Big J

Hi all - finally got the front page of my website and a stocklist up. A colleague of my wife is excellent with IT, so he's done my website and I'm helping him with a coffee table. Only an imperfect front page so far, stuff to adjust and fine tune, but it's all he had time to do before going on holiday. RSTW Jonathan

It's funny, but Lime used to be used for furniture quite a lot, but not so much now. You could try milling it and marketing it as an alternative to pine for simple furniture? If you price it accordingly, it should sell OK. If it were me, I'd mill the lot (it won't take you long - Lime is as soft as any timber) with a mixture of board thicknesses with the bulk at 1.5-2.5 and then a few at 4 inches as Rob says. Stick it, stack it, advertise it on your local gumtree and forget about it. You should be able to shift it at £12 a cube, which is £906 for the lot (assuming a 10ft log). Shouldn't take you more than a day to do either. Jonathan

That is absolutely insane - genuinely made my legs go weak, even though I was sitting down!

Thanks for that Steve!

I'm now trying to stick to the larger logs. Sub 18 inches diameter isn't worth bothering with unless it's a small tree species like Yew, Cherry or Holly, or high value, like Walnut. Cabinet maker I work with said generally, the goal is boards of over 30 inches in width for Oak and Elm, and to a lesser degree Ash. If you can mill and stock those, you will be fine. Jonathan

Ring round the sawmillers in your area. If it's sound through the main butt, it is worth silly money. My neighbour at my workshop (a cabinet maker) bid on a walnut tree that eventually sold for just over £40 a hoppus foot in the round. For example - a 2ft diameter log 7ft long is worth £690 at that price. It's shotgun makers that pay the most apparently. Just don't burn it! Jonathan

Congratulations mate! Some would say having twins is just lazy - one pregnancy, not two etc etc......some might say that - I fear few would live very long afterwards! The wife and I are hoping to start a family in a few years - I get the impression that nothing really prepares you for that moment when you walk through the door coming home with someone (or two) who is completely dependent on you for everything. Jonathan

It would be a good way from the house and behind the turbine, in terms of prevailing wind. Thanks for the reply Marko. The folk in question are mostly retired but have a teenage son, so no issue regarding labour for harvesting. In my mind they would either let it grow on beyond 3 years and continue to use their Aga, or chip it dry and use it in a wood chip boiler. Would it be as much as 10 acres required? Preliminary research seems to indicate that 8-12 tonnes a year is achievable from 1 hectare (2.7 acres) which seems like a reasonable amount for a household. That's assuming 1kw to 1kg of dry willow (roughly), an 80% burn efficiency creating a total of a minimum of 6400kw a year (27kw a day spread over 8 months). Perhaps I'm off on my calculations though. The estate I live on has a lot of self seeding willow that are a tremendous size for their age. We spent a few days clearing a small glen of trees barely 20 years old that had wide canopies reaching 15-18m in height, and trunks up to 20 inches in diameter. I should try to get a specific identification of the species, but theoretically cuttings from these trees should be suitable? Good luck with your coppice - I'll be very interested to find out how you get on! Jonathan

Friends/customers of mine are very interested in starting a willow coppice. They have a lovely house and a bit of land south of Edinburgh and their aim is energy self sufficiency. This is as much a need and an ideological desire, as they have no mains electricity or water. The wind turbine is going up this week (as far as I'm aware), and they have a good bit of fairly boggy moorland that they can use for coppice. They were very interested in coppicing, and it's something I'm extremely keen to try as it's something I want to do for myself in the future. My questions are: 1) What acreage will be required to sustain a reasonably large (older, and presumably not fantastically insulated) house and a smaller (new, presumably well insulated) holiday cottage. Possible total floor area around 200-250 square meters. 2) Which variety of willow (or indeed any other tree would be considered if advantages were clear) would be best for exposed, reasonably boggy site? The site is at about 200m above sea level too, with a south west aspect, but receives quite sustained cold weather in winter. 3) What would be the best coppicing cycle to use? How often should the willow be harvested? 4) What spacings should be used, and would cuttings suffice, or would whips need to be bought? 5) Best drying methods and best method for converting the coppiced material into heat? Sorry for the multitude of questions, but I want to make sure that I have the full picture before making any recommendations to them! Thankyou in advance for any advice offered! Jonathan

All the best to you mate. I've had mine checked out once for a suspicious lump, but thankfully nothing more than a cyst. It's a brave thread to start, and thankyou for highlighting the issue. Jonathan

Photos from the first kiln, with some photos tagged on the end showing the revised dehumidifier and fan set up. New photos from Robinson Sawmilling | Facebook

No chance of getting it for a song I'm afraid. The estate is managed by: Scottish Woodlands - Forest, estate & land-related services and they are up on the value of good Oak (unfortunately). I would mill it, and extraction is no issue as it is directly by the road side. I would probably mill it in situ actually, though I would have a reasonably large amount of sawdust to get rid of after. My best guess for the log (on the basis of calculating the hoppus footage at 87 cube) is about £350. That's £4 a cube on stuff I can sell for £35. There is no shake at all in the log and little branching. What Scottish Woodlands want to do though is package up all the Oak, which will be difficult for me in terms of storage and affording half a dozen trees at £300-400 each. Jonathan

They've started felling the big stuff these last couple of weeks. First off is all the knackered, rotten beech and sycamore, then onto the (predominantly) Oaks. Nice Oak felled earlier in the week. Quite a clean 20ft length at approximately 30-32 inches in diameter, though touching 3ft at base. Potential to be a bit pippy. What would you guys pay/offer for that? Jonathan

Very positive reception at the Furniture Makers Exhibit. I spoke to around 20 different makers and most of them were very interested to see my stock. Had another timber sale as well yesterday, so I suppose 15% of the kiln is now sold. I've put in my application for ASHS (Association of Scottish Hardwood Sawmillers) too. Speaking to Jim Birley of Scottish Woods, ASHS seem to operate in a very cooperative fashion, doing training days (for instance Kiln Drying at Falkirk Woods) and a lot of good marketing. Only £100 a year too. Similarly, I've been recommended to become accredited with Scottish Working Woods. Looking at their website it seems very straightforward and worth doing. I'm off up the workshop this afternoon complete with camera, so plenty of photos to follow. Jonathan

A real corker! There is a ride on the estate with a series of large holly. Not quite as large as that, but the largest is a single stem at perhaps 13-15m tall and 60cm diameter. Keep meaning to measure all the huge trees here, but always forget.

