Squaredy

I make it 160 hoppus feet and judging by the quality maybe £4.50 per hoppus foot. That would be my limit anyway. But extraction of a single log is always costly so I would deduct the cost of this from my offer. You may may well find it contains much clean timber but you may also find rot and lots of worm.

Finally the world seems to be waking up to global warming, air pollution, etc. Not enough is being done yet but I detect a sea change in attitudes. Why then is no-one talking about the vast scale of industrial pollution that is Tailings dams? Even when one collapsed in Brazil in January killing several hundred people I don’t recall much discussion of the 11 million cubic metres of toxic mud that then was spread down the valley. I didn’t even know it was a Tailings damn until I read about it in Geographical months later. I thought dams were massive concrete structures built to provide drinking water and provide hydro-electric power. It turns out there are thousands of dams in the world (800 in Brazil) whose sole purpose is to hold toxic waste. And is this just a short-term storage facility whilst the waste is disposed of? No, these dams (which are themselves built of mining waste and so are potentially unstable) will be around for thousands of years, and need constant monitoring. I wonder who will pay for that!? The UK stopped using home sourced Iron Ore many years ago and now imports because it is so much cheaper. Well here is one major reason it is cheaper – in many countries they extract the ore, then just dump the waste in vast pools endangering the lives of anyone living downstream, not to mention local wildlife. If you want to read a nice little summary is here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47159216 Quiz question: What is the largest man made structure in the world as measured by solid volume? Yep, you guessed it a Tailings dam (the Syncrude Tailings Dam in Alberta Canada to be exact). I would say most Arbtalkers have a greater than average awareness of environmental issues. Anyone got any views or other snippets they would like to share? Am I the only person who was very ignorant of these vast toxic dumps? Apparently there are even a few in the UK – anyone know where?

Difficult to judge the quality of the log from the photo, but if it is straight and fairly free of branches it is worth around £3.50 per hoppus foot which works out about £275. I bought two very similar cherry tree logs a few months ago from a local estate. There is no demand from UK sawmills for native Cherry which is surprising as 25 years ago it was sought after. A few years ago I was offered two lorry loads of quality milling cherry so I rang around my local sawmills to see if I could share them with another mill. They didn't even want to know the details - just had no interest in UK Cherry logs. If you were near me I would be interested, but I am much too far from Norfolk. You could advertise locally and may find a buyer - Cherry, Yew and Blue Cedar are all good timbers - depending on how clean the stems are.

To some extent you are correct. There is a market for air dried slabwood, but it is laregly hobbyists and people doing house improvements; so often they will not want exactly what you have, and it is very easy to overlook how time consuming and expensive it will be to find these customers. This is what I specialise in and I have a premises which customers can visit 6 days a week and a stock of over 100 cubic metres of air dried native hardwoods and it is a full time business to look after it and deal with all the customers. There are lots of joiners, kitchen fitters etc out there but they are already very well served by the imported timber market, and are very used to getting high quality rather boring timber off the shelf in good lengths and a huge range of sizes and low prices. Arb arisings, or even forest grown UK hardwoods are never going to compete in this market. So you are left with specialist and niche markets and thousands of hobbyists who will want a very diverse range of stock. The only useful suggestion I have for anyone wanting to mill is to sell to me! Of course there is a limit to what I can take but I am selling at least a cubic metre a week so am always in need of native hardwoods. Of course I will only pay wholesale prices, but at least I will take a whole batch rather than sorting through looking for the perfect board! I have 20 cubic metres arriving from Big J on here within a week or so, which will be my second lot from him this year.

I was considering 3" but I'll suggest 4". The client has got a bit sentimental that the tree had to be removed so wants to try and make use of some of it for something other than firewood Maybe something could be made for indoors. If is has some character maybe mirror, sconses, tables, bookends, blanket box...

PM sent.

I will PM you the contact details if you wish. As it has been down a year he may be willing to wait a few more weeks. Apparently there are also some pine logs he will throw in but I have no idea what they are like.

Well yes, but I don't think the owner wants it to stay where it is as habitat!!

Let's see an up-to-date photo if possible. Based on the photo we have seen so far it is ludicrous nonsense. They might as well ask if a nicely cut lawn has damaged the house. That will dry out the ground more than the tree in the picture! And as Gary Prentice said what are they expecting the arboriculturalist to say? "Yes the tree looks healthy." He or she will not comment on damage to the house. Are you sure it wasn't another issue the bank want investigated? If the surveyor has identified a problem with the house shouldn't a structural engineer produce a report?

I have been contacted by a man today offering a large Sycamore stem, which judging by the pictures would produce some large characterful slabs. He isn't after money, I guess he just wants it gone. Whilst it is clearly not a nice clean milling stem I would think someone local with wide slabbing capabilites might appreciate this. It has apparently been down for a year, and is 16 feet long and up to 5 feet wide. Some of the smaller pieces in the photo are also available. If anyone fancies it PM me and I will pass on his contact details.

