Squaredy

Ooooohhhhh that is a lot of firewood you burn. Maybe you should try some of my top quality kiln dried firewood when you move down this way....

I can send you some more details if you are interested Richard. Feel free to PM me. My system does depend on having a site which is manned of course, so customers can just turn up during opening hours.

To answer the questions no I am not VAT registered - my business is not big so is under the threshold to register. And I am quite fussy about species, and logs are well kilned so I do pick up a lot of customers who have had bad experiences with logs not really as dry as they want. And I bag it up differently from most people so customers come to me and go away with anything from 1 to 10 small bags. There is some effort and time in bagging, but it makes it a really easy product for customers to collect. Even a Smart car can fit two bags, and a medium hatchback with rear seats down can fit about 8. The point is the customer can buy as much or as little as they want, when they want. There are just over twelve bags in an IBC cage in case you are wondering.

Good thread. We have all been on courses highlighting risks and dangers and safe practises to avoid accidents, but sometimes it is silly things like your incident where no training course would help. I had a very silly incident last week. I needed to syphon diesel from my backup diesel tank to my main one and to cut a long story short after racking my brain I tried sucking. I got a mouthful of diesel (didn't swallow any) and it didn't work anyway. It was at least 36 hours before the taste of diesel was gone, and trust me if you have never done this - it was disgusting. I sometimes get a meal repeating on me but red diesel repeating on you is something else. On reading up on it if you do swallow, and especially if any gets in your lungs it can be serious. The moral of the story....have one of those syphon bulbs handy. I own one but it is so rarely used I couldn't find it.

I charge £144 for 1.2 cu m hardwood (kiln dried) and it is collection only. And I cannot even come close to keeping up with demand.

I needed a new carburettor for my Lucas MIll just before Christmas 2016. I phoned the local agent for the Kohler engine and they said they couldn't even order it until the second week in Jan. I rang a company in America and a very helpful man identified exactly the right part on the shelf, and he shipped it the same day. It took a day or two to cross America, and was flown to the UK on Christmas Day. It was in the UK within three days. Then sadly Parcel Force faffed over the import duty, but even with their delay it arrived a week quicker and was about £90 cheaper (even with shipping costs and import duty) than the local UK agent would have been. I also order occasionally ebay items from the USA - normally really quick.

Ah yes sorry I pictured lovely straight clean stems being turned into firewood...!! I am a dipstick.

This doesn't address your dilemma at all but what a shame those logs are being turned into firewood! I am always looking to buy good diameter Ash, Beech and Sycamore. Of course you didn't say they were good quality....maybe they are only good for firewood?

Selling timber is hard. At least, like selling most things it takes time, marketing and space. And if you have a small stock of timber to sell you will invariably find the customer wants something a bit thicker/wider/longer/cleaner/more characterful/drier/wetter than what you have. Firewood of course also takes time and space to sell, and also needs marketing at first, but at least you know you will find customers so long as you have dry logs. They won't complain that a log is not quite straight, or is too knotty. My specialism is milling, drying and then selling timber and I may even stop selling firewood altogether, but it has taken me eight hard years of accumulating debts to make it work. I purchase other people's air dried stock by the way occasionally, but at wholesale prices of course. So if you are sitting on a pile of decent wood that you cannot find customers for (and if you are near South East Wales) I might give you a lump sum price for a large amount.

My newest Logging dog..... Cherry. I think she needs to beef up a bit yet, but the salesman assured me when she is fully grown she will be able to haul logs up to nearly 2 kilos, and if we can team her up with her big sister the sky will be the limit.

Well my setup is maybe a little less organised and professional than yours....we run a Jappa 700 and usually can't afford more than one person processing firewood, so we achieve a maximum of about 5 or 6 IBC cages per day (1.2 cu m each) or if a lot of the stock is too large or bendy or too long that can drop to 2 cages in a day. I don't think Certainly Wood feel threatened by us!!

Wood carvers (not so much turners) would like almost any part. Small chunks will be what they want. Small boards maybe 3 or 4 inches thick, and thicker chunks. As firewood it does dry quickly, but it doesn't have much density and so won't last long on your fire. But it will still burn.

