Big J

Green oak is worth a bit more than that Steve. I've got a really good quartersawing butt in the yard at the moment, 12ft long, 4 diameter, that I had to pay £12/hoppus foot for. Seasoned oak can also be worth a touch more if you can do it without distortion or defect. You stand a much better chance of this by ripping the boards up the heart, and there isn't as much demand for 3 inch stock as 1.5 or 2".

Fresh sawn, £18-20 a cubic foot at most, so £108-120 a board. Be prepared to take less though if someone offers to take a lot of it.

Fair point, though what is the point of insert stoves?

...with lots of extras. Intriguing! Electric Chain saw. | United Kingdom | Gumtree Can't say I've ever seen one like it. Must be of some interest to a homeowner or Dolmar nut, I mean enthusiast!

Not defending the daft price the eBay seller is asking for, but you get all manner of American firewood processors that will take 3ft diameter material. I you can get the poplar back to the yard for £25 a tonne, you've halved your material costs compared to standard hardwood. It also takes about 3 months to dry (I've been doing most of my heating so far this winter with poplar) so capital is tied up for far less time. I think as supply starts to be squeezed (which given that figures of £55/t have been suggested for standard hardwood mix delivered in) producers might have to start processing other materials. Of course it comes back to educating the customer though....

Don't get me started! So many people with stoves has got absolutely no idea how to use them. Assuming you have a stove and it's fitted and all is in order, the first thing to get is a flue thermometer. I have no idea how people operate stoves without them - genuinely. I have a big stove and I know that it's running to spec when it's sitting at 450-550 degrees fahrenheit. Too much air and within just a few minutes it can get to 800. Too little air and a few minutes later it's down towards 300 and smoking. Flue thermometers are £6 from eBay and vital - perhaps all you proper firewood merchants out there could save yourself a lot of headaches and supply one free with every new customer's first batch of wood? Also, a small fire can sometimes be counterproductive to economising on logs. Small fire equals less heat, less draw and therefore more air. A good, chock full firebox burning at the sweet spot of about 500 fahrenheit uses very little wood. I've loads of friends with stoves and a minority can use them properly. I had one chap say he didn't want wood too dry as it burned to quickly. Same guy who poked fun at me for filling up the stove rather than waiting an age for the three half wet logs to smoulder into life. Anyway, we got a stove fan on Tuesday. It requires a minimum of 70c to spin and it has not stopped once in the past 5 days. Perhaps the answer for people who struggle to light fires is to get a stove that is nigh on impossible to put out?

As much of a chancer as he is, he might not actually be that far off. A 16ft length of 3ft diameter mid girth poplar is 3.3t. I processed quite a bit of (wet) poplar into firewood last winter and found that I consistently got 2.5 split cube per tonne. So if you get 8 and a quarter cube from the first 16ft, that's 11.3 builders bags... Either way, they are very easy straight fells and I'd offer him a fiver a tonne for them. You tree surgeons forget that forestry contractors pay for trees standing sometimes!

I've just spend some of the afternoon finally getting around to typing up charts for the various thicknesses that I cut at. I have fibre optic set works on my mill but I prefer to cut manually. As such, I've always had a few pieces of paper kicking around with the common scales (ie 40mm is 40, 83, 126, 169 and so on, allowing for a 3mm kerf) but I'd been meaning to print off a complete set and laminate it and put it in a folder so I had it for quick reference. Anyway, I've done most of the common thicknesses from 25mm to 77mm, so if any of you want it and want to save an hour or so typing it up, message me with your email and I'll send over the files. It will save you a tonne of time and mental arithmetic! I should stress that whilst I have checked them, it's a Sunday afternoon, I'm pretty sleepy and there might be the odd error. I make no guarantees!

Crane operation 101, first day, first lesson..... Put your outriggers out!

BBC News - Dutch marriage proposal sees crane smash IJsselstein house The only thing worse than toppling your crane into a house is to drop said crane in a botched recovery effort, causing even more damage!

Oh yeah, forgot - new injectors too!

Not to worry Si - any chance you can chase them up?

Not true. Commercial vehicles such as vans, pickups etc are limited to 50mph on single carriageways and 60mph on duals. I know this to be true as they've recently average speed cameraed the A9, so we all have to know our limits up here.

I have a Navara. It's settled down now (thank God, as it's out of warranty) but during the first three years it was into the garage 29 times for various faults including, but not limited to (I honestly can't remember them all now): * Intermittent power loss/limp home mode. This left me stranded twice. Never properly diagnosed. * Loud knocking from front right wheel when under heavy throttle load, particularly when weight on that wheel (when turning left, for instance). Present for last 55000 miles. Nissan can't find the fault. * New wheel bearing * New front section of exhaust * New transfer box sensor/bearings * Heater matrix (huge job, 4 days in garage) * New fuel rail * New fuel pump * New glow plugs three times (to try to fix power loss) * Front propshaft * Master window control (twice really, as it broke again just out of warranty and Nissan refused to honour the warranty on the spare part. Not paying over £300 for not having to lean over the car to put up the passenger window) There will be more. I just can't remember. The words Bargepole, Don't, With, Touch, 10 foot and A spring to mind.

Not been down that long, but I'll email some pictures now

I've only got 3ft diameter elm, and then bigger as well. Any use?

Our fuel consumption was pretty uniform when hardwood thinning. Two tanks Breakfast Two tanks Lunch Two tanks Bite to eat and cup of tea One or two tanks then home. Depending on whether we did a final one or two tanks, this was an 0800 to 1630-1730 day and production rates were always good. Hell of a lot less snedding on hardwoods though, and with a 550xp, you generally always used about 5l of fuel.

That is not including overlap, so aye, £7 a cubic foot. I can get reasonable European Larch into the yard at less than £2 a cube and quite easily cut over a hundred cube a day, so the figures add up. It's not going to make me a millionaire, but it keeps the mill ticking over, and gives me something to do whilst I'm waiting around for customers purchasing hardwoods (which are more profitable).

They most likely need to be reset. I've had mixed experiences with having bands sharpened. When everything is done correctly, it's great, but if they grind off too much of the tooth, or forget to set the bands, or over set them, you can have all sorts of issues.

Very good, thanks for the update

Hi Mark, You do get anomalous trees like that sometimes. I had a couple of brick hard elms this year - no idea why they were so tough. First thing to do when the chain comes out the box is take a reasonable amount of each depth gauge - at least 5 strokes. After that, keep nibbling at them until it's just the right side of grabby. You want the saw to pull itself along, but not constantly stall. It's a balancing act, and one that comes with practice. On 4ft wide cuts on a single powerhead, I'd expect a 1ft/minute cut rate. Also, sharpen (as in a tiny tickle on each tooth) after every cut. It will save you a lot of effort and fuel.

Anyone?

Alec has covered everything, but I would only say that you would be better off having the timber milled at a static mill rather than mobile. 60 trees equates to at least a couple of lorry loads, and haulage by artic is not very much at all. A static mill (like a big Stenner) will cut at approximately 5 times the rate of a Woodmizer type mill, and do so without any worry of deviation. Larch can be an abrasive and hard timber to cut sometimes, and very narrow bands (like those found on mobile bandsaws) can struggle to cut true. Additionally, your cost per cubic foot to mill will be markedly less.

Mill them both - nice butts

Good effort on the milling - it's certainly a nice bit of Oak. It shouldn't take you nearly an hour per cut though. With a single powerhead it should still be no more than 15 minutes per cut. The snapped chain is most likely an indicator of it being too blunt/depth gauges too high.