We are also a sawmill and have used Didac of Bristol. They do a crosscutting and maintenance course in one day and will come to your premises to do it - but you will need to provide a saw with correct safety features and all correct PPE and of course logs to cut. The cost is around £500 and this is for up to four delegates, so it is economical - if they still do it.

It doesn’t matter what you finish it with, the cats will totally ignore it and scratch your sofa and stair carpet anyway.

Freshly cut Oak logs take about a week or more at 70 degrees centigrade to really dry, right through to the middle. Even then any oversize logs could still be a bit wet inside. In reality as long as the huge majority of the logs are under 20% it will be fine. After all, a not quite dry Oak log is still mainly quite dry - just the middle portion which may be only a tenth of the log. I agree of course that air drying is best, but you need to have the space to store in well ventilated conditions under cover (in the case of Oak) maybe two or three years worth of logs.

Sorry for the late reply, but yes generally the logs are good. There is lots of Oak, and if you split a large one of these it is not really dry enough in the middle, but overall I think the claim that average moisture is under 20% is probably correct.

Just to let anybody know who is interested, this has now been resolved. I finally received from Surefire Logs a correct invoice which I have paid.

Bit difficult to comment without pics, but in my experience a 6m span is going to need a 9 inch X 3 inch beam with no big faults, and this is assuming it is taking no real weight - ie just roofing sheets and maybe some snow. If it is a floor taking any weight it will need way more than this. Their will be structural strength tables you can find on t'interweb, but it will be very complex and difficult to follow I guarantee.

Would leave the end of the board impregnated with oil so yes it may work well but at what cost? Best to not cut Oak in this weather or before the summer.

No you shouldn't worry. It is definitely a cube.

Thanks Ash yes I remember, but what you quoted me for was freshly processed. When I received an email out of the blue offering kilned and ready to burn UK grown I thought it would be worth a punt. I will happily give yours a go, but only if it is all UK sourced. I thought I read in one of your posts that you are using imported these days?

I measured the internal size of the bag - ie the usable size of the bag. The seller may have been measuring the bags including the seams as you suggest. The point is he offered to sell me a certain number of cubic metres of the product. It is up to him to ensure that is what I receive. If the bag he uses will not hold a cubic metre he should either use a larger bag or more bags to make up the agreed volume. It will be interesting to see what happens if I ever buy a walking floor lorry load from the company. Will they measure the outside dimension of the lorry to calculate the volume......?

No I am talking about loose measure as delivered and then when we measured.

Well the bags do bulge, and sag and stretch, so the smaller bags on the face of it would only give 0.512 cubic metre, but they are in fact yielding 0.73 or thereabouts. I guess if they were using 1000 X 1000 X 1000 bags they would actually contain about 1.2 cube. I will not lose out on this one as I am only going to pay for the volume they actually delivered. Luckily I did not pay in advance. If they are not happy with that they can take me to court, and I will go to court with all the evidence I need to prove my case. I mainly just wanted to warn other Arbtalkers what to expect as I have no doubt some have been contacted by the firm offering their products.

Not an entirely new subject I know but the answer it seems is when you buy from Surefire Logs. Up to now I have always processed and kilned my own firewood but I thought I would give these guys a go - wholesale log supplier already processed and kilned and even have the ready to burn accreditation. It is a new venture from a company called Bicester Woodchip who also trade as Chip Chip, so they have done woodchip and retail firewood for a while and are now getting into wholesale. The reason I was attracted to them is that the logs are UK sourced and they have a depot not too far from me. I was going to get a walking floor lorry load but this wasn't feasible to begin with for me. So I got a full lorry load of cubic metre bags at a cost of £71.50 per cubic metre delivered plus VAT. 61 bags on a curtainsider. Nightmare to offload but that is a learning curve for me. My real problem is they are not cubic metre bags. I did not necessarily expect them to be 1000mm X 1000mm X 1000mm, but I did expect them to be large enough to give a realistic cubic metre when filled with logs. There were actually two different sizes on the lorry; mainly 800 X 800 X 825 and a few at a slightly larger size of 850 X 850 X 850. We have measured and the actual volume of logs from the smaller bags is around 0.73 cubic metres and from the larger bags 0.9 cubic metres. So my expected 61 cubic metres of logs is actually about 45 cubic metres. I have of course contacted Surefire logs and told them the situation, which they are partly accepting. They are now trying to charge me for 50 cubic metres and I have assured them I will only be paying for the 45 cubic metres they delivered. I am not suggesting they are a bad company to buy from but I would stay clear of the bulk bags. I assume the volume would be much less open to interpretation for a walking floor lorry, so that is what I will try next time. The logs themselves seem pretty good, but I am still testing samples for moisture. Anyone else tried them yet?

Yes of course this is correct. And this highlights why you should probably not join the military unless you really trust the politicians who tell the armed services whom to point their guns at. I suspect some youngsters sign up with very good intentions and then have concerns over what they see.

If I get broken into I would be very relieved if they only steal bits of paper. But then I have very little to hide...