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Woodland Crafts of Britain by Herbert L. Edlin. It's an excellent read if you like such things. It was first published in 1949 and he spent time going round talking to people for whom this was in living memory and recorded it. The other book which is quite good on such things is Evelyn's Sylva but my copy is less to hand. I agree that there is a lot to be learned from old knowledge. People had time to try things out and generally settled on particular strategies for a reason. For example, if they had poplar, willow and sycamore to hand, all were probably tested for the same purpose at some point and they would have chosen the one which worked best. We lost a lot of this knowledge from general consciousness in half a century of mass production but the pendulum has swung a bit, due I think to the low cost of power tools making hobby/small craftsman production possible and the raw materials being perceived to have no value. If Forest2Furniture goes ahead with making his trailer floor out of willow I would expect it to weigh less and perform better than most alternatives, at a very reasonable cost without taking a ridiculous length of time to do. Not a bad outcome for a bit of rubbish. Alec

I have some spare, do you think they would like some? Alec

I use these: Trap line Mole Trap | eBay You can also get them from the US where they are made and it works out cheaper if you get a few. They are very simple and extremely efficient - when we moved here we had a mole-catcher who cleared about 8 moles from an acre and a half over a couple of weeks. He used these traps so I bought some and have kept them down ever since. I get a couple every year but it is a lot more manageable now. Making shallow runs near the surface is called spooking. They tend to do it when the ground is compacted or stony. When they are doing this, the spooking runs tend to be parallel, all running off a main deeper run along a side of the area, such as where there is a hedge and the soil has been broken by the roots and compacted less. If you can find the main run this is the best place to put the trap. Alec

Yes, also because it has excellent strength to weight and doesn't splinter so you don't catch yourself on the cart floor. Still used on some flatbed lorries for the same reasons. On willow, my book of such things says: 'Sawn willow is remarkable for its resistance to shocks that would split other timbers, so it finds a use in the flooring of carts, trucks, and barrows, particularly where rock or stone has to be carried. It is also resistant to friction, and does not readily catch fire, so it is preferred for the brake blocks of carts, which bear on iron tyres, and has also been used for drums over which wire haulage cables are wound. Although perishable in contact with the ground, it lasts indefinitely if kept constantly wet, and the blades of steam-boat paddle wheels were often made of willow, as well as the similar strouds on the wheels of water mills. Other uses of willow wood include the making of scythe snaiths; here its light weight and pliability are of great advantage. It is also used for making toys, clog soles and boards for whetting knives. It is a passable substitute for ash in tool handles, being used either in the round or else cleft. Another occasional use is in the framing of packing cases for furniture, where lightness in weigh is a consideration. The same property caused it to be chosen for the yokes used by milkmaids to carry their pails, and sometimes also for the pails themselves.' Alec

Yes they are weldable, at least Transit ones are - it's what I made my froe out of Should be dirt cheap as well - mine came free with a transit back axle. If you were closer you would be welcome to the spare one and leftovers from mine. You just have to get it hot enough to straighten it and it saves a lot of grinding time if you can forge the front edge down. Alec

With the markets you are looking at, I think question isn't so much pricing, as whether you can set up to get your production costs low enough to achieve a decent rate when selling at the fixed market price. A lot of assumptions in the calculations below but: If the garden centre can sell a 2.6m x 25cm x 12.5cm (full size) sleeper for £25, you will probably get £12.50. Sleepers need heartwood. If you have 18" top diameters of heartwood you can get 3 sleepers out of a length; 22" will yield 5 sleepers. If you can get the logs to the mill fairly easily then this should be possible to make work, assuming there is a large enough demand for sleepers? Are there any issues with grading for the bridge construction timbers? There shouldn't be, as it would be visual grading only, which doesn't require any formal certification, but you might want to know what you are doing unless the contractors are prepared to select their own and take responsibility. Supplying cleft chestnut to the fencer could be a very good option if there is suitably sized material? Not very difficult to learn to do but doesn't need the mill. Alec

It's not that soft and not that nasty! I milled some for someone last year who wanted to make a particular type of basket out of it. A bit harder to mill than some as it doesn't chip out nicely - the grain is long and stringy. Once milled it makes a general purpose white wood. It used to be used a lot more than it is now, for most of the things which you would find spruce used for today. Alec

If you are planting at the top of the bank, you have a lot of depth of soil there under normal circumstances (the full depth from the bank to the top of the river). From the photos I would guess well over 6' so as long as you plant something which can cope with getting its feet wet from time to time, I don't think you will have any problems. Our situation is very similar - we are by a slightly smaller river, on the floodplain, and pretty much everything except sweet chestnut seems to do fine. A couple of suggestions for trees which would make an interesting statement with a long lifespan. First is a walnut - there has been work done on growing walnuts in NI with some success if you choose the right varieties and since they don't grow too tall and have good root systems they should be OK. I would look at varieties from here: http://www.desmallekamp.nl/images/PDF/catalogus%20prod%20rassen%20eng..pdf Second is an elm. These cope really well with your conditions and the varieties Lutece and Vada are commercially available, with enough resistance to be very unlikely to contract DED and die of it deliberate injection trials of massive doses do not cause much damage and there are no reports of trees dying when planted out). For your location I would go with Lutece I think as it is slightly less formal in outline. Alec

A complex set of variables in this, but the starting point for me is the price which allows me to end up at a reasonable hourly rate after allowing for depreciation on capital and running costs. I am using low capital investment equipment (Alaskan and chainsaw driven bandsaw, plus powerheads