Squaredy

3 hours ago, Steven P said:

Am not so sure that he has the ear of Starmer though enough to shelve the deal?

No indeed, but Trump has changed his tune on Chagos.

1 hour ago, Mark J said:

One thing he did in Davos apparently is meet with the Americans about Diego Garcia, which may be one reason the Chagos deal is now shelved.

2 hours ago, nooie said:

I've been treating the timber I use myself with Boron and so far it seems to be ok. It's only sprayed on though.

What is the purpose of this?

On 23/01/2026 at 12:34, trigger_andy said:

You've just put an order in for a 10" Peterson, right? I've just picked up a used model myself. I plan to do remote milling for customers with it and mill Oak Beams etc. But I'd like to offer customers 2"x4", 4" posts, 6" Posts, 2"x6" etc. 

 

On the practice log Im working on I ripped 14 of 2"x6" in 30 minutes. If I had a helper it would be significantly faster. I've been told localluy we're £30 for a 4.2m x 2" x 6" board. Sounds steep to me and I need to look more into it. But if thats the case on my tod I can rattle out 28 boards in an hour on a good sized log. Obviously there is a lot of prep time and waste removal before you get to the good stuff. But in an hour I could produce £840 worth of 6"x2" boards. I could sell at half the price of a Timber Merchant and still make good coin and they'd save a fortune. 

 

I'm trying to figure out how best to advertise this though. 

Don’t forget to account for handling, positioning and storing logs, clean up and dealing with waste.  Also remember that a proportion of the boards you cut will be rejects as they will be too bowed or have major knots hence weaknesses.

Also as you have alluded to it is easy to totally overlook the part of the business that takes the longest - marketing and sales.  If you spend two hours on production but then another four hours actually selling and dealing with the customers the equation is turned on its head.

3 hours ago, Dan Maynard said:

The Honest eSIM allows you to roam quite a few apps including nav and messaging, I don't have it but was working in Lincolnshire this week and the phone signal is rubbish on my network up there. From £3.75 a month might be worthwhile in Wales?

 

honestmobile.com/smart-sim

Interesting, thank you.

I have for the first time used the angry emoji.  But the trouble is will it be clear that I am reacting angrily to the subject not the fact that it was posted here.  Or am I just over-analysing…?

2 hours ago, Mark Bolam said:

Shame we can’t follow the European model of just locking onto the strongest available network.

It’s quite a scandal isn’t it?  I went on a cruise in 2018 stopping in 7 different European countries and then Russia.  With the exception of Russia every country automatically locked onto the best local signal.  Automatic roaming.  And as soon as we were back in the UK I was stuck with the useless network I was on (Tesco who use O2 I believe).

I left Tesco mobile soon after and now get better reception, but still really poor at work.

Even in the EU it was quite a battle to get high roaming charges removed if I remember correctly.

2 hours ago, Paul in the woods said:

Have you tried different networks

Yes, the most powerful signal where I am is from a mast in Portishead about 15 miles away.  The tall trees are the problem.  It was better years ago when I could see the river Severn from my main building; but since then the trees have grown up a lot and it looks to me like they might just grow some more!

1 hour ago, Steven P said:

Sounds like the solution is Starlink to be honest, suffer filling Musks bank account, and you should be able to move your number over - if not wonder if you can get it forwarded to a different phone but that might mean paying for 2 services.

To be honest I don’t mind making Musk a tiny bit richer.  If he gets rich by providing something no-one else can I take my hat off to him.

Contrast that to my current situation where I pay £100 a month to XLN for a barely usable copper line; and £18 to EE for a completely useless 5g router.

9 hours ago, Muddy42 said:

 

Im not technical but a friend of mine got decent wifi this way and he had poor mobile 4g at his house.  I don't think you need line of sight to an antenna. Id expect the wifi provider to do a desktop survey and maybe come out to your house to make sure it'll work.

 

When I had my 4g antenna fitted a few years back the engineer spent a good couple of hours trying different locations for the antenna and eventually got download speeds of 6mb.  But then the mast he pointed it at was permanently degraded and it has not worked since.

There are several people nearby who have Starlink and all have really good things to say about it.  And whereas the UK is reducing the number of masts for mobile phone signal, Starlink are continuing to ramp up their satellites.  Another 11,000 going to be launched over the next few years apparently.  And of course there is no contract.  If it starts to decline in performance I can just back out.  Whereas my stupid 4/5g mast I am still paying for until at least next year.

