Squaredy

My one full time employee recently attended a speed awareness course and was duly informed that most vans are only allowed to do 60mph on dual carriageways and motorways and 50 on single carriageways. I doubted this at first but found it is correct. It is rather important for me as I sometimes ask someone to do some driving for me (in my work Transit) and would feel awful if I failed to inform them of the lower speed limits on the vehicle and they were then fined. Our work transit has a speed limiter fitted at 70mph, but legally can only do 60. More surprisingly my daily driver, a 2004 little VW Caddy van, is also only allowed to do 60. I have driven similar vans for at least 30 years and am shocked that I have been maybe breaking the law all this time. It seems the only type of vans allowed to do car speeds are classed as "Car derived van" on the registration document. My little Caddy says "Light Commercial" on the reg document. I am aware that long discussions have taken place on this forum regarding pickups and how some of these are classed as Dual Purpose Vehicle and some are classed as Light Commercial, but I could find nothing really about vans. How many white van drivers bombing along the motorway at 80mph know they are actually going 20mph over the limit?

Correct me if I am out of date but many farmers and other landowners have licenses to abstract water from rivers and streams. In fact I believe this sometimes causes serious problems downstream where river levels are much too low for the wildlife attempting to live there. Hasn't this thread covered a lot of ground.....water wastage, poverty, as well as log goblins. I have been a log goblin years ago.....but always with permission from the owner.

I completely agree fitting poor quality parts is a false economy. It is wrong to suggest however that the only way to get good quality parts is to buy from a main dealer. A good example of this is bearings. Matching up virtually any bearing is usually simple via a bearing specialist and you should be able to get hold of the identical bearing. And contrary to what some manufacturers would have you believe you will not invalidate a warranty by using non genuine parts as long as they are the correct spec.

Yes I am aware there are certain exceptions, and I assumed the original poster was not talking about game birds. I thought it worth mentioning the general law as it sounded like the poster who suggested destroying the nests was unaware that this is usually illegal. He did not say you would need to check the species and have a specific license and use certain methods. As professionals we all have to be careful of what we tell the public. I am sure we are all aware on this website about the laws relating to felling trees but maybe not disturbing bird nests.

In the UK that would be illegal no matter what the species. Check out the RSPB website.

Yeah agreed, I get this quite a lot. I downgraded my Norwood sawmill from ceramic blade guides to rollers and got the correct roller kit from USA about half the price I could have got it over here. It was the identical part actually purchased from Norwood themselves so wasn't a cheap alternative. And I needed a new carburettor for my Lucas Mill shortly before Christmas 2016 and the local Kohler dealer in the UK said he couldn't even order it for me until the second week in January the following year. So I phoned a dealer in the USA who had exactly the correct original part on the shelf and shipped it the same day. It left the USA on a plane on Christmas day and the only delay was with UK customs who faffed a bit, but it still arrived before the local dealer would even have ordered it for me, and was nearly £160 cheaper even with postage and import duty. I don't know who is taking the mickey but someone is! I remember some years ago a trend started of going to Europe to buy a new car. It sounded like a bit of a faff but apparently a correctly specified right-hand drive car with plates and everything was in most cases several thousand pounds less just because it was ordered in Germany or France.

If you are concerned about having no long term sickness benefit because you eventually will become self-employed the type of cover you are after is called Permanent Health Insurance (PHI). This will pay out a fixed amount per month if you are unable to work and it will be paid until you are fit to return to work or until retirment. Unless you are young and in good health it could prove costly, and if you never claim you will get nothing back from it. Before considering this you should attempt to work out what help you would get from the state so you can evaluate what your actual shortfall would be. Most self employed people have no such protection and simply have to deal with whatever life throws at them. And for most it works, but of course it is possible you could be one of the unlucky ones who does have a serious accident or health issue and is off work for an extended time. You should seek professional advice if you want prices and detailed guidance. Even this advice of course will not be free! I personally have no cover in place, but to an extent I could still run my business even from a wheelchair.

I looked into smokeless zones in 2008 when I installed my logburner and couldn't find any proper info online about which areas are smokeless zones. Is there a website where you can check using a postcode? I certainly couldn't find one when I installed my logburner so I just did it anyway. I live in a fairly rural area so I assumed it would be fine but I wanted to check but got nowhere.

My understanding from literature I have read is that the Elms in the UK are a rather complex mixture of sub-species. I know of the Cornish Elm and the Huntingdon Elm for a start, and apparently they hybridise readily? I do hope they start to overcome the disease some day for many reasons. I have just bought in a load of Scottish grown Elm and it is very beautiful timber. Not as clean and straight as Ash or Sweet Chestnut, but for character and beauty it is unsurpassed. Now Sweet Chestnut is also dying out I believe? That will also be a great loss, but not comparable to Ash of course.

Would the electricity company not have a responsibility to fell or top the trees? Or is that only the high voltage lines?

Well sadly it is wonderful firewood also!

Holm Oak....very beautiful timber once milled, even with the fungus. Got any stems for sale?

I agree I just bought a pair and they are good. Max twig size they will cut is about 8mm or so.

As a general rule logs do not dry very well until they are cut to short lengths or milled. This does vary by species, for example Oak barely dries at all in the round. The fact that the log is sprouting shows it is still alive and has enough moisture in to grow. If it continues to be deprived of any fresh moisture it will eventually dry and die. If it is touching the ground some species especially Willows and Poplars will actually take root and start to grow properly. So to answer your question the log may still be drying but very slowly. I have got logs in my yard sprouting now that were felled in 2016, and they are not touching the ground.

