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Thought you might spot this one.....

May be worth contacting Big J on here - he mills some elm and can give a fair assessment. Alec

Whereabouts is it? Alec

051AV is a decent smaller milling saw - would be a very good fit to a 24" mill and would cope with a 30" mill (36" if you keep the chain spot on with one of Rob D's grinders). Alec

I presume from your description that the 5th is Study 11?, I can't work out which number the other one you like is. I agree with 11 and also like Studies 2, 5, 9 and 18. Alec

Excellent find. Really effective technique and some great subject matter. Thanks for posting. Alec

It's an ambitious opening bid for a non-runner. In known running condition they make around the £300-350 mark if the seller will ship. Pick-up only depends heavily on location - one in Aberdeen made £225 recently in good working order. The last non-runner made about £120. That one has also had at least its top cover changed at some point. Would need the serial number to work out whether it's actually an early one or late one. Alec

Chainsaw mounted band mill. http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/milling-forum/29832-why-i-like-my-ripsaw-mill-good-day.html

No shrouds of that type I'm afraid - only the short ones. There may be a muffler - depends if I can fix the one on my saw back together or not. Alec

I use a chainsaw mounted bandsaw mill, and have hired in a large portable bandsaw mill before. There are others on this site who do too. However, this particular thread is on the Alaskan Mill sub-forum.... Alec

Martin, just wait a bit and you too will be an expert on the Octonauts (and making associated blue cakes). Alec

Your feeling would still be correct, but hopefully just for testing. Not sure if I've cured all leaks. Cakes lie within our combined repertoire, although the last one may have been a little blue for your taste, it representing the sea for our eldest's fourth birthday cake, with little icing figures of the various characters from Octonauts on top. Alec

Great story. I think skills like this still have their place and the advent of the internet makes it a whole lot easier to keep them alive. The scythe I used had previously belonged to my grandfather, who had given it to Dad (his son-in-law) in the early 1980s as he had conceded he wouldn't use it again, being in his 80s himself at this point. It came minus the back handle, which had succumbed to woodworm. In that pre- internet age, trying to find a scythe handle was near impossible. None of the local ag dealers or hardware shops still had them, even the old shops which had been going since they had been commonplace. We eventually found one, in an old hardware shop on holiday in Yorkshire in about 1986. Just checked ebay - four suitable handles instantly available! Alec

In my opinion, no. Ash is not naturally durable and any piece which tends by design to have flat, horizontal surfaces exposed outside is likely to end up with lying water. This will end up in surface checks and hence you tend to get fairly rapid rot setting in. You can overcome inherent water traps by good design - something well known to joiners in previous generations which is why so many 19th century and earlier wooden windows still survive (although admittedly they did have more stable timber than was used in the 1960s/70s). You can overcome this by regular treatment with something water repellant (oils and waxes), sealing (e.g. varnish) and/or fungicidal, but it's not ideal. 'Best' is subjective, but outdoors oak, sweet chestnut and cedar are durable (as is yew if you feel so inclined) and robinia is extremely durable. Indoors, whatever you like really. Some things are harder, others softer, some lighter, redder, darker, more pronounced grain etc. but they all have their uses - some things are in fashion and others aren't, but if it's for your own use that doesn't make much odds. Alec

Hmmm. Aged about 16 I cut the grass in the orchard one summer holiday (around an acre) with a scythe as the mower was bust and we didn't have a brushcutter at the time and it had got to about 2ft high. Doing it took me two days and I was shattered. Doing it to the standard on that video takes a huge amount of skill. Alec

And thanks Barrie too - I was actually outside testing it when you posted. Oh yes. It didn't catch me out this time around though - I checked it by opening the tank and listening for the hiss, rather than firing petrol across the kitchen (again). I know I use Aspen, and it's very clean and everything, but my wife was doing the dinner and I thought the Aspen/gas ring combination may not be optimum in a thatched house..... Alec