3 hours ago, Muddy42 said:

 

Have you considered having a 4G / 5G receiver on your house, that then provides your house with wifi and a landline.  These receivers can pick up 4G signal where your mobile can't because they are stronger, higher up and point towards the source (if that makes sense). It'll be cheaper than Starlink and avoids giving money to Elon Muskrat.

 

 

Yes I had a 4g antenna fitted, and it worked for a couple of months.  When I complained they upgraded it to 5g but it hasn’t worked at all for over a year.

You see it isn’t my home it is my work site and in the middle of a forest so trees get in the way for phone signal.

1 hour ago, Steven P said:

VOIP - I thought all phones were going that way now? Our phone is plugged into a wall socket rather than the router but is VOIP - you'd need to check of course, but it should be as simple as that.

Yes all phones will eventually be VOIP.  But the challenge I have is how to keep my landline number but get the connection via another supplier (Starlink).  The copper wire to the property here is in poor condition but is not being upgraded to fibre so I don’t want to keep paying for a really poor connection.

Does anyone else not at all love the new operating system on their iPhone?  It seems to make it almost impossible to quote a section of text on ArbTalk amongst other gripes.

Did Apple not test it on ArbTalk forums…?

3 hours ago, openspaceman said:

I'm surprised n one has commented on Mark Carney's speech yesterday, it called out US for what it has been for 80 years.

Maybe you can enlighten us.  What did he say about the US?  I did Google it but didn’t get much.

3 hours ago, nooie said:

Hello all, I'm wondering how you price your timber? I'm milling mainly Sitka Spruce and Greenheart for a house, but I'd also like to make a bit of cash selling rough sawn timber. How do you guys price your timber? I could take a punt and just sell it cheaper than the builders yard I guess.

Well that is the six million dollar question, and at the end of the day you will need to work out what prices work for you.

The only tip I can really give is to remember that what you mill will be very different from what builders merchants offer.  
 

Your timber will i guess be unseasoned.  If it is the right species (larch, douglas fir) it will have natural durability.  And you will be able to offer a bespoke service.  Eg if the customer wants beams at 135mm x 60 you can help, whereas the builders merchants will not.

Also I suggest always pricing up for the full length.  The customer may ask for many different lengths, but you should charge for the length your logs are.

And I haven’t mentioned that of course pricing should be by volume, except possibly for very thin or narrow pieces.

1 hour ago, openspaceman said:

You could simply have the voip provider divert the calls to your cellphone .

Ah yes I should have mentioned: no mobile phone signal at all.  At least not enough to hold a conversation anyway.

16 minutes ago, Mark Bolam said:

You know Musk will listen to your conversations, don’t you?

He will get very bored with mine…

Has anyone got any experience of using Starlink to operate as a landline using VoIP?  I understand it is possible but I am finding it difficult to work out how to go about this.  I am sure I could ask a local firm to set it up, but I believe setting up Starlink is very easy.  What I want though is to be able to transfer my existing landline business number over to the Starlink broadband.

The reason I wish to do this is because the current setup is just so poor and expensive I believe Starlink would be way better.  I currently have a copper landline provided by XLN whom I have been with for years and it costs around £100 per month for the line and broadband (terrible speeds making many websites unusable).  XLN have even told me that as a legacy copper line the cost is going to go up by 15% per year!

I have tried shopping around but as soon as they know the premises everyone declines to get involved.  I guess this is because they know it is a long run of poorly maintained copper cable that is not being repaired or upgraded anyone soon.

Openreach have surveyed the line with a view to installing fibre, but unless there is a lot of government funding this is not happening anytime soon as we are miles from anywhere.

Anyone else tried using Starlink with landline?

And now for some new news…

Trump has declared on social media this evening that the framework of a deal for the USA to acquire Greenland has been reached with the NATO secretary general.

What the Danes think of this I have no idea!

Maybe we can put the sex offences one to bed by remembering that data from all 43 UK police forces confirmed that men of Pakistani heritage were between 200% and 400% more likely to be perpetrators of grooming and related offences than the general population.  Apparently it is even known where these men originate - the Mirpur region as they have a very different culture there even than most of Pakistan.

And of course ethnicity and skin colour are irrelevant; or should be.  But the point is that men of certain ethnicities were being protected by the establishment for fear of stirring racial tensions.  That is why ethnicity was brought into it.  Every perpetrator should have been treated equally - but they were not.

