Squaredy

I don’t wish to seem negative, but: 1) the oak in the photos has not been standing dead 15 years. Maybe one year. 2) It is not normal oak by the looks of it. Possibly turkey oak or red oak. 3) The value if it were a good oak stem would be minimal. Especially as it will have to be milled in situ. If I am right about the species, value is even lower. 4) I think most people capable of removing it would want paying for a day’s labour at least.

I have used it just once. Most of the paperwork hassle was avoided by using timber hauliers who were used to dealing with FC. I did still have to prove I had £10 million public liability insurance. As for prices, the FC do publish average prices once a year I believe, so this might give you an idea.

Thank you Doobin I am sure you are right. The only reason I am tempted to do a swap is the fact that the one I have on loan is clearly a very sound machine. I am always wary of buying old cheap kit as it usually ends in tears... But I will probably end up buying a low mast one as you say.

I have this Lansing sideloader forklift on approval, and it is a great machine except it has a mast which sticks up way too far for me. I need the type of mast which you can use in restricted height areas like the second photo. With the one I have, at the same forks height the mast sticks up about three metres higher! It is a long shot I know but do any of you fellow arbtalkers know of someone who has a duplex mast from one of these machines they are selling? These Lansing sideloaders are quite common (common for sideloaders that is) and to my amazement I discovered they are made in Wales.

Do you think them being illegal stops people getting them? And if you accept that supply of drugs such as you mention still happens on a vast scale despite being illegal, are you happy that all this business is managed (quite literally) by criminal gangs?

It is called ring shake. Not common in oak thankfully. Can be a huge problem in sweet chestnut. Also had it in elm. It is not fully understood what causes it, but in chestnut is much more prevalent in older trees.

Interesting. Sadly the pieces I have which have confounded my expectations of fast rotting are of an unknown variety. I mean I don’t know the exact species, not that they are new to science.

I have always considered pine timber to be non-durable. I have noticed however a number of instances where it resists rot surprisingly well. I am not talking about pitch pine or oregon pine (Douglas Fir) but the types of pines we get here in the UK - I guess: scots, lodgepole, ponderosa, radiata. Can anyone guide me - are certain ones known to be durable? Or are they all more durable than I imagined? I would have said they are not much better than spruce, but I am thinking they are actually closer to larch. What do you think fellow Arbtalkers?

If leylandii (or indeed any cypress) is quite heavy it is still wet.

And is this a school run by the LEA or is it an academy school? I think it is about time local councils stopped trying to run schools. But I don’t know if academies are any better.

I guess most parents have very little idea of just how bad things have become. No wonder home schooling and independent school numbers have gone up. I would suggest it isn’t even that difficult to solve the problem either. Just give each school the ultimate ability to exclude a pupil if they feel it necessary. It must be soul destroying to kick out an unruly child only to find them re-instated by the local authority the following week.

So the implicit message from the school to the children is that bad behaviour will go unpunished. The children can literally do what they like, and unless the police get involved there are no consequences. All I can say is thank goodness my kids are not in that school.

Well, Trigger Andy has summed it up quite well. By the time you have faffed about understanding the customers needs, explained about what happens if you hit metal and then get your head round how you will actually do the resawing; you often find that is an hour or two gone. The customer sees that the cutting took ten minutes so expects a bill for two and six. Plus, in any case my kit is set up for sawing logs, which are wet and easy to mill. A board or two that a customer has been drying for years and years and is now dry, twisted and super hard is the last thing I want to mill.

Maybe you should say why you want a sawmill with a bandsaw. Are you hoping to buy it? Are you hoping they will do some re-sawing for you? If that latter perhaps put details on here as there may be other ways. Or it might be what you are hoping for is unlikely to happen. I run a small sawmill, but we very rarely take on re-sawing jobs. Not because we don’t get asked but for commercial reasons.

So, just to be clear, this happened on school premises?