Squaredy

I recently did a deal to buy a load and price is £100 per ton delivered to my yard. Some people may pay more but it is not a tree the usual mills will want - it is a specialist niche tree.

I bought a few cheap head torches a few years ago.....what a waste of money. I will make sure I spend £30 or more next time and get a good one - there is some rubbish out there.

I have not bought any for a while (due to lack of availability in my area) but Elm sawlogs should be worth around the same as Ash, or maybe a bit more. So maybe from £70 per cubic metre up to around £120. A lot depends on what they are like - if hedgerow or street trees (as many will be) then this will make them likely to contain nails and wire. If with better provenance ie estate or forest grown then they are more desirable. If you want Elm sawlogs you may have to get them from Scotland.

And thank you to all the people who have replied and enlightened me as to why chippers have become so normal.

Glad to be of service! And well done for questioning yourself.

Mmmm yes funny thing is you have reminded me I do use a chipper at home....but it is this one....about fifty years old and still perfect....

Well Dan, the reason I asked the question is (as I said in my original post) I recently witnessed one being used right by me in what seemed to me a totally pointless way. It actually added an extra step for the workers and achieved nothing good, yet caused pollution and created a hell of a racket! I do get that on many occasions they are useful, but I wondered if there was some other compelling reason why one would be used, that I hadn't thought of.

It is all about starting a debate Mr Otter. No harm in questioning methods every now and then I would say.

Well there is a neighbour of mine who needs to be bumped off as it happens. But as Rowan Atkinson said many years ago there are drawbacks to this I believe....

Well I was meaning when the trees were cut on the verge, not brought from elsewhere!

Any trees containing nails, horse shoes, fencing wire, etc.

Yes I did say I understand lack of space in gardens....but what about huge roadside verges?

Yes now this is different of course, but most tree surgery waste is chipped and left on site (eg road verges) or removed and tipped simply to dispose of - hence the tip site directory on Arbtalk.

Yes I realise this, but what about when there is no need to remove waste, like my neighbour?

OK I know chippers are to chip brash and help clear a site. But what I really mean is why do tree surgeons and arborists generally dispose of waste with a chipper? Forgive my ignorance as I am a miller not a tree surgeon, but unless there is no space (eg a domestic garden) why not just leave neat piles of brash and small diameter logs? This would be far better for the environment and the thousands of species who need deadwood surely? Is this driven by the customers eg road authorities who think leaving piles of logs will invite trouble? I got to thinking this when a neighbour of my work site had a tree surgeon in to reduce a Red Oak in her garden; and the tree surgeon chipped all the waste (on to my site). It was totally pointless as I would have quite happily given permission for them to leave it all unchipped, and the forest where this took place has thousands of trees felled every year as part of forestry thinning and none of this is ever chipped. What am I missing?

Should be some nice slabs in there hopefully as long as it is not full of nails. I wish I could get hold of more walnut logs, but I am not willing to pay the sort of prices I would need to pay to get more. Yes the timber sells well, but so does Oak, Ash and Sycamore, and these can be bought in by the lorry load, saving hours of faffing trying to arrange haulage and I know they are forest grown not full of wire, and it is still highly profitable. Anyway, always interested to see it when it is milled....post some pics when you mill it....

Ash sawlogs have been the mainstay of my business for years now. Much cheaper to buy than Oak, and so much easier to dry. Unless you need outdoor durability Ash is a perfect choice. UK timber merchants import into the UK thousands of tons of American Ash every year - and you could argue home grown is far superior. Nearly every pub or restaurant you visit which has lots of lovely Oak on display - it is more often Ash. Same in shops.

A bit unusual - I am guessing it was not seasoned timber?

Sounds OK, hopefully should give you some good characterful timber. Yew is never clean and straight, but is usually very beautiful and characterful.

There is no real value to those branches - just offer to pay him what you think is fair for his time in bringing them to you.

Yes. Length only matters in that if they are too long they may not fit in the kiln. How long a board takes to dry is mainly all about thickness. A really thin piece of any wood (say half an inch) can be totally dry in a couple of months in good weather, or even less for easy drying timbers. An Oak beam 8 inches thick on the other hand will take 7 or 8 years or more.

You haven’t said whether the boards are freshly milled or air dried. Kilning from fresh sawn will take ages. Also thickness is very important.

Pleased to report the new parts arrived yesterday, we fitted them straight away and are milling again now. So simple in the end - if only we had checked for part numbers first. Thank you to RS Components who had the part in stock in the UK and delivered it to us next day. Never used them before but I am sure we will again.

Well the import duty on the parts from Canada would have come to about another £10 when they arrived in the UK. Aren't we lucky in the UK to have 20%VAT thanks (in part) to the EU. Purchase tax in most of the USA is around 6% in my experience.

Well there is a lesson here. My one employee and I were looking at this part this morning and Mike said "There is a number on here - it might be a part number". Not on the sleeve that I posted the photo of on Arbtalk, but the small assembly this fits into. So we googled it and it took us straight to a UK website where the whole assembly is available next day with free delivery. I have ordered six of them for £6 each and they should be here tomorrow. Touch wood they arrive tomorrow, but what a contrast to getting from the dealer. Incidentally I managed to get Norwood in Canada to offer to supply them and send them to me, but that was going to cost $100 Canadian dollars. Better than £200 that it would have cost from the UK agent, but even so, what a scam - £15 dollars each for a tiny bit of plastic weighing less than a gram and another $40 postage.