38 minutes ago, tree-fancier123 said:

so instead of taking the lot after WW1 and lording it over them, the allies went soft and let the Germans rebuild their country, not long after they rearmed. If Germany was really defeated in WW1 it would have been the ideal time to do an Israel and stop them from ever having weapons again.

WW2 happened because the allies couldnt stomach occupying Germany forever

Well they did go soft on them eventually yes.  The initial terms of the Treaty of Versailles however were very humiliating and impossible for any country to comply with.  So to an extent they really had no choice but to go a bit soft as the original terms were unworkable.  We created a perfect ground for someone like Hitler to exploit.

1 hour ago, tree-fancier123 said:

what got me about WW2 is when they say unconditional surrender or whatever - if I was in charge I would have wanted the land we fought for - a slice of Germany forever. Let the other allies keep a slice each and the German language would have to become illegal. That was the proper way all through history

I know you have already been corrected on this but it might be worth reading up on the causes of World War 2.  To an extent it was down to Germany being punished severely and stripped of much of their land in the Treaty of Versailles.  

The USA came up with a list of fourteen principles that were meant to be enshrined in the treaty and how the defeated Germany were to be treated.  Every single one was broken by the allies.

3 hours ago, nepia said:

Thanks Squaredy.  The cut wood has a red tinge to it as claimed by the owner and it's softwood; Douglas makes perfect sense.  There was a slight smell to the timber when cut despite its age so again an indicator of Douglas surely.

 

Thanks all; can't wait to break the news re the valuable tropical hardwood!

@Squaredy any thoughts on value?  The piece of string is 'that' long!

Sale will be down to matey; I'm not getting involved!

It looks as if there is rot in one of them which will affect the value.  If I milled them for a customer I would charge probably £30 per cubic foot.  Shorter beams would be less; I charge a premium for long beams.

But as it is unlikely they will exactly match anyone’s need the seller will have to be realistic.  If he gets £20 per cube he should be happy.

43 minutes ago, daveindales said:

A topic I find interesting.  By  the way, with regard to helping other nations, the British gave a lot of aid to russia. Some of which came from Britain via America. 5000 tanks and 7000 aircraft including nearly 3000 Hurricanes and 1300 spitfires, together with radar sets, depth charges, bren gun carriers and millions of rounds of ammunition etc. Some British hurricane squadrons were even based in Murmansk, Russia for a while.

Those on Artic convoys must have gone through hell, what with the extreme weather and not knowing if you will get torpedoed at any moment 

 

Obviously America had a huge impact on winning WW2. However, without The British Isles, they would have had nowhere in Europe in which to establish a foothold in Europe. Nowhere to station their troops, aircraft, ships etc. How could the allies have undertaken the invasion of Normandy or anywhere else in Europe?

 

We should start a History thread maybe...

11 hours ago, openspaceman said:

It wasn't by the Marshall plan. Germany and Japan were rebuilt under it wheras UK was excluded from any of the resulting trade. Worse was the exclusion of british scientists from knowledge they had supplied  in the Manhattan project. The UK government realised the new threat was Russia and embarked on our own nuclear weapons project but without some core knowledge which resulted in a fire at Windscale.

As I said the war in wouldn't have been won without US industrial might ( which was able to develop hugely in the absence of bombing) and the many more of their servicemen that were killed than brits ( in fact US commanders have always been a bit gung ho with their use of troops from 1917-18 through 1942 to 45 then Korea and Vietnam).

 

Yes during the war we received massive amounts of material and food but the american economy grew  well from the war, we emerged destitute and the cost was the loss of the colonies as a result of the Atlantic treaty.

 

I grew up in the early post war years and saw the way the american standard of living was outstripping ours ( my father's younger sister was a GI bride and the family visited several times in the 60s, twice on Cunard queens before air travel took over). Then half a crown was referred to as half a dollar, a dollar was 10 shillings and 4$ to the £, That's how far we slipped in economic terms.

 

I did not know about the WW1 debt but oddly we committed troops in the russian civil war after 1918 but don't think  the US did . I suppose their irrational fear of communism had not yet developed.

 

Thank you very interesting.  I am aware of the difference in living standards post war in the USA and the UK and much of Europe.  But I wasn't aware about the trade so I will be reading about this.  I often say to people I know that WW2 was in effect won by the USA and lost by Europe.  Which is not to deny the incredible efforts of the UK, France, and a host of other nations - it is just that even the so-called winners in Europe were losers in reality.