Squaredy

Got a nice Ash log on the Lucas mill at the moment. Not slabbing it, just getting square edged stuff, but flipped this one over to get a slab.

The main thing I am trying to teach my kids whilst they are off school is something they are certainly not taught. Indeed neither was I when I was at school. I am trying to get them to learn how to teach themselves. Yesterday they taught themselves (with a little help) how to play chess.

Worth selling to me for milling?

Yeah that is what is needed take charge and don’t leave it all to the school. We have already decided our kids are hopefully not going to local state secondary but we are now feeling a little disillusioned about primary as well. I am sure there are some great state schools around, just not near us!

On my route in to work near Chepstow/Newport they are flowering now.

The other thing you need to look out for Harry is that the logs will give off so much moisture they could cause mould and rust on other things in the garage. You need to get the door open as much as you can.

Well it turns out at age nine they are now trying to get our eldest to do joined up writing. Trouble is they haven’t shown him how to form half the letters yet so he was just guessing. And he has had no practice yet. Why not teach cursive writing from the start?

Well, yes we probably should have taught him this, but I am comparing to my own schooling. They also don't teach them times tables. At seven years old I knew all my times tables up to 12, number of days in each month of the year, number of feet and yards in a mile, and chains in a furlong, etc, etc, etc. My kids only know times tables because my wife and I have taught them. And yes we do check our kids work as far as possible - but they get precious little homework and so the only time is parent's evening twice a year. And just to clarify, we do not expect the school to bring up our kids. But I do expect them to teach them lots of stuff in the thirty hours a week they have them.

My wife and I have been home schooling our two boys (7 and 9) since a week before lockdown, and I will be honest we are pretty shocked. We are shocked at how easy the work set by the school is. We are shocked at some of the things our kids do not know (youngest did not know months of the year). We are shocked at our eldest boy's handwriting. In general I am wondering what exactly the school do with our boys all day. Our boys are apparently both top of their class so what the hell do the other kids know or not know? Anyone else come down to earth with a bump?

I meant to reply to this a few days ago but I've been rather tied up. I would say you are wasting your time trying to sell to joiners. They want to make doors, windows, conservatories, shop fittings etc and are very well served by the imported timber industry. They can get top quality square edged Idigbo, Iroko, and others and you will be struggling to compete with that on quality or price or size range. It is quite difficult to judge who your customers will be and my experience is they vary a lot, but I almost never sell to joiners - they just don't want UK timber - it is way too characterful for them. High quality bespoke kitchen manufacturers might be a possibility, but again you will be competing with lots of high quality relatively cheap imported timber like American Cherry, Walnut etc. Not trying to be negative, but finding your customers could be quite a challenge. Maybe don't pre-judge, just start advertising what you have and see who wants it. Your customers might turn out to be people you never even thought of.

I do agree that it is all very arbitrary sadly. I heard a pub owner talking on the radio a day or two ago (Radio 5) who is going to miss out on these grants because his rateable value is £1 over the threshold. If your rateable value (for leisure hospitality and retail) in England is between £15000 and £50,999 you get a grant of £25,000. His rateable value was £51,000 so he gets nothing. He said he had a thriving pub business and now he has no idea if he can keep his head above water until he is allowed to re-open. And let's be honest pubs will not be able to open fully for a while. Maybe not even properly until next summer. We have it easy compared to them, at least tree work can largely carry on with social distancing in place.

Yeah comparing trees is a bit crazy! I have never chipped London Plane, love the timber though. Lime timber is lovely for carving mind. Wonder what round two will hold. Yew versus Sequoia? Juniper versus Cedar of Lebanon?

Good question, not sure anyone knows, just a feature of the tree.

The theory of a low tax society is not actually that people will have more money, because they will be spending that money on the things the government would have provided. What it should do is give people more choice. For instance rather than everyone pay loads of tax and then send their kids to the local state school, pay less tax and then choose which private school to send their kids to. We have all got so used to paying loads of tax and assuming that the state provides everything we forget that their may be other ways of providing vital services. We don't buy our food from the government after all....!

Actually not true. This country built a huge railway network and an extensive health service without tax. Both were nationalised in the forties.

Common Lime is one of the few common trees that it is really justified to dislike. Just like the London Plane it is a hybrid but unlike the London Plane it has few redeeming features. Ever tried growing anything under a Common Lime? Or parking a car under a Common Lime? Or wondered why it is that it produces such a forest of shoots from its base all the time and no matter how often you prune them they come back faster than ever. Small Leave Lime and Large Leave lime are lovely trees, Common Lime is a bad mistake, and the fact it has been planted in so many cities is testament to the ignorance of the planners. London Plane may not be quite so good for insects such as bees, but it is surely our cities' most majestic tree by a country mile, and so well adapted to life in polluted cities. Open and shut case in my opinion....

If it is Alder or Poplar it is not really suitable for using the spoon. If you want to make spoons etc for use in kitchen you really need Beech or Sycamore.

No the grant is not repayable but if he succeeded in getting it he might eventually end up paying business rates, which could eventually end up costing more than the grant in the first place! Whereas currently he is paying no business rates.

If you can persuade them to charge you business rates remember you may pay for it in the long run as perhaps the small business rates relief will be reduced or abolished in the future to repay the grants. Be careful what you wish for!

It is not about cheap labour it is simply about getting the job done . Pay can actually be quite good and is at least min wage.

Well done Saul that would have been such a waste to go for firewood.

Well Saul Enjoy.

I don't recall this being a thread about youth. It is about the lack of ethic of hard physical labour in the UK. Realistically it is the youth who you would expect to want to go for hard manual jobs most, because they are likely to be able to cope with the demands of the job better, but the point is we have had apparently one million extra people claim universal credit in the last month, and yet thousands of farms are in crisis because they cannot get good workers. It is a fair point that something does not add up!

Some nice sticks there. Surely not all for chainsaw milling....?

This kiln dehumidifier is designed simply for kilning timber that is already air dried. It is not intended for fully kilning freshly split logs. I used to use my diesel powered kiln which can dry around 24 cubic metres split logs at a time. It uses around 600 litres of red diesel to fire it for 5 or 6 days. This will just about dry split logs if they are already partly dried. That is the equivalent to around £1000 worth of electricity. I no longer use my kiln for drying firewood, because it is too time consuming and expensive and takes up loads of indoor space.