Cheers Rich, ideas much appreciated and spot on in identifying the problem. Well, if nothing else I have become pretty quick at this - since reading your post I've started from fully assembled saw, stripped the carb, established fuel pressure was fine but not getting through to the top end. Realised I hadn't set the height on the metering arm, set the height on the metering arm, put it all back together again, started it and established it's fine. I make that a shade under half an hour all in. It can now go off and be pressure/vac tested and tach tuned - assuming all's good I finally have a happy saw again and can carry on cutting up the milling offcuts for firewood. Alec

Well, the 026 is still proving annoying. Carb fully cleaned and carb kit installed, new impulse line (without even swearing, is this where I went wrong?) and new fuel line. All back together, H and L screws at 1 turn and it won't now run at all. It's fine if you pour a teaspoonful in through the air filter - starts and runs fine. It just won't run on the carb at all. Suggestions? Alec

Are you using a processor? If not, it may be useful to know that I sometimes get sawlogs from people who normally do firewood, as they don't want the oversized stuff. There are pieces that are oversize for processors, but fine for hand processing, and no use for milling, so oddly enough it may be worth talking to firewood processors directly if that would suit. Alec

Which model of muffler and shroud are you looking for (there are at least two mufflers and three shrouds!) If you can point me at a picture I'll see which ones there are. Alec

I think this alludes to another factor in play here. Chain is supplied in very few sizes compared with the number of saws it can be run on. Consequently, the same chain can be run on saws differing widely in power, which can be developed through different combinations of torque and revs. Take, for example, an 051 and an 064, which are pretty similar in .cc (I know the 051 was usually fitted with .404" rather than 3/8", but assume for argument's sake that it's been switched over). These would be similarly rated saws, and would take the same chain - full chisel or semi-chisel, your preference. However, the 051 is low revs, high torque while, relatively speaking, the 064 is high revs, low torque. The chain out of the box has to be a compromise that will perform acceptably with both. By definition, this means the chain will need some alteration to optimise it for the saw it's been fitted to. For a '70s/80s saw I would expect lower rakers to take advantage of the torque and drag out big chips, which will allow them to keep up with a higher revs saw in cutting performance if you take into account that the rakers will need to be set higher on the latter. The same chain will also go on the 036. 038, 044, 046 and 066 (or whatever the latest MS equivalents are) which spans a huge range of power output. Again, you will not get as much out of a big saw if the chain has been optimised for the smaller one, and you will stall the smaller saw if you optimise the chain for the big one. Most of my experience of the above is from rip cutting (milling) but here you see the differences very clearly as the cuts tend to be wide, so they're using most of the available power, and you make long, steady cuts so you get a good sense of what the saw is doing, rather than stop-start work where it's harder to work out. Alec

Not seen that one before and thought it was excellent - thanks for posting it. Alec

If it was relatively near me, I would have been very interested in taking a look (given that it can be milled on site) but unfortunately it's too far for making multiple trips to move it in slabs, and transport would kill it. It also has a fair number of side branches, so will make rustic type stuff, rather than clean boards, which limits its usefulness. Alec

It would. AV stands for anti-vibration. It's the way the handle is mounted, separated from the engine and bar by rubber buffers, at the back of the handle, under the top cover and at the front at the base, in behind the bar cover. Other than the AV parts, and associated handle mounts etc, it's the same. Should add that the reason suffixes such as AV, E and Q are no longer used is because these are now standard features, so it's redundant when they cease to be options. Alec p.s. haven't forgotten to look for a bar cover, but there's no power in the shed and I've been getting home too late to go out there and search through the boxes by torchlight!

Mine don't, but they're all a law unto themselves anyway. Mine have never complained about what's in the recycling - they just periodically stop coming up my road for a few weeks until we ring their boss (again - in the end it got so bad he gave my wife his mobile number to make flagging it easier). I think the operators on the ground are a law unto themselves and sometimes make up their own rules, but clarifying with their boss seems to get results in my limited experience. Alec p.s. I wasn't thinking above - HDPE is not a crosslinked polymer - it's a non-crosslinked modified thermoplastic polymer (which means it relies on long chain entanglement rather than formal chemical bonding - think felt rather than woven cloth). Corrected in original post.