Big J

And the fire is lit. As it has been every day (albeit I'm working away through the week at the moment, so my better half is handling that). It's looking like the first spring since records began where the highest temperature recorded was in March (24.5c, which hasn't been, and looks unlikely to be exceeded before the end of May). Very chilly indeed.

A man in Iran was forced by judicial decree to marry a goat. As he'd in effect consummated the union already, the judge said that it was the only decent thing to do, and would be better for the kids.

Edit: posted a joke in the wrong thread. 70hrs on a forwarder in a week isn't the best for concentration on basic things like use of tabs in a browser 😄

I had one offer, but one of my local cutters has managed to jig things around so we're covered

Still looking for a man for next week. £20/hr, though must be top notch

If I towed a 2.4m wide sawmill down them they'd be wider once I passed through 😄

Looks superb out in the open like that. Good job you don't have it down here though. With the width of it and the tail swing, you'd be getting into a world of trouble on the back lanes in Devon 😄

No, unfortunately not. It's very close to Minehead and there isn't any space, nor is the stand large enough. We're getting the job done as quickly as possible and the bridleway will get polished when we leave.

There's just no other way of getting the timber out. I've spent almost 18 months exploring the alternatives. Fortunately, the very deep flood water (a regular occurrence - not actually my fault) means that there is no way to get through, so most people aren't bothering to walk into the woods.

We're on a thinning site near Minehead at the moment with a long and very tight extraction route. 600-700t to come through this bridleway. It's slow going 4-5t at a time. It hasn't been helped by the vast amount of rain we had this week, which has filled the bridleway with 400mm of floodwater.

Fire is on again this morning. The logs are starting to feel a little damp in the store too (not from being rained on, I should say). 85mm of rain here this week.

I was just about to message you too 😄

Hi all, We're a man down for the next couple of weeks on a softwood site at Minehead (Somerset) and need an experienced softwood cutter for douglas fir, larch and some spruce. Nothing especially large or difficult, but the stand is on a slope so experience is required. I realise it's very short notice, but excellent rates of pay. Please message if you can help out

Speaking to a Met office forecaster friend this morning, the weather situation of the past 8 weeks or so has been caused by a stubbornly persistent Greenland High, which has pushed the jet stream way to the south. In the last week or two, the High has moved off to the NW slightly, allowing a trough to develop across the south of the UK, bringing back an Atlantic influence, albeit with temperatures well below average. I love cold weather, but the heavy rain is horrendous. My wife was just out in the garden briefly with my younger daughter trying to plant sunflowers, but it's just started torrentially raining again and they've legged it back inside.

Same here. I can't even remember it ever being this cold in spring in Scotland. I'm working at Minehead at the moment, and the constant rain and 9c really makes you feel like it's November.

Just up, living room is 17c and the fire is lit. That'll get it up to about 21c and we'll perhaps light it again once this evening. The average temperature outside is only 6c at the moment, so it's unrealistic not to have some form of heating.

Another thing worth noting (when it comes to the debate of old versus new) is that the AV systems and fumes are so much more bearable with the newer generation of saws. I remember stepping up from a MS260 to a 550XP, and as well as gaining a chunk of power, my hands were in much better shape after a day of cutting. I always thought that the best policy for saws (if you're using them full time in forestry) is to hammer them for 9-12 months and then flog them on eBay and replace. You'll get 2/3 or 3/4 what you paid for them new, avoid those major mechanical issues that happen at that sort of hour count (1500hrs I'd guess) and get a nice shiny new saw to cover in sitka sap

I guess it's a trade off for performance against durability. If you're a commercial cutter, being paid by the tonne, you're only expecting to get 18 months out of a saw, realistically. If that saw allows you to cut an extra tonne every day, 45 weeks a year, you've earned just over £5k more (assuming you're being paid £15/t). That pays for a great many saws and it's undeniable that new saws are a lot faster than their forebears.

Grows far too fast for quality. For instance, there is a massive difference between the western red cedar grown here in Devon and the cedar I've cut in Morayshire. The growing season is too long, and in some instances, they never stop growing. Scandinavian trees have a clearly defined season of growth, with fairly hot summers and almost constant daylight. On the flipside, they also have a sustained period of inactivity each year during winter. Additionally, the constant wind that the UK is subjected to causes the trees to pack on a lot of reactionary growth, meaning they are much girthier for their height than their European and Scandinavian counterparts. This reactionary growth is full of tension. I think it was nearly 10 years ago now that they downrated UK growth sitka so that it cannot achieve a structural rating in excess of C16. Don't get me wrong, with the amount of eucalyptus I plant, I'm entirely in favour of having some fast grown crops, but we could do with a bit more high end softwood in this country.

Roadside timber prices are a bit nutty at the moment for log. Daft really considering the generally low quality of UK grown softwood. I was passing a builders supply today in Cullompton and noticed that they had a pack of timber in from Vida. They're a Swedish company - I passed one of their mills in October near Eksjö. It's absolutely enormous. When you consider that their roadside prices of excellent, slow grown log is only about 70% of what ours is, it's no wonder it's economical to ship it into the UK as a competitor for UK grown products.

£2500 a cubic metre including VAT, exactly. Utter greed. Decent quality larch is about £100/t delivered in at the moment. Recovery rate is 0.55 (factoring in the tonne to cubic metre ratios) when cutting premium, no sapwood cladding from good quality logs. So you need £181 worth of raw material to produce a cube of finished product. Commercial mills will covert the logs for about £70 a cubic metre, kiln dry it more or less for free (on account of burning waste wood products and being RHI supported) and then grading and planing double the cost. So £500/cubic metre. That's what I'd expect the wholesale price from a major mill to be. Costs are obviously much higher for small mills, but there is no scenario in which £2500/cubic metre is justifiable. That's getting on for kiln dried walnut prices.

Board foot is a very obscure way of measuring Andy. It's either cubic foot, cubic metre or linear metre. I'd be looking at £18/cubic foot for straight edged, rough sawn and £30/cubic foot for PAR (planed all round). More than that isn't justifiable.

The fire is on morning and night, and sometimes through the day too. The average temperature so far for us this month (averaging day and night) is only 8.4c. It's very cold for this time of year. We've got some lovely spruce with a bit of douglas, which was really intended for next winter. It was felled May last year, processed in late October and stacked outside, not under cover for the entirety of winter. Due to the dry, cold spring, it's sat at 18-21% MC, despite the logs being a fair size (50-60cm). I've honestly never burned hotter burning wood - I've a well sealed stove and it's sometimes a struggle to keep the temperature in the normal operating zone (according to the flue thermometer). It burns so much hotter than the ash we did most of winter on. Much, much better.

No, that's an insane price. Almost £100 a cubic foot. I'd be looking at £18/cubic foot for rough sawn cladding. That equates to £1.85 per linear metre.