Squaredy

26 minutes ago, doobin said:

You're looking for a full free lift, or 'container spec' mast. Not that commmon as most side loaders are used in open yards.

 

They are cheap enough machines secondhand as there is not much of secondary market for them. I'd look for another secondhand machine rather than to spend a lot of time anbd effort trying to swap the mast with another.

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.

5 hours ago, Johnsond said:

Do you genuinely think. Heroin, Crystal Meth, Fentanyl etc etc should be legal ?. 

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.

3 hours ago, Muddy42 said:

I don't have any experience with ponderosa or radiata, which I have not seen planted commercially on scale, more species trees.  Logepole pile used to get planted in commercial blocks as windbreaks.  The timber was never amazing - slow growing so small by time of harvest and not very straight.

 

Scots pine and particularly the heartwood is great stuff and very durable.  And yes I agree much better than spruce and very similar to larch in the same condition.  Of course small sappy pieces of either species with the bark left on will be rubbish.

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?

On 28/03/2024 at 19:19, Billhook said:

Thanks for the replies 

 

The wood came from some large trees and had been seasoned for about three years so there was less resin but it was still quite heavy.  Little bark and quite stringy on the outside of each log. I felt that this stringy layer burnt fiercely and may have coated the remaining log with a black ash which subdued the fire 

The air vents were fully open, normally half shut down for Ash and Sycamore once the fire is going 

I think it is good advice to mix it with the Ash and Sycamore 

 

 

 

 

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

4 hours ago, waterbuoy said:

Yup - I had no idea just how bad things are until I was asked to join the Parent Council. 

 

Whilst our situation isn't helped by a very self-serving and weak new headmaster who has effectively sidelined the former leadership tem, it is the overbearing desire to protect the 'rights' of the minority - in this case the trouble makers who do not want to be at school - which is undemining the moral of staff and pupils alike.

 

In the cae I described the unruly child was not actually suspended by the school - the police took her away for interview, she took a day off (I am told) and was then welcomed back into the school - to the surpsie (and dismay) of many.

 

I have been told (but don't know for certain) that the new head teacher sent his children to private school, which if true kind of says it all really.

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.

17 minutes ago, waterbuoy said:

Correct on all counts - the school used to have an onsite police liaison officer pre-covid but that is no longer the case due to cutbacks.  It is probably worse than you state as there is a perception amongst the 'normal' children that those who misbehave then get special attention, to the detriment of everyone else.

 

This makes the top headline in the 'Scottish News' section of the BBC website this morning - again, plenty of discussion on dangers to teachers, but nothing about the children who may also be on the receiving end:

 

Union calls for teacher guidance on restraining pupils

WWW.BBC.CO.UK

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The NASUWT says the Scottish government is four years late in providing "concrete guidance" for teachers.

 

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.

11 hours ago, waterbuoy said:

Sorry - have been away working on Coll for a couple of days

 

Yes, it happened on school premises - in full view of one of the staff rooms.

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.

4 hours ago, doobin said:

Why not? 

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.

2 hours ago, Adam Bl said:

Good Morning,

 

I wondered if anyone knew of a sawmill in the South West (Somerset area) that had a vertical band Resaw? 
 

many thanks, 

 

Adam 

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.

9 hours ago, waterbuoy said:

Whilst I agree, the reality is that things have moved on since we (well, me for certain) were at school.  I currently sit on the Parent Council for our local High School, and on Monday we discussed a recent event with the head teacher:

 

One 12yr old pupil was attacked by an older pupil, knocked to the ground and repeatedly kicked in the head.  All of this was videod by the attackers friends and posted on Insta.

 

School's response - notify police and parents, and then step back as quickly as they could from the situation.  The school say that they prefer to 'empower' families to make formal complaints to the police themselves as that is not their responsibility. (My view is that the safety and wellbeing of the child is the responsibility of the school whilst they are on the premises, but apparently that is not the case any more!).

 

Two days later the attacker is back at school getting counselling and receiving additional lessons whilst the poor child who was kicked in was/is still in hospital.  The family are too scared of the potential consequences to make a formal complaint and/or press charges.

 

I suspect that if it was a teacher who had been attacked then the school and local authority would have been all over it like a bad rash.

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

Is it just me or is there a massive elephant in this room?

Gordano School apologises after pupils hurt in crush

WWW.BBC.CO.UK

---

The Health and Safety Executive says it is looking into how the crush developed at the school gates.

I mean yes the school should look at their procedures, but are they not going to tell the kids to not push in future?  Is it not allowed these days to ever suggest a child behaved badly?

My kids don’t go to this school but if they did I would like to think the first thing the school would do is make it clear that pushing and unruly behaviour is unacceptable.

