Big J

Ah OK. Fair enough. Shame not to be able to delay it though. Just look after it - lovely boards!

Lovely boards but I really would have saved the log for cutting in cooler weather. One little spell of hot weather and it will cause no end of cracking. Store them somewhere as cool and as damp as possible, but treat heavily with anti fungal agent.

The Logmaster is a very fast mill (2" bands help) but I did have three guys in helping me. That being said, only one unloading the mill - the other two were edging waney edged boards, pressure washing logs (that also speeds up production - no mucky logs means fewer band changes and better accuracy). 11.5t of 130 odd tonnes to cut - we have to be quick or we'd never finish the job!

Perhaps you chaps aren't quite grasping the quantity of sawdust being produced here. I had 21 cubic metres of it go out this week...! On the offcuts front - Good News! Local biomass producer has offered £25 a tonne with them collecting, so pleased with that.

It's feasible certainly, but you are going to want to spend the most you can on a saw. Anything less than fully hydraulic is going to frustrate you and your customers no end. A hydraulic mill will cut many times more in a day than a manual mill and you won't be as tired at the end of it. For instance, I have a fully hydraulic Logmaster LM2 and we cut 11.5t of average 35cm diameter 4m western red cedar yesterday (29 logs). I don't think we'd have done more than 10-12 logs on a manual mill. Where abouts are you?

Almost all good hardwood species will make 1000 or more euros a cube when dry. Double that for burr elm or walnut (and then some really).

Just curious what some of you larger sawmills do with your waste products? I'm about 38 tonnes into a 130 tonne cutting job and we're producing sawdust and offcuts at a rate of knots. About 2 cube of sawdust a day and 2.5 tonnes of firewood offcuts to be precise. Are the biomass lot interesting in sawmill offcuts or will they only pay a pittance? I used to firewood it myself, but I don't have time time (and never really had the inclination). The sawdust goes to horsey types, but it's a ballache loading them up and organising them to bring builders bags and not come after hours or weekends. Any ideas appreciated - seem to spend almost as much time dealing with the waste products as cutting!

I'd always say allow at least 10mm, depending on timber species. If you are cutting timber to sell, always cut thicker than you sell it at (so that your customer feels they are always getting a bit more, and so that your 1.5" stock is never less than 1.5"). So for instance, cut 1" at 27mm, 1.25" at 34mm, 1.5" at 40mm (or even 42mm), 2" at 54mm and so on.

Alaskan and bandmill. Use the Alaskan to break down larger logs and do the bulk of your cutting on a bandmill. Even a basic manual bandsaw mill with produce twice as much in a day as a chainsaw mill and remember that you are creating 3 to 4 times less sawdust with every cut too. This means better efficiency and not having to deal with colossal amounts of sawdust. That said, all my horsey types that take my sawdust are full to the gunnels and I have 30 cube of the stuff waiting to go out!

Now 6 years into self employment, I'm trying to take more definite and more regular time off. I guess it's something you naturally crave when you become a parent. Had a week in Sweden so far this year that was a complete holiday, several days in Germany that sort of was (collected a trailer, drove a couple thousand miles) and planning to have another week later in the year. With the hours I do at the sawmill, I'm certain that I do an average of 45 hours a week even including my weeks off. So bloody busy.

Not sure. Will give you a buzz when it comes out. 6 weeks or so, maybe a bit less.

Sorry Steve - didn't see this post. There is some of it in the kiln now, so once it's out, I'll send you a turning blank for identification. Very heavy indeed. Really, really heavy. No outcome just yet chaps - still in the dark.

Beautifully made and a good idea, but is it not a bit flexible? Thick and as heavy as possible is my experience of chainsawmilling rails. The last ones I made were from 8x4" timber beams.

Not many fishkeepers here then!

Much to my wife's bemusement/amusement we now have a very tiny 2nd tank for the purpose of breeding a red cherry shrimp hybrid. Bought several hundred of them from a local breeder, not realising that they were quite as small as they were. One bag went into the big tank and many were quite quickly eaten. The other bag I kept back and set up a 15l tank to provide a steady steam of shrimp for the big tank. There are loads of places for them to hide, but there are also lots of predators!

If I was cutting to get a finished 144mm PAR I'd start at about 165mm, expect it to shrink 8mm and plane off the rest. That's assuming it stays straight....

