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Thatch on ours isn't too bad thanks - we're in a long straw area so regular renewal of the top layer is needed anyway, but we budgeted for the first maintenance and first re-thatch when we took out the mortgage. I've cleft 8' lengths of sweet chestnut to 8mm but I really don't fancy that job with scots pine! Sounds like your listed buildings officer (I presume you're listed?) is rather less picky than ours. We would have to patch up absolutely everything feasible and insert new timbers alongside old ones if they couldn't be suitably repaired. Not sure where things would stand if we needed to take down a ceiling to access damaged timber underneath - it could be an interesting conflict of interest. We would also have to replace like-for-like as to species, although I suspect that they may not be able to identify that many species if I didn't volunteer the information. Alec

Most of my spare stuff is a bit heavy at 3" and a bit wasteful to resaw, but I'll keep you in mind once I've got my extension rafters and studwork installed and know what's spare. I know what you mean about waney and bowed - we have an inserted upstairs from the 16th century(originally built as an open hall house) and one half is the original insertion which was designed to be seen so is fairly square, the other half is a later (c19) replacement which was originally plastered over and the joists look like bits of hedge! Your earlier comment on squaring with an axe vs sawing - I think it depends on whether they're box heart or not. Squaring up a box heart beam with an axe/adze makes sense, and it's still the best way to make the curved sections, but if you're splitting down a larger section it's less wasteful to saw them to get a true surface. You need at least one true surface for the top, sometimes a second one on the lower side if it's designed to be plastered over (look for the little nail holes if they're currently exposed). Early joists and rafters tend to be split (cleaving) up the centre, so you cleave along the straightest line, meaning they have the maximum sideways bow. You then clean up the lower face and the sides to as true as you can get, using an axe. The timbers therefore end up wider than they are deep, which isn't very structurally efficient. If you saw them out though, every face is true and you can make the timber deeper than it is wide, which is more efficient in use of timber. Our early c19 timbers are all sawn, the c16 and c17 ones are all cleft/axe finished. I wonder in your case whether it relates to being part of a large estate which may result in deliberate forestry and hence labour for moving logs and a saw pit? Alec

Hi Gavin, Did the oak grow naturally from seed, or was it planted there from a pot? If it grew naturally, it probably has a pretty serious taproot, going straight down, unless you're on very thin soil or it hit a load of rubble etc. They don't like having their taproots damaged so that's probably the biggest problem in moving it. Since you don't have a lot to lose, you might as well give it a go. It's best done as soon as the leaves fall so it's dormant. Trees continue root development over the winter, so it might be OK. It's a bit big for conventional bonsai, but you could use the same approach, in a tub rather than a small pot. I would consider planting in a dustbin for now as they're cheap so you don't lose much if it doesn't work, dig it out with as much taproot as you can get, knock some holes in the bottom of the bin and fill up the bottom third with rubble, then the top two-thirds with John Innes No.2 and plant accordingly. Keep it somewhere sheltered for the first year as its ability to take up water will be reduced. With a bit of luck, you'll get the root structure to develop fibrous roots and then when you lift it for root pruning you can take the taproot back accordingly if needed. Good luck! Alec

I wouldn't be too worried about a green beam - assuming it's resting on brick walls on the ends and maybe the middle. There will be very very little shrinkage along the length, almost all in the width/height, so it might open up gaps if it's mortared in but should otherwise be fine. The original would probably have gone in green - I doubt they would have waited four years for it to season! Fortunately we haven't had any deathwatch here - just the standard woodworm, but I don't think they enjoy the dust dry elm very much. We're also thatched and about the only thing that goes for that is the mice. I think the problem with 'green' construction materials is trying to find a way to defeat the natural agents of decay, or at least slow them down as much as possible. How big are the joists and rafters you need to make? Alec

I run a solid nose 47" bar on the 076. It gets hot. Heat means it's running less efficiently (energy is going into heat rather than turning the chain). It doesn't stop it working though as the stellite tip will not be damaged even if it's glowing and the chain is passing too fast to pick up the heat - just stop when the oil starts smoking! Alec