Couldn't stop laughing until I saw the forklift flying around, at which point I thought you really don't want to be anywhere near 3 tonnes of flying steel....

I'm heading out there today, but unfortunately my wife dropped our camera, so nothing yet! I aim to have this remedied very shortly. In other news, I'm invited to the private viewing at the Scottish Furniture Makers Annual Exhibit at Greyfriar's Kirk in Edinburgh on Friday. I will be attending with a stocklist and business card for each furniture maker! Better still, there is a piece being exhibited by a maker called Chris Scotland using cherry from my kiln. Hoping that the sales will pick up significantly after that. At about the £1000 mark now, but that doesn't begin to cover the setup costs (estimated £1800) or the timber. I'll see if my neighbour has a camera that I can take with me to photograph some of the timber today. Jonathan

Sounds like a no go then. Nevermind then - I'll try to think my way round the obstacle

Got the last stack of boards out of the kiln yesterday. Due to airflow issues with the first setup, the timber at the back didn't dry as well as at the front. A week with the new fan and dehumidifier sorted that though. All timber is of good quality - some really nice wide elm that I had forgotten that I'd cut at inch and a half. Even the maple came out fine - I thought that it would stain for some reason. Started the modifications to the box - added the plywood coving to aid airflow and built a splitter to sit over the fan to direct air around the kiln. Question for those who have kilns using a fridge box - how did you get the inner workings of the fridge out of the box? It's sitting there impeding the airflow and it needs to go. I'm just a bit concerned about cutting any pipework due to the presumably toxic refrigerants in the machine. Jonathan

Good stuff Rob - I'm there with increasing frequency at present and will be filling my kiln again the week commencing 20th of September. Thanks Harvey. It is a converted fridge trailer, yes. It was from a local commercial hire fleet operator called MV commercial. Not the greatest of companies to deal with, but the two containers including delivery (which wasn't easy) cost £1000. They are both in excellent condition and one still has a substantial diesel generator on it that I need to take off and sell! The kilning process for the next kiln will take 7 weeks at a reasonably well educated guess. The first kiln took far too long owing to an underpowered dehumidifier and insufficient air circulation. The new set up is altogether far more industrial, and will get teh job done more quickly. Jonathan

Thanks Robert! You are always welcome to come and see the operation - my workshop is just outside Uphall. Jonathan

Update: Sold approximately 10% of my stock with a couple of customers coming this week. Also, next Friday is the start of the Scottish Furniture Makers Association Exhibition in Edinburgh, to which I'm invited to the private first viewing. Plenty of business cards and stock lists are going to be handed out to the 50 or so furniture makers who are exhibiting. I have been doing a lot of milling this last week, which has been lovely after a period of relative inactivity on that front. All Oak, some wonderfully pippy stuff, some small stuff for the local church lectern and a beautifully curved section for a green Oak bridge. I'm also really excited about getting the new kiln load up and running. I've had to change my set up a little due to the aforementioned dehumidifier suicide, but I think the change is for the better. I've ended up with an Ebac BD150 dehumidifier. I thought that I would need two in the kiln reading the extraction stats, but putting it in to just bring the last lot of timber down from 15% MC to 10%, it was extracting twice what it said it should. So only one needed. Similarly, the heat it produces is huge, resulting in the need for an extractor fan (previously closed system with only moisture removal coming from dehumidification) as the dehumidifier shuts off above 35 degrees C. No bad thing really, as Oak can honeycomb above that. Also, as airflow was a bit of an issue in the previous load, bought a snail fan (carpet dryer) locally for £50. It pumps out at least 20 times as much air as a standard 10" fan and is amply sufficient for the whole kiln. Anyway, I've yet to finish the set up for the new kiln fully, but I'll post some photos and diagrams of it once it's done - might help someone else avoid the mistakes made in the first run. Regarding stock for the next kiln, it's almost all going to be Oak at this point. I have a beast of a log to mill - 27ft long at an average 3 foot diameter, which will fill most of the 250 cubic foot capacity. Beyond that there are some other random bits and bobs going in too. Jonathan

Very nice!! Only thing I would say is you might need more frequent stickers to avoid distortion (due to the thin boards) - every 18 inches or so at most. Jonathan

Whilst getting involved with the sale of timber isn't necessarily something you need to worry about, the way forward is to advertise on the private market to hobbyists using Gumtree or something similar, and then also contact furniture makers too. You might get more trade from hobbyists, but furniture makers will take more (though will be much pickier!). You could try: The Norfolk Furniture Makers Association 3 inch slabs won't be of much appeal to them though. 1-2 inches shifts better. Jonathan

Very innovative, though I would worry about movement in the ladder when running the mill along it. I've started taking a very rough top slab off freehand to give me a flat surface to screw the ladder to. I also put alot of screws and wedges in to make sure that the ladder doesn't move one millimetre. Jonathan