You have no idea how lucky you are, most of us only have two.....

I am not really a cyclist any more but I have a lot of sympathy for cyclists, as I see they are the victims of a lot of unjustified anger from car and lorry drivers, and let's be honest it is almost certainly the cyclist who will get hurt by the car or lorry not the other way round. Of course cyclists are sometimes inconsiderate and even arrogant, and I don't defend this. But in my experience these are qualities displayed by car and lorry drivers on a grand scale. So why do cyclists get attacked so much? Are they really such a colossal problem on our roads? Or is the biggest problem over-crowding and poor driving from lots of different road users? And by the way, cycle tracks a few metres away from the road are a good idea, but they are not suitable for serious cycling. They are often shared with pedestrians, so going at more than about ten miles an hour would be dangerous and often the surface is poor meaning a serious cycle ride is really only possible on the road. I am glad it is not my hobby as frankly it is risky and with the attitude of some vehicle drivers and over-crowding on some roads it is getting more dangerous.

Best crazy bureaucracy I ever saw was a few years ago near me in Newport, a really busy two lane through road had a three way set of traffic lights installed for several days because of a hole dug in the pavement. The only obstruction on the road was a small pile of earth and rubble which stuck out from the kerb into the road by about 3 feet. In front of this pile and behind it were perfectly legally parked cars, which stuck out into the road much more than three feet of course. Some dimwit had decided that this small mound of waste justified a complicated set of traffic lights, even though it caused absolutely no obstruction at all. The traffic lights on the other hand caused heaps of problems, and delayed me by about ten minutes and no doubt thousands of other people as well. We should start a thread about crazy bureaucracy if there isn't one. I have a feeling it would be very popular....!

Sorry John I didn't mean to be misleading. All the prices I quoted were per hoppus foot, which is of course most of a cubic foot, hence I was saying per cube. My error, as long as you can work out hoppus feet that is all you need.

I agree with previous posters, get a professional to ring it up - much safer, less hassle and cheaper than buying a saw and looking after it with no experience. You only have to make a silly error and your expensive saw is stuck. Have you thought about chain sharpening (not difficult but needs doing), As a first time chainsaw user your Spruce will be a real pain to cross-cut at that width. If you are a practical and capable person no doubt you will work it out and muddle through but I suspect it will be quite a mission, especially bearing in mind even a really large chainsaw won't be able to cut through from one side. On the other hand, for a professional it sounds like an easy job, maybe just a couple of hours work. Even paying transport costs it might just be the best idea.

Thanks for your opinion Geoffers, you are probably right. As it is such a distance for me I will leave it to someone nearer to find out if this is real or not I think.

Well I can only give you an idea of what I pay, which may vary depending on local demand and so on. Also a lot depends on delivery or whether it is feasible for a timber lorry to pick up a full load. I am often offered single stems where the value is zero not because of anything wrong with the stem, but because transport for a single stem is costly. Oak can be anything from £3 to £7 or more depending on quality. A forest grown first length of Oak free of knots or other faults over 2ft wide could be regarded as planking quality and may give lots of high quality boards. A knotty field grown piece could give some characterful slabs but value would be near the bottom of this range. Ash that is bendy or knotty is firewood value, or a top quality clean stem without serious shakes will be maybe £3 to £3.50 per cube. Personally I like olive colour in the middle but many mills will devalue logs with this characteristic. Cedar of Lebanon is a difficult one as the logs are almost always knotty and never come up in large quantities as they are a park tree not a forest tree. So if they are not really knotty maybe £3 per cube. Leylandii you should be able to pick up for a low price, maybe £1.50 per cube, or just firewood price, though as you say it is not the most sought after firewood. As for qualities I agree it is durable and it is in fact a good quality light weight but strong timber. In my opinion it is superior to Western Red Cedar, but sadly most stems we are likely to come across will be knotty and fast grown (also true of WRC of course). The grain is subtle certainly not dramatic, and it has a lemony smell. If you are offered clean stems of any size then buy them as they should be cheap and useful. Don't expect to have hoardes of customers asking for them however! I would rate clean Leylandii timber as excellent for outdoor construction, doors, windows and more, but most woodworkers will not appreciate this. I hope this helps.

Well it is on ebay again, here is the link: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/timber-trailer-forwader-timber-crane-forestry-trailer-tree-surgeon-road-tow/253606333272?hash=item3b0c1d8b58:g:uNAAAOSwPHxa62PK So do you have any idea if this is really your trailer being sold on again, or just a scam listing? If the seller were accepting paypal payments I could make an offer and pay by paypal, but as the seller specifies they will not accept paypal I would not risk doing a bank transfer.

Ah that is interesting. This is the problem with ebay currently there are so many fake listings it is difficult to find the real ones. You are right it was advertised as near to edinburgh so too far for me to just have a look. I really need a fast tow trailer with crane, maybe i will have to go the hp route.

They also make (or used to make) a fast tow trailer with bolsters (in fact one was just listed on ebay though I think it was a fake listing) but here is a picture of one and the unladen weight is 1200kg so payload is 2300kg. I would have one in a flash if I had the cash....

Davies Implements of Carmarthen are UK suppliers. I have a Norwood HD36 which came with the ceramic guides. I invested in rollers as I found the ceramic guides hopeless. The ceramic guides wear out quickly and a new set costs hundreds unless you are willing to try and buy them from the USA. I have been using rollers now for 9 months or so and have not looked back.