54 minutes ago, irish surgeon said:

Hi Guys,  we have a sale of western red cedar coming up, just wondering how prices are over there and will speak with interested partys. Sawn to order from 3m - 8m in length.   Cheers 

I could be out of date, but prices here are high.  My last batch of WRC sawlogs was £160 per ton delivered.  That was maybe a bit less than a year ago.  Decent logs mind.

But, unless you can ship them across the sea does it matter what the price is here in the UK?

Now I have also tried Victordle.  This is where you play competitively with someone else, somewhere in the world.

It is great for knocking back your confidence if ever you start to feel you are getting good at it!  I don't like it much as it takes away the pleasure (for me anyway) if you are under time pressure.

I am pretty sure you can get word processors these days that fit on a small desk.  Something like this...

No need for any trailer, but it will need a power source I believe.

Been doing it for years, on work days with a cuppa when I get home with my Mrs.  We do it as a joint effort.

Have you tried Quordle?  Four to do simultaneously with nine guesses (total) instead of six.  Can be a lot of fun, and not as hard as it sounds.

Anybody willing to share their opening words?  I always use AUDIO followed by EVERY.

1 hour ago, Muddy42 said:

The seed bank must be fairly decent because smaller trees still get going and survive for a bit.

The reason small elms keep popping up (mainly in hedgerows) is that when a tree dies due to Dutch Elm Disease it is only the part above ground which dies off.  In fact it is the tree itself which shuts down the top part, so the vast root system survives.  It then puts up many new shoots, some of which then survive until eventually the elm bark beetle finds them, and it happens all over again.

Sadly this is also the reason they aren't developing immunity.  The new trees are literally clones of the original that succumbed to DED.  But there are millions of young elm trees in the UKs hedgerows, so every now and then one gets to a decent size.  And of course there are still many survivor trees in Scotland and Brighton.

I agree with all the negatives mentioned about salmon farming, but with two more to add.

 To produce one kilo of farmed salmon takes about five kilos of wild fish, so the whole process is not only extremely harmful to the environment it is also very inefficient.

 And to top it all, much of the Scottish salmon is actually flown across to the USA.  Apparently many of the passenger jets heading from London to NYC have 2500 kilos of Scottish salmon in the hold.  And just to square this particular circle we also import over 100,000 tons of salmon, mainly from Norway.

 Needless to say I never eat salmon.

 But I have read that trout farming is a lot better.  It takes place in ponds so does not necessarily pollute the sea, and don’t they have a vegetarian diet?

1 hour ago, Con said:

Hi. I have milled a bit of elm. It's not something I usually do. It was dead standing for about 18 months.  I've cut it in 3" slabs. Plan is for a chunky coffee table. How long drying before I can use it? I'm hoping it's not the inch/year rule. 3.5 ft lengths, if that makes any difference.  It will be outside, covered with reasonable airflow. Thanks 

Much depends on the design of your coffee table.  If you plan to have gaps between boards, or some other method of allowing movement and shrinkage then you might get away with two years or a bit less.  If your design means movement would be a disaster then perhaps longer.

 But I would suggest after a year or so see if you can move the boards somewhere similar to their final destination.  Then you need to periodically check moisture until they are losing no more water.  

This was a surprise when I got to work this morning.

2 hours ago, lux said:

If you were buying that board at WL West or English Woodlands both near Doobin and myself, a board like that air dried for 2 years would be around £400 plus vat with that character in it. Maybe 250 is fair all round if he's got to kiln it or wait a fair while to use it. 

Yes I understand, but freshly cut oak is of course worth a lot less than two years seasoned.  And of course anybody experienced in buying oak will know that they always look lovely straight off the saw, but when they are dry they are usually bendy, twisty the grain is no longer visible and there may be cracks and shakes.

10 minutes ago, lux said:

, £250 is pretty cheap

I would like to know what you class as expensive!

I am afraid the planning laws we have in this country, combined with steadily increasing population mean every little bit of land in a built up area is likely to be seen as a potential plot for a house.  Inevitably this will cause conflict.

I remember as a child growing up in semi rural Surrey being dismayed at how many beautiful large houses with lovely large gardens were being developed into modern tasteless executive houses.  Indeed the house I was born in was built in the extremely extensive grounds of a small stately home.  But that was a little different as it still left a huge garden.  But in my nineteen years living in the area the number of houses must have at least doubled, always at the expense of nice open green areas.  And that was an area with a blanket PTO.

I have recently been looking in Monmouthshire to see if I could buy a building plot to build my own house.  Forget it.  There is almost literally nothing.  Plenty of farmland near me being turned over to housing - but nothing for the little guy like me to build one house.