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If you're not in a desperate hurry you're welcome to borrow my Alaskan (work near Duxford). Alec

Used to mill with an 064 with a 36in bar - no problems. Alec

Saw, bar and chain will be fine. Ladder will work fine as a rail to run down (if there are no protruding rivets etc) but what will you do to hold the bar parallel to the rail? How thick do you need the planks/slabs? If rough cut, rustic is your thing, it might work. If you want decent planks, you really need some sort of mill. What do you want to make with it? Alec

I kneel behind the saw and push forward. I use standard Stihl chainsaw gloves, which seem OK. Is the butt wider than the mill for much of its length, and by how much? If it's much wider, I split it. If a little wider, I roll it up to skim off the face I want to run the powerhead down, then roll back for milling, if it's only flared at one end I tend to just line it up and freehand it off with the chainsaw before switching to the mill, or chop it off with the hatchet - only takes a few mins if it's bark and a bit of sapwood both sides. Alec

A few ideas: It takes a bit of time to get used to the 'wobble' of the powerhead/bar relative to the guide rail. If you lift or drop the powerhead, you get a bit of extra friction which makes the surface rough and also slows it down. If you start to go a bit off line (too high or low) the quickest way out of this situation is to advance the powerhead rather than the bar nose, round the log to the greatest angle you can go to, then bring the bar nose round to catch up. Milling with the bar at a bit of an angle to the log is often a bit easier. If you do it with the bar nose slightly advanced, you direct the exhaust a bit further away from your face. If you run on Aspen it really does help, with your head stuck so close to the exhaust. Remember to fill up before every long cut - it's really annoying backing the saw right out if it floods on its side and refuses to start again! Touch up the chain with every tank if you can. If you can arrange the log to run the powerhead side against a smooth face it helps, either by trimming down the side and rolling it, or even just hacking any lumps and bumps off (I tend to carry a hatchet for this as it's often quicker than switching the saw around if you're set up for milling and only have one powerhead with you). Enjoy it! Alec

Yep, still in occasional demand for the wooden teeth on watermill gears. Alec

As per Spudulike really. If you Google "ms660 parts list" you'll get the .pdf file from this site as the top item - you need p.44 to see the parts options. Mine is a Magnum, so the filter is slightly different (the HD one) but the main principle is the same - milling you're particularly likely to make fine dust, and because of the horizontal position of the saw partway down a log you pull it straight back in the direction of the air inlet, hence it clogs up frequently. This is a better thing than not having a filter, which would mean dragging said dust through the inlet port. A hole in the filter will provide a path of less resistance, so tend to preferentially drag air through, hence the intake of dust will be greater than its proportional area. To see if you have any damage, pull the exhaust and crank over so the piston is down. Dragging in dust causes wear on the inlet side, just below the inlet. If you're getting frequent filter clogging, is your wood very dry? If not, and you're not bogging down, and your chain is -really- sharp, consider taking the rakers down a bit as it will give you less dust and more chips. Alec

I'm the owner of the 044 and 066 Magnum referred to above. The 044 hasn't been running long in my ownership (bought as a non-runner with a let-go ring) but has had about 30l of fuel through it with milling, and has no sign of problems. Notable that GHS get the difference between A and B pistons - indicates a reasonable level of quality. I've found that Mister Solutions has a slightly greater range - they had a non-OEM part for my 051 for example. Alec

Yeah, but when milling you usually are Alec

Further to the above, I did a bit of digging on the Stihl website, by country. The MS460 (non-Magnum) is not currently available in many countries, but Stihl Mexico still have a 2009-2010 catalogue up, and it gives the maximum bar length as 36" ! So it looks like the change in recommendation may be after a certain date - still no clue as to why though. Alec

As the owner of the 044 and 066 Magnum mentioned above, I can say that I've been very happy so far with the GHS parts on the 044. I bought the saw as a non-runner on ebay, found it needed the anticipated pot and piston, in this case due to one of the rings having let go. Since I was able to make a positive diagnosis, I just fitted the new parts and away it went. I'm using it on a Ripsaw mill, so it's being worked hard, and it's done a reasonable amount now, probably about 30l of fuel through it. It's running nicely and no sign of premature wear. It also has a 1yr warranty, and they know I'm using it for milling which didn't concern them over likelihood of survival for a year. Alec

So far as I can tell, it's not just for the Magnum. I can't find a US manual, but a couple of places in the US and in New Zealand list the basic MS460 (with the right power output) as up to 32" on the bar. This would be consistent with the spec. for the old 044, which was the same. It suggests that it may have been 'downrated' for the UK market? No sign of why though. Alec

Have you tried Endeavour oil? Alec

Oak is usually quite open grain - if you like this effect then I would suggest an oil finish. Danish oil is good and cheap. Tung oil is very good and less cheap (but you would only need a small bottle from your local Liberon stockists). These will leave it looking 'wet'. If you want to leave the surface smoother, a wax finish is the way to go. This will also go into any residual gap along the joint (thinking of your other thread...) I would use a paste wax such as Black Bison and pick the lightest colour you can get if you want it to stay pale. A wax finish needs several light coats rather than one thick one. Put it on and buff it up, just like furniture polish. Just don't use anything with silicone in it. It will make the finish look flat and dead, and you'll never get it off again! Alec

