daviddb

Got a seven tonne Rabaud ( single phase) which has some nice features like an easily adjustable table height and it's easy to move about but isn't really man enough even for a weekend warrior and big chunks of tough old high altitude beech. It's bent a couple or three times ......for what it's worth I think ease of production at the factory took precedence over beefing up the delicate bits for ultimate oomphff. The splitting blade, held in place by a pin, rests loosely on a metal strip that, at the factory, is welded flush to the green outer casing of the ram. Trouble is that in production the outer casing of the ram has to slide up through the main body of the splitter so there isn't clearance to lay down a really chunky weld both inside and out - hence the fail. Once that weld fails the force is transmitted to all sorts of other places that I had first beefed up without twigging the root of the problem. Now the metal support strip has been extended beyond the inner housing which itself has been trebled up in thickness both fore and aft to provide a chunkier surface for the blade to bear down on as the ram retracts to split the log. But it's always been repairable...and if the good lord hadn't meant us to stick metal together he wouldn't have given us welders.. cheers m'dears

I had that James May off Top Gear in the back (and front) of my car once..... [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gpUHtRVBn4]YouTube - James May Talks about Citroen DS[/ame] Really really nice guy and funny with it. David.

Hey nice work there in your shop Kraftinwood! And thanks for the infos...... regards David

With apologies for pre-empting any future 'show us your pussy' thread..... Fire is a Dovre 760 which takes 50cm logs with about 5cms to spare - output is advertised at a nominal 13kw but who really knows.... Sits in the basement and used to heat the whole of a three story open plan house so works pretty hard most all through the winter. Burns mostly dense high altitude beech that's dried for one to two years. Don't have a moisture meter though - Father Christmas has been letting me down there in fact. Had it about four years now when it replaced and old tin sheet box stove - one of those with three rectangular boxes of diminishing sizes sitting on top of each other. I'm not sure I'd get one again though as the various airflows regulated by the handles on the front are channelled through passages between the cast iron rear of the firebox and a sheet metal back cover - both of which expand and move about at different rates and so soon break the integrity of the seal whereupon the air goes pretty much anywhere it pleases.... Bit ( well a right royal actually) of a PITA hauling it away from the wall each year to dismantle and reseal. Length of logs it takes is fine but could do with with a tad more depth/height which is restricted by the curved cast iron top plate in the firebox itself for those chunkier logs. All that said it does seem to burn extremely cleanly - minimal ash left at the end of a burn and although we sweep the chimney twice a season there is never get more than half a supermarket plastic bags worth of soot from the eight-ish metre stainless flue. Salut! David

Yes, it's not exactly the world's best stacked stack is it....trouble is we cut wood as a group and then every one mucks in to deliver and unload. If one were doing it one's self..... Wood is lovely dense beech btw.....

Well I never would have thought of looking there! That's excellent, thanks very much. Just a quick supplementary if I may; I've now found a workshop manual on the web as opposed to the user's manual which comes in the box. It also seems to lack a diagram showing the vent, a bizarre omission for a service item but hey......and when, at page 39 it speaks of the vent testing procedure one has already removed the tank. Is this necessary, or difficult bearing in mind God gave me a bunch of bananas for fingers and mechanical aptitude to match? Secondly if the vent tests to fail ( well I haven't even got one of their testy pumps but lets assume) it then speaks of replacing the Vyon Plugs withought saying what these are. Presumably these are a component within the vent, so the vent itself has to be taken apart..... Which would make plain replacement as a unit more attractive. Presumably sticking a thin bit of wire through the vent as per a motorcycle is a no-no? Apologies if these are completely dim questions but I'm just trying to go by the book. For once in my life! Regards, and thanks again for that diagram. David. (brighter but cold and very blowy in the Pyrenees)

Terraced house with no garden so we pop it on the pavement up against a (good) neighbour's terrace. Nobody much seems to mind as long as it's moved around every year. Bit of tarp over it during the winter. Mrs B and the Cat for scale.......

I perhaps have a related problem on my 357xp but I seem to have fallen at the first hurdle...where exactly is the fuel tank vent ? Apparently not on the tank filler cap itself presumably and the (modest) book of words that came with saw appears silent on the subject regards David (gloomy and damp in the Pyrenees)