Squaredy

Well I have customers who buy dried boards for furniture and joinery etc. It would yield about 100 cubic feet sawn timber so this would eventually return around £2000.

I am a small sawmill so I would mill it and sell the timber in a couple of years when it is dried.

Little bit far for me....from South Wales!

Chop that lovely ash log up for firewood? That will be a crime! Where are you based?

If you can find someone willing to buy such logs they do have a value but they will have to be clean and straight with minimal shake and few knots especially dead knots. The ash you mention I would pay around £450 for, but only if it is good and you can deliver or make up to a timber lorry load. I regularly buy from tree surgeons and I try to always pay well to make it worth their while. It is true the value will be higher as firewood but this would mean cutting, splitting drying and delivering to multiple customers. Does £450 sound attractive to you?

I guess this makes sense about the sequoia. It is a very light wood when dry - only about 300 kilos per cubic metre. Whereas when freshly felled it only just floated which indicates a weight of about 900 kilos per cubic metre. Hence most of the weight was water. This is why when buying logs it is so much better to do so by the ton.

Ah, I just realised;- did you mean a firewood drying kiln? 60 degrees sounds a bit high for seasoning wood. Not necessarily a firewood kiln, though this might be more likely to find. A timber drying kiln will also go up to 60+ degrees, and a timber drying kiln will be able to control the humidity to perhaps reduce damage to the timber.

Actually no I had seen the picture....but bad tree surgery is a tiny problem compared to grey squirrels.....

Round my way it is the grey squirrels are the problem. I have been helping (in the sense I let them store materials in my yard) the Woodland Trust plant trees in south east Wales - 54000 of them. Their head guy In the area told me squirrels will see to most of them. They are protected by 1.8m tree guards but nothing will save them from the greys.

Best way is to find someone with a large timber kiln and have the entire lot disinfected. It may cause some cracking but not a lot if the timber is all dry. It just needs cooking at 60 degrees C for 15 hours or so.

Oh yes I had forgotten about the Jetmaster. I will be opening up an open fire in my lounge and I am looking into the options for an open fire which is a bit more efficient.

Fair play you did a great job of that. I just have to say the plywood let’s it down. If you struggle to get a single wide board there is no harm in jointing several which judging by your skill level would have been easy. I sell lots of timber to people to make tables, but very few people tackle chairs. You should be proud.

Interesting. What is the other brand name if you don’t mind me asking?

None of you Arbtalkers got any experience with this clever looking product then? Surely Vespasian must be an expert on it....? http://ecograte.ie/

The best things in life come to those who wait....... Sweet Chestnut at 2" thick may be air dry after a year or so if you are lucky with the weather. A kiln would probably take a couple of months at a guess - never tried it from fresh sawn. Also it depends what you have in mind for the timber. I have sold completely unseasoned Chestnut for various uses over the years - like Oak there is some demand green. If it is for selling this is another option. Or if it is for your use it depends on what you have in mind.

I think it is worth pointing out that as a general rule when you kiln timber you do so after air drying - to get it dry enough for indoor use. Kiln drying from freshly milled is possible but very expensive and troublesome. Air drying will bring timber down to around 20% in most parts of the UK, and kiln drying then will take it down to 12% or whatever you want. You may actually find that there are plenty of people who are quite happy with air dried.

Anybody got any experience of the Ecograte? Www.ecograte.ie It is an Irish made product which looks like it simply sits in a traditional open fire and greatly increases the efficiency. Based on the manufacturer’s claims it will never rival a wood burner but will greatly improve the average open fire. Anyone got any experience of it?

I mill both Lime and Sweet Chestnut regularly. Lime is a wood with limited value - great for carving, but not generally valued for anything else. You can use it for furniture etc but it is usually a bit plain, very subtle grain, light in weight and colour and rather soft. Durability outdoors is non-existent. Unless you have a buyer lined up you might struggle to sell it. Sweet Chestnut is a durable timber not as strong or as hard as Oak but more stable and quicker to season. Look out for ring shake in the log - if present this can ruin the log and result in most ending up as firewood. More likely in large logs. Chestnut can be used as structural outdoor timber but also as furniture and many other things. Much easier to sell. Retail value a little less than Oak.

The RSPB also have a lot of experience in this type of problem, might be worth speaking to them. I read recently about a large development where they worked very closely with the developers to ensure local wildlife is considered at every step. Apparently hundreds of garden fences on this development have hedgehog highways running through them so the little guys can go about their business.

I think you are right it is a regulatory body, but also a company. The question I suppose is who owns it and if there are any profit distributions who do they go to. Maybe the reason their bank balance is healthy is that they do not distribute their profits. And as far as I know there is no connection between Grown in Britain and HETAS....

Have you spoken to the Woodland Trust in the area? I would be amazed if they didn't help, with contacts and possibly pointers to legal matters and possibly with publicity. They don't only protect the woods they own.

No.

Good idea. I would imagine they will be riddled with knots as they are fairly young trees sadly.

I was contacted today by a nursery in Suffolk trying to sell a large number of small Yew stems. They are not large enough for milling, but maybe would have a craft use of even fencing? Sounds crazy but Yew is really durable so what an interesting fence this would make!!! They are 12 to 15 feet tall so I guess the stems are 4 to 6 inches diameter, though I have not seen them myself. If anyone is interested they will be wanting to sell large numbers not just a few - there are hundreds available apparently. Sounds like their options are a bit limited but I thought I would put it out there in case anyone has a need. If you want details PM me and I will let you have the phone number.

I feel for your situation. NR are perhaps acting like bullies. They know they can scare you as the tree owners, but I am sure when it suits them they will just go ahead and reduce the trees. If it was impossible to trace the owner what then? Of course you and your neighbours are responsible if the trees are unsafe, but are they really unsafe? It is NR who operate a railway with high voltage overhead wires, perhaps they should come and sort the trees out. I have high voltage overhead power lines on my sawmill site. The owners send a helicopter on a regular basis to inspect them and then send out a tree team to trim all the trees within a certain distance. Have NR really got the right to force you to reduce these trees or are they just taking advantage of their large size and your small size? I am no lawyer but if I were in your shoes I would be doing some serious research. There are other threads on Arbtalk dealing with this - might be worth a read.