APC

Can you just confirm, did you originally put in 2 stroke oil and chain oil in the fuel tank, as a mix?

Yeah agreed on all of that. As was driving away I thought perhaps I should have asked to see what he has. I'll be sure to ask in future what size they want. It all comes out the same bay though, which we usually load with tractor so can't pick and choose bits in that situation. With forward warning, I'd rather come in a little earlier and load by hand and make the sale. We are selling better logs this year than we did last year, which were better than the years before etc. This season, I'm gonna try and have a bay for big stuff and a bay for normal gear. We have three bays at the very beginning, knowing that the first will sell out as soon as it gets a little bit nippy. When it's a third full, the rest goes in net bags and the bay gets released for other purposes, e.g. ballast etc. No matter how many bays we have though, we will always need another. With an extra one, I could accommodate a wider customer base. I bloody love this log malarky. From being in the woods planning the thinnings, the hauling out and the processing, and finally dumping the load

Lad

give and take though innit. my wife works mon-friday. I do a jumbo of monday-sunday. I take her where she wants when she wants, she does likewise, without complaining. It would be rubbish if the only night all her mates could do was the one you were working, so she couldnt go out. Grin and bare it, use it as a bargaining tool. Christmas is coming up.

Had my first customer tell me my logs were crap today. 8-10" 50% ash, 10% oak, 10% birch, 10% sycamore, 20% misc (poplar, cherry, chestnut). He said that my logs were what he would sweep off the floor after his real logs had been delivered. These are the same logs I deliver to most of my other customers. When we have been less choppy choppy and delivered bigger lumps to people in the past, they've kicked right off in numbers. He tried to think about it, whether he really wanted them, and I made my mind up and said I didn't want to sell them to him and drove back and attempted to tip them back into the bay. It was then I noticed that the trailer tipper controls were knackered anyway, and the manual control was missing. So probably best I didn't dump a load of what this guy thought was crap, lobbing it all off by hand after realising the tipper didnt work. moral of the story is ask the customer what size fireplace they have. This guy had one as wide as my arms. My logs weren't suitable, but to the majority of my customers with log burners and smaller fireplaces, they are perfect size.

Ghouls.

What's the order of cuts on that? gob cut then?.... 2 verticals then felling cut?

saw him at Glastonbury in 2002 I think. was brilliant. the sound was so well done, moving from speaker stack to speaker stack through the crowd of the Pyramid Stage. Had to leave though as the mrs of the time wanted to drag me to Chemical Brothers.

got Spotify Premium the other day so have been taking a chance to delve back into my teenage years, and I'm bastard well lovin' it. Therapy? Madball Acid Bath Nirvana Machine Head L7 Helmet Prong All featured tonight. I've been on a diet of acid techno for about 10 years, 4 yrs solid drum and bass before that. Now I'm firmly back to my roots. Might have to go and watch The Wildhearts next month..... Here's one to start you off (although this is later than the stuff I actually liked when I were a lad, just now found it and realised i should have perceveried with them!) [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibqaL5ruVNY]Therapy - Stories - YouTube[/ame]

Have you sat the exams yet?

I think we might manage about 70-80%.

Do it once to humour her. Say somat like "oooh I've never done this before but its got me thinking so I counted and got 320 this time, but I can't guarentee that amount as I load with a tractor bucket/don't have time to count again". Then take her money and spend it on cinzano and umbongo and some little umbrellas.

Base rate for full load upto 5 miles. 5-15 miles is a tenner delivery. Any more varies.

Done up to 10 yesterday then rested a minute and did it again but backwards, i.e. start at 10 and finish on 1.

Main thing you want is air circulation. Maximise exposure to wind.

ps: I've burned poplar and it's really good, highly under-rated. Not the best, but certainly nowhere near the worst.

Depends what the market was like down your way. I think £30 is a little much for pop but it costs the feller the same in time and effort to fell and process as it would an ash, birch or whatever else. I have never bought it personally, but we remove the odd bit from site from time to time so mix them in with normal loads.

Yeah poplar bark seems to hold in litres and litres of water! You might find that cords of pop in the stack start growing and remain soggy for ages! Get it ringed up and split. Once it's actually killed proper, it will dry out pretty quick. Try and get it undercover, off the ground on pallets but where it is exposed to the wind. It'll dry out in no time. You might be lucky and be able to sell it by late spring depending on your location, otherwise it'll be super-seasoned next year.

Seasoned poplar is fine mixed in with preferred wood. I wouldn't go out of my way to get tonnes of it, but if it was cheap, easily accessible and I had the space to store it separately then I probably wouldn't turn some of it down, maybe to achieve not more than 20% loads of poplar. Your sycamore will season faster than the ash which will season quicker than the field maple. The sycamore always seems to go a bit mouldy in comparison with other woods.

Looks like my woods with skeletal moped! Must have dozens tucked away!

Maple is pucka. To save on splitting it, could you sell some to some crusty juggling bead wearing green wood-worker? Can make good kitchen utensils and chopping boards.

Burntwood Nurseries just off the A33 between Winchester and Amazingstoke, is apparently pretty good although the internet age seems to have passed them by.

I keep scrolling through and finding more that I hadn't noticed before! There must be 1,800 hours worth at least!! That's 75 days, 2 months! I'm going to educate the young assistants at work and wean them off the usual crap off the radio when we're in the workshop! No more Beyonce, No more Right Said Fred, or whatever other crap is "hip" at the moment, here is Sasha, take notice!

gotta get the Bukem mixes too.

Dunno if many or any of you lot are into any form of dance music. I've not really seen eye to eye with 99.9% of Radio1 rubbish but there have been some proper good shows on there over the years (John Peel, 1 in the Jungle etc). Pete Tong has run the Essential Mix for 18 yrs now, over that time he's hosted some of the best producers and DJ's, often showcasing them while they were still relatively unknown. Whether it was his show that gave them the credibility to launch their careers or what, I dunno, but there have been some seriously good sets on here; all here to download. All 909 of them. To download, click the downwards arrow to the right of the set names. You'll have to be patient with some of them as they are .FLAC files, around 700mb in size. Rest are around 100-150mb. Essential Mix Db by +dB on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free I recommend the Pete Wardman, Leftfield, Billy Nasty, Blame, Dave Angel and DJ Ron sets!! Have a listen!