The use of beech isn't that surprising if it grows well locally - timber wasn't moved much c.1750 so unless you are sufficiently close to the coast for them to have been using old bits of ship and unless it was a very high class building they were left with what they could get their hands on. There's a lot of poplar and elm used in various parts of the country - our place is mostly elm dating from c.1500. What are the dimensions of the parts you're looking to make? I've almost exclusively used timber from standing dead oak and once even from trees which had been felled and left lying on the ground for approx. 10yrs. All fine. If you have a sense of why the tree died it can help a bit in guessing how likely it is to be sound but in reality there's very little to go wrong with oak - I haven't felled a bad one yet. If they die slowly you tend to get nice dense timber at the edges and less sapwood. Brown timber is slightly more brittle but quite useable for things like rafters and no more prone to being eaten than anything else. I would remove every scrap of sapwood though as it is a magnet for woodworm and it rots really easily - several trees I've done it's been possible to remove it along with the bark, using nothing more than a wire brush! I would also be inclined to apply a generous dose of boron-based treatment to all components, particularly in the joints and the reverse faces which you won't be able to access once installed. Alec

Not sure if you're all done with this (been away on hols for a couple of weeks) but I've got a decent sized oak to do in Great Abington (A11/A505) shortly. 3ft dia at the fat end, with a sharp taper x 20ft long. I'll be breaking it down into cants I can trailer away. If you fancy this one then drop me a pm - It will probably be the 076/48" bar mostly, but if you want to try the 066/36" bar too then I could bring it along for comparison. 20ft lengths are always interesting to do - getting it all levelled to best effect. I've also been playing with my new toy - precision chain grinder from Rob D - so want to see how much faster the chain performs. Alec

Apples - any time from leaf fall to bud break. The sooner you do it, the more growth you'll get so if it's growing vigorously and you want to slow it down, do it late, if it's growing slowly and you want to accelerate it, do it early. Older recommendations also suggest not pruning in frosty weather, so perhaps Jan/Feb is trickier these days? I must admit I tend to try to avoid pruning in frost, but I can't comment on whether it's made a lot of difference. You can summer prune too, to really slow them down, but this tends only to apply to heavily trained wall or wire-grown shapes such as espalier or fan, where you want to keep them very restricted in size. Plum - from bud-break to the end of August to avoid silverleaf. For most plums you tend to either prune in June to aid in thinning the crop, or after harvest. With damsons you don't have the latter option as they fruit too late. Hope this helps! Alec

As Hamadryad has said, this tree has good vigour and is in decent shape. Gnarly old apple trees like this are part of their charm - they're not a natural look and were never designed to be, it's a classic example of the impact of man's intervention and the fact that it still provides a habitat/productive/aesthetic benefit. 'Normal' pruning to keep it reasonably thinned, remove crossing/diseased branches etc would be all that's required and it should keep going for a long time yet - decades if not another century. If the hacked branch is dead though, I would take it off to where it joins the main bit - there will be a visible collar of live bark which you should aim to avoid cutting in to. In my experience it's hard to specify how to know when a branch, or the trunk, is about to snap. The weak point can be very hard to predict, as when the inside is no longer structural the remaining bark and sapwood acts as a tube with holes in, which cause it to buckle under a particular loading. The only thing you can do if you think it's a bit thin in places is to keep weight and wind resistance off by shortening up branches to reduce leverage, and height to reduce wind resistance - the classic 'mushroom' shaped flat top apple tree with thin fruit-bearing branches being regularly renewed on a permanent scaffold of old branches is one approach. This is the basis of renewal pruning, which is favoured for retention of old orchard trees. The Ancient Tree Forum has some useful advice here: http://frontpage.woodland-trust.org.uk/ancient-tree-forum/atfscapes/images/RestoringFruitTrees.pdf Alec

Technically, you are probably in the right (legal, not commenting on moral). If you had agreed a salary and the employer allowed you access to the accommodation and you turned up for work during the week you were employed, clearly both parties had accepted a contract and you are entitled to the pay for that week. During the early stages of a contract it is quite normal for both parties to have the right to immediate termination of contract with no notice. Practically, it will have cost the employer time, effort and possibly even money (advertising etc) and they are also quite understandably likely to be hacked off, so it's not surprising they're trying to recover their costs, even if they're not technically entitled to do so. However, getting the money back would be tricky and expensive, and in reality probably not worth it. You could talk to your local Citizens' Advice Bureau and see what they can suggest, and then decide if you think it's worth pursuing. Alec