Another trick - clamp the boards together as you want them: put battens across them first, above and below, and g-clamp them firmly but not hard, every couple of feet. This is to stop the boards twisting. You want at least 3 pairs. Then use a sash-cramp in the middle to pull them in together from the sides, again firmly but not hard - you don't want to edge-bend the wood. The g-clamped battens stop the boards from just twisting away and making a v-gap. If they're done up too hard though, they stop the sash-cramp from pulling the boards in together. Once the whole thing is solid, run a handsaw up the joint line to the sash-cramp, from both ends. When you reach a set of battens, unclamp them and move them down into the bit you've cut. With the sash-cramp on the underside you can get right up so the cuts meet, but don't cross the cuts. The saw kerf is a perfect width, even when it's not dead straight, so when you're done the boards just pull in and fit perfectly. Other option is planing as above - I use coloured chalk on one side when doing this, so you can see the bits to plane off the other side. Alec

Unfortunately it's not that simple (or it's much simpler, depending on which way you look at it!). The pot is a magnesium alloy, lined with a thin Nicasil plating layer. Once the plating's gone, the pot is shot. Consequently you can't bore them out - big bore kit is a full kit. Alec

Over the past few days I have been very much enjoying its big brother, the 076. Alec

Yes, very much so. There's one just up from me that's around 100ft tall, 30in diameter. It dropped its leaves very early last year, which is worrying, but it didn't do the classic DED branch-by-branch death, so I'm hopeful. There's also a row of half a dozen in the local town of larger diameter, one of which is still full height at a similar figure. There are three more in a row by the roadside about 5miles away, which look more like pollards, and another group of three and a further single tree about a mile on from that. Then another couple of miles on, where I work, there are a couple of decent specimens, a bit smaller but still nearly 2ft diameter. One of them is not doing too well but it's nothing to do with DED. I'm trying to persuade our site services people that they shouldn't have it felled, sadly with little success. Really it just needs aeration and mulching, and a bit of a reduction, but this doesn't fall into some people's way of thinking. Alec

Humans are 'diploid' - men have an X and a Y (one from each parent), women have an X and an X (one from each parent). Sometimes, very rarely, either the egg or the sperm has two chromosomes. This then forms a 'triploid' child, i.e. three chromosomes. It's thought Mae West may have had XXX syndrome. In plants, it tends to make them more vigorous, hence successful in out-competing their neighbours, but less fertile in terms of fertile fruiting bodies. The best known example is Bramley's Seedling, which is a triploid. It needs two pollinators, grows vigorously and crops very heavily as a result. Plants don't stop there - prunus avium (common cherry) is hexaploid (six chromosomes). This can lead to fertility incompatibility issues. Not sure if this clarifies? Alec

Don't forget it's low value - likely to fall below Customs' radar, even with the shipping. That's the thing that really holds items up. Alec

That's very interesting. There are a couple of small propagation programmes running in the UK that I'm aware of, one in Warwickshire and the other in Essex. They're based purely on propagating survivors in the hope that they have resistance. This might give a way of testing (or these ones could of course be resistant for a totally different reason). There are quite a few survivors around here. They're surrounded by dead ones, so it's a reasonable bet that they have some resistance at least. Conveniently they propagate quite well from softwood cuttings, even from really weak lower shoots, so at least when survivors are found it's easy to keep the gene pool going. Alec

Hi Callum, afraid these are tricky to get - fortunately that wasn't what was wrong with mine in the end. The only option I found was in the US. You have to go to ebay.com (rather than .co.uk) and log in using your usual ID. You can then find item number 220771325456 which ships worldwide. Hope this helps. Alec

Stihl quote a max bar length for the MS440 and MS460 as 32" ? If you have a 25" bar buried in a tree you're using about 23" by the time you account for the dogs. If you run a mill on it though, by the time you lose the 3" for the sprocket end, and the 1.5" for the bar clamp at each end, this comes down to only about 17" max cut width. You can lengthen that out to 19" if you take the dogs off, but if you're only running one saw it's a bit of a pain to keep taking them on and off. If you run a 30" bar you should get a 24" max. cut, i.e. much the same as the 25" bar would give you normally. Alec

A bandsaw mill as I'd rather have the ability to make wide boards. I don't run across enough trees over 3' diameter to worry about capacity, and have only ever exceeded the capacity of the hydraulics once - with a 20' butt, 3' at the narrow end. We had to flip it round with a very complex combination of mill hydraulics and farm forks, but it coped (made enough planks to finish the boat and do my living room floor!). Alec

I normally run an 066M on a 36in bar, but it's currently being fixed, so I had to fit the 044 for a bit. I was running it through 20in oak, with no real problems. It's slower, but OK. Your question suggests this is a bit of a hobby. Therefore, personally, I would fit a 30in bar on a 36in mill with proper ripping chain. This would give a cutting width of up to about 2ft (I wouldn't bother removing the dogs for the extra width) without slowing it down too much with bar drag. It should then run nicely on the smaller stuff. This would give the maximum flexibility to handle the odd wider bit without risking saw damage. Don't forget that ash is particularly hard work! Alec