I bought one of these about 6 years ago (not from Withams) and it was in excellent condition, and drove faultlessly. I fitted an Atlas 4 ton crane and log grab etc, but my needs changed before I registered it for road use. The biggest limitation from my point of view was the fact that the payload was only 4 tons, and by the time I fitted the crane this was down to 2 tons. And yet it would still have needed downrating to drive on a car licence as a 7.5 ton truck. Also the offroad capabilities were mediocre.

Hi Jason, Lime is not great firewood, but there may be demand from wood carvers. You might have more luck finding a woodcarving club or just advertising on ebay or gumtree. There are lots of hobby woodworkers who would like Lime, but the trouble is it might be more hassle than it is worth as each person might only want a few little bits. If I was closer I might have had it for milling.

Hi Sandpiper, I can't help you now as I am out also, but we will get more stock as the year progresses and then we should have stock right through the year. Ours is nice and dry (air dried then kilned) but is collection only from Wentwood Forest. Price is around £120 per loose cubic metre hardwood and £90 per loose cubic metre Larch, and we bag it so it is easy to fit almost a cubic metre in most cars. If this helps PM me.

Alder has around 60% of the dry mass of Beech. Personally i would not want much, in fact i usually mix it with the softwood rather than hardwood as i don't think i can justify selling it at hardwood price. On the plus side it dries more easily than Beech.

Watch this video....it is worth it. I don't know the full details but these are clearly real roads, real cars, etc. And I love the ending.

One of my regular customers had a new Nissan Leaf, but last time he visited me he was driving a french electric car, so I asked him about it, and he told me the range on the Leaf was in his experience very poor - less than 80 miles and so he got rid of it. I guess manufacturer figures always need to be taken with a pinch of salt. I think the one to go for if you have a spare £80,000 is the Tesla. They are meant to do 300 miles between charges....

Hi, forest grown Western Red Cedar is worth maybe £45 to £50 per ton roadside. The trees in your picture however are very knotty, so not good quality for milling. Red cedar is poor firewood as it is so light when dry so maybe worth £30 per ton if you can find a taker. Someone may want it if you advertise it, but the value to most log purchasers is very low sorry. The best way to get a good price would be to get it milled into useful sizes and sell it as timber perhaps, but this takes time and space of course.

Well that is about 50 hoppus feet of timber. It sounds like a good stem, though who knows until it is felled. If it looked good once felled and if it were local to me and I thought I could extract it I might offer £500. To be fair to the agent if he arranges to have it milled, transported and dried for a few years and then market it and find buyers he might get close to the sort of price he is expecting

As with all logs for milling it depends on the quality. I pay usually around £4 per hoppus foot for an average tree, but if it was a really straight stem and over two foot diameter I might pay double this or even £10 per hoppus foot (less transport cost). That would be for a rare quality tree however. Most Walnuts I have been offered are not much more than a foot diameter, which means even the widest board will only have 6 inches of heartwood. Also the problem is people see the value of Walnut timber per cubic foot and think that they can use this figure to work out the value of a tree. They forget about the time and cost of felling, transporting, milling, waiting for a couple of years whilst it dries, and then finding 50% is waste due to splits, nails, sapwood etc. I am currently milling three walnut trees and there is some lovely timber, but nearly 50% sapwood, some bad rot and two lovely nails!

Yes it can get complicated! Two more items to consider: How well insulated is the house? Heating 8 rads in a poorly insulated drafty house is a different matter from 8 rads in a modern house with very little heat loss. Having a back boiler needs a lot more management than a simple woodburner. You have to watch that the water doesn't get too hot and boil, which might happen when it is not really that cold, and possibly stoke the fire a lot to get all the rads up to heat in cold weather. Whereas a woodburner that is not connected to rads you just add fuel when it gets a bit low. If you can achieve the same result by opening some doors to distribute heat around the house, this is a lot simpler than having the back boiler! Also if it is an open fire with a back boiler I suspect you will burn an awful lot of firewood to get the rads hot....they are much less efficient than woodburners.

OK Gary thanks. I had a good response to my original post, but most people were a bit far away, though one member is just round the corner from me. I am always after logs for sawmilling as well, though I have plenty just now, but maybe later in the year...

Hi Taff and thank you for your message. A bit more information would be good. What species softwood do you have or is it mixed?

Yes with some species this is true, for instance Cedar of Lebanon has very wet sapwood, but fairly dry heartwood. But I would say with most hardwoods this is not the case. Oak, Sweet Chestnut Beech and others are very very wet right through so splitting is a good idea and will help drying.