of my social circle. The slimmest and most attractive country I've been to in Europe has to be Sweden. Whereas you might see a real stunner of a lady here in Scotland every once in a while, you see countless head turners every day in Sweden. They must come to the UK and think we're a country of (fat) trolls!

I fear you are going to get a large number of sarcastic comments, and it's hard to defend your point of view. Buying a wood burning stove and then complaining about having to purchase the fuel for it is a bit like buying a car and complaining about the petrol bill. Firewood costs money. I appreciate that you are prepared to travel, but surely you see that you'll be paying out with your time and your travel costs? I imagine that you'll struggle to find much for free unless you are prepared to completely clear sites, or you're able to take some awfully ugly logs. Then, you'll need a lot of space to store them and specialised equipment to process them, and perhaps when you get to that stage, you'll understand why logs costs money. Either way, I wish you the best of luck in your quest

Minus 8.2 last night, no snow. Reached a high of minus 1 today, which is a touch more humane than yesterday's high of minus 3.6

Hard frost here (near Edinburgh). Reached minus 7.7 and it's still minus 7.2. No snow to speak of.

That was the intended reaction!

Saw a bloke at the beach the other day snogging a shell, so I asked him "what you doing?!" He said "I've pulled a mussel!"

Interesting issue, and one I've been fortunate never to experience. All the time I've had stoves (9.5 years) I've only ever lived in two different, old and drafty cottages. Had four different stoves on 3 different flues and all fine. Only thing I can share is my preferred method of lighting (when necessary - I've not taken a match to the fire since coming back from a short holiday 5 days ago. It can go 6 weeks or more continuously). I use loosely knotted newspaper (two sheets, rolled and tied into a loose knot) x 3 with a few handfuls of processor dross on top, but slightly behind. The chips and shards from the processor make superb kindling and it never fails to light.

Sadly firewood I suspect. Too short to be useful and the metal apparent on the stump means chain/blade damage is guaranteed.

Thick boards are very difficult to grip, and given that weight of an object is determined (mentally) by ease of grip, it may have skewed it. I've yet to come across a timber in the UK that sinks in water, even if completely freshly felled. If the 42" by 120" by 2.5" boards had the same density as water, they'd still only weigh 206kg per slab. Obviously still a heavy lift, but fairly manageable for four guys. I am a bit particular about weights and measures. I like to know what I'm lifting before I lift it so tend to always work it out. Having done that for many years now, I can usually reasonably accurately guess, though in the timber game it's just different degrees of stupidly heavy!

Not to be a pedant, but boards that size I'd put at 190kg. That's on the basis of the boards being about 7.3 cubic foot, and 26kg per cubic foot (just over 900kg per cubic metre). 350kg would mean it wasn't far off the density of concrete.

How do you weigh a whale? At the whale-weigh station. Why do bees have sticky hair? Because they use a honey comb.

I can do cut and split softwood, but not hardwood. Horrible gnarly, slow to process stuff. Very little benefit burning hardwood too. Ball park of about £38-40 a cubic metre for softwood delivered within about 25 miles Linlithgow on the basis of a 30 cube load.

I am afraid that (with the possible exception of the main stem) you have nothing but firewood there. Reasonably inaccessible firewood at that. As a rule, I never pay for knobbly beech and I'm never in short supply. You'd be lucky to get £50-60 for the stems. I'm not trying to be negative, only realistic.

At the front of my store I've got a mixture of oak, larch and corsican pine. The pine is hands down the first choice. Puts down a much larger ember bed than the oak, gives off more heat and lasts longer. If only it weren't so stringy to split!

I've just started lifting weights (gently) again after a 9 year hiatus. I've had a nasty, niggling back injury for 10 years which has been slowly and incrementally disabling me. The weights (combined with swimming) seem to have had a really positive and rapid effect on the amount of pain I endure each day, so I shall persist. Excellent benching there Bigtreedon. I only ever got to 140kg close grip, but being 6ft 8", my arms are about three miles long so my range of motion didn't lend itself to benching!

Good man. I think most serious millers go through the mobile phase, but it's exhausting work for lowish reward. Which saw did you get?

We got some lovely boards out of it and in the end the repair wasn't expensive at all.

It wasn't actually! Managed to find some beech even larger that just completely filled the throat. Half the weight was sat on one back stop and half ripped it off!

I'm not familiar with that model. A 75mm blade is wider than mine (I run 60mm blades on mine). I'm still working through my original batch of 50 blades that I got with the mill. I've probably lost 15 or so to snappages and micro fractures in the gullets, but they've resharpened over 10 times each. Otherwise, Dakin Flathers do good blades in the form of the Ripper 37s, but I also quite liked Woodmizer's Silvertip which I think you can get in 75mm