You do need a decent sized saw - roughly 70cc for a 24in mill, 90cc for a 36in mill, really big and high torque for anything bigger. One cheap option for trying it out is to use an 051 - many don't have chainbrakes but this doesn't really matter for milling (frame gets in the way before the bar gets you, and most of the time it's buried in the log so it can't kick back even if it tries as the frame jams it). There are a few around on ebay at the moment - seem to be making about £50-90, except the stupid bidding war ones. There are two ending in the next couple of days. If you don't like it you're pretty certain of selling it on and getting your money back. Alec

These are woodworking saws, I really like them although getting the teeth right for hardwoods can be difficult. There's a very helpful UK supplier who has an excellent range and is working with a Japanese blade maker to design teeth suitable for ripping oak. He's just shipped a 90kg lump to Japan for development trials and if they come up with something I am in line for field trials:biggrin: Alec

An opinion - this doesn't look like fireblight to me - I tend to think of fireblight as affecting more of a 'patch' than scattered shoots. It looks to me more like local damage as Goaty has suggested and I think he's probably right. The other things that can do this are pear scab, or girdling canker at the base of the shoot, which is a particular problem in damp weather. Alternatively brown rot can do this if it gets into the spurs. I wouldn't prune back anything other than dead/dying at this stage - if it is fireblight you won't get enough to control it and the tree is of an age and style where it will be hard to get it back. Also, pretty much all the causes except for chilling off are fungal. I would therefore write off any crop for this year and spray with a fungicide. Writing off the crop by deliberately removing it will also help if it's brown rot, as it will break the cycle. Hope this helps. Alec

Oil will soak in more and give a darker, richer colour. Wax will give less colour change if you use a clear/neutral one. If you use an oil, tung oil is easier as it cures faster but boiled linseed is pretty good if you don't mind waiting a few days for it to dry. Oil is usually wipe on a heavy dose, let it soak in for a bit, then wipe off any excess if it ponds. Personally, I would apply a dose of something insecticidal first as holes emerging after finishing annoy me. One of the permethrin-based emulsions would be suitable (if they haven't been banned since I last bought some!) - try Sovereign Chemicals for recommendations. Actually, just had a look on their site and one of their products is still permethrin based but there are a range of others so I'd ring them - very helpful people and don't mind dealing with 'the public'! The insecticide will be buried under the finish so you won't be exposed to it, but it's best to put it on after final finishing and if you get any grain raising when wet, rub off the nibs outside, using a mask, to avoid inhaling it in dust form. Alec

I wouldn't just chop off branches to leave stubs. Try to take out whole branches to re-form the framework. In some cases, this can be direct, in others you will need to head it back a bit, see what grows, keep cutting back above it to keep the new low bit vigorous and eventually cut back to it. I've tried to illustrate possible cuts in the pictures below. These shouldn't be taken as definitive but rather indicate the type of thing I would suggest. They also illustrate the two different approaches. The Bramley has a decent framework of branches but could be thinned, particularly at the centre, and taken down to a lower level, single tier. The pear (I presume) hasn't got the necessary lower branches, so the first series of cuts shorten branches, which will then be shortened again depending on what grows back where. The green line is an attempt to indicate a zone within which you could aim to keep branches going, but to get this shape you need some new growth from low down, which is what the cutting back is designed to stimulate. Note, there are three cuts shown on the Bramley but the one on the left is to take the upward growing branch out above the one sticking towards the camera. The bits on the Bramley would be very heavy, so would need taking out branch by branch before making the final heavy cut. Doing a tree of this size in this condition using hand tools only is likely to take a whole day. Alec