Here is a slightly poor photo of mine - needed somthing to rest the camera on, so the oblique angle is due to the location of the fireguard.

Completely missed this post - sorry! Sounds like a really interesting set up. I'm happy to admit that marine aquatics scares me somewhat (not just the price!). I'd love to see pictures of your's and your father's tank. Globalnetwork - interesting fish in there. What are they? CallumA - my daughter also loves the tank. One of her first words was Wow! and she knew to point at the fish food tub for feeding quite early on. Just waiting an hour or two until there is no external light to take a photo. I'm really very pleased with it - the dwarf grasses and java moss finish it off nicely. Now comes the hardcore gardening to keep everything in check! I'm rather tall and I can only just reach to the bottom and need a step to get to the back!

Gin clear by this afternoon. Added the last of the plants - will take some photos tonight. I had to cut 4-6 inches off of some of the cambomba at the same time.

I don't want to encourage them to grow any more quickly! I've a couple of bunches of green cambomba that grows at about an inch a day! I'll have a think about LED lighting. The chap who supplied the tank changed one of the bulbs from standard to bring out more colours in the fish and I think it works. Tank much less cloudy this morning, almost gin clear. Will take photos this evening. What do you have in your tank matelot?

It's certainly a feature! We don't have a TV as such, so it's not much bigger than many people's flatscreens. Many of the fish in that list weren't in my smaller tank. Rather than the 3 L number plecs I now have, I had a couple of Gibbiceps, but they had grown quite alarmingly and I figured I had to get rid of them at that juncture as catching them in the big tank would be impossible. So the chap at the aquatics shop took them and I though sod it, I'll get some more fish to fill the tank a bit! I did check with the shop as to how to switch over the tanks and he reckoned it would be fine. We just didn't have space in the living room for both. I don't think I've lost any fish, not even the shrimp (I have two armoured and two bamboo shrimp). The jurupari (cichlids) will likely end up numbering 4 to reduce territory issues. As a pair, one is completely dominant.

Lime isn't that easy to sell. I'm only taking it because it's large, clean and part of a parcel with sycamore. I'm also not paying much for it. You'd be better off firewooding your stem.

I could do a large amount of sawn sycamore extremely cheaply delivered to Ashford. I have 20 tonnes (as well as some lime) coming in later in the week.

Hi all, As a fairly recent rediscoverer of a love for keeping tropical fish (had them as a child), I thought I'd start a thread to see if anyone kept fish (tropical, marine or coldwater). I had a basic tropical set up as a kid, with a succession of fish that didn't like as long as they should have. A few months back I thought sod it, and got a 90ltr tropical set up that quickly got pimped out with an external filter to allow for more fish. A chance on a 330ltr corner tank came up, which I set up at the weekend, moving my old tank stock, tank water and external filter over, as well as all the plants. It's looking great (water still not quite crystal clear, and will hold off posting photos until it is), and is a heavily planted tank, with lots of bogwood and some slate. Silica sand substrate. Fish are: 6 Denison barbs (torpedo barbs by another name) 6 Cardinal tetras 6 Penguin tetras 4 zebra danios 1 gold nugget plec 1 blue phantom plec 1 green phantom plec 1 corydorus julii (soon to be 8-9) 4 kuhli loach 1 pictus catfish 1 hoplo catfish 1 synodontis decorum 2 geophagus jurupari 1 black ghost knife fish Might seem like quite a lot but the tank is huge and was set up with mature filters, mature water and plants. Very much understocked until they grow a bit. The jurupari are fascinating and quite territorial. The black ghost knife moves like no other fish I've ever seen and inhales earthworms. The plecs are stunning and the barbs are a wonderful focal point. Other than a few extra corydorus, the only thing that might possibly be added later is a handful of discus. Water needs to be 0ppm nitrate/nitrite/ammonia before that's considered. My old tank achieved that without any issues. Interested to see what other folk are keeping. In a miserably cold and damp Scottish climate, it's wonderful to have something tropical in the living room. Jonathan

Ah, but you are forgetting that drug addicts are all victims, and stealing someone's means to support themselves is a victimless crime! I would honestly support sharia law for theft. It is because they can act with impunity that they are so brazen and that theft is so prevalent. In all seriousness, why not work camps for such scum? Have them doing something menial and degrading all day for no wages. Sod their human rights - they forfeit the right to them when they consider a life of crime as being acceptable.