Hi Bill, they're not as bad as I've seen in the past. Yellow leaves and grass length point to lack of nitrogen so that would be where I would start. First thing I would do is get the grass cut right down, then smother it (or use weedkiller) around the trunks - make the circles about 4ft across, and apply some fertiliser. I would then think about pruning, work out what you want to do, mark up diseased branches with a spray can so you can spot them easily, but not make any pruning cuts until the leaves are off. The large tree to the left in the first photo and the tree in the third photo have easy forms to come back to. The first one will come back to a single layer bush form - think mushroom; the one in the third is a classic mop-headed standard but wants some of the centre taking out to avoid smothering the lower branches. The trees in the middle photo look unusual for apples. They're high but thin. Normally when they go like this it is from bush form trees that have been planted too close together, but here they look to have always had this trunk form as the forks are narrow from the start with no sign of them having grown up from replacement water shoots. The photos are a bit dark to see, but are there plums in this orchard too, or cider apples? Whereabouts in the country are you, my guess from the tree form is the west? Alec

I still use one every now and again for entertainment. Softwood usually takes a wider kerf as has been said - relates to the 'fuzziness' of the cut fibres and the risk of gumming. The teeth can have a more hooked form for softwood, certainly than for a dense hardwood like oak. This makes the saw more aggressive and faster cutting, but in a harder wood you run the risk of pulling the teeth off. There's a section on saw sharpening in Spon's Engineering Workshop Manual and Receipts, which is really good, but I don't have it here. It may be available on line by now. Alec

Hi, To address your question - a lot depends on the conditions in which they are grown, and what you want out of them. As has been said, they are well past their commercial productive life, but then again they're so far past that it suggests this isn't really what you're looking for. Fruit trees are grown on rootstocks, the selection of which controls their size, by controlling how vigorous they are. This also determines how well they can compete with weeds etc. So, big trees (30ft or so, often grown as standards) can out-compete almost anything, whilst dwarf trees (8-12ft probably from that era, on a stock called Paradise) will tend to struggle if they're grown in full grass and definitely don't like higher weeds like nettles, brambles etc. Then there's the question of whether they have any particular fungal invasion - weaker roots means less able to live with it. If they're just craggy, very dense (not been pruned for a long time), with small leaves, maybe yellowing, and very short extension growth every year, growing with grass right up to the trunks, a regime of pruning to reduce height and density, coupled with mulching with cardboard and something to weight it down, such as chipped bark or rotted compost, and a good dose of blood, fish and bone or any other balanced fertiliser may well work wonders. Spread the pruning out over some years (3-5) though. I still look after Mum's orchard, which was planted in 1919, a mix of dwarf and vigorous rootstocks, and most of the trees are doing fine. Not looking for a commercial crop - just fruit for all the family throughout the year, which it does nicely. Oh and some pictures would be good. Alec

Two important factors are whether the benefit is discretionary or a defined benefit, and whether it is occasional or regular. I've worked for two companies which have allowed occasional use of company vehicles on a discretionary basis. They were large companies with very clear understanding of the tax position (i.e. it wasn't just that they weren't asking any questions). Whilst at the first company I borrowed the Volkswagen Sharan once in three years to drive to Shropshire and back one day to pick up a small boat engine. Whilst at the second company I borrowed the van twice in ten years, once to move a load of floorboards and again to move house. This hasn't caused either company any tax concerns. Alec

Yes, we both get them and almost everyone takes them. Once you're in it's best to stay in as they have eroded the level for newer starters. Alec

Nah, Gibson flying V, worn on a really long strap so you play it somewhere around your knees. Alec

Possibly interested - whereabouts is it? Alec

Check whether the bar rails have opened up - does the chain wobble from side to side? If it does it could be due to splaying out or from wear. In either case you can get a bit more life from it by nipping them up so the chain runs smoothly with no play (if you overdo it tweak them back with a big flat bladed screwdriver). When they start to go again it's new bar time. Alec

Hi Rick, I haven't got an photos myself but there are quite a few if you google it of the barn at Avoncroft. This one is quite good: Inside the cruck-frame barn | Flickr - Photo Sharing! There's also some discussion in the very useful "Regional variation in timber-framed building in England and Wales down to 1550; the proceedings of the 1994 Cressing Conference". I believe the earliest cruck blades were hewn, but that meant finding two trees with similar curves. Later ones were therefore ripped centrally down the two lengths and the halves used as a matched pair of blades. Alec

I agree with Tony - the other thing it does is to give you an area where you can apply fertiliser without it being taken straight back up by the grass! After mowing, I'd stick down some cardboard first to smother the grass, with something more decorative on top that stops it blowing away - chipped bark or compost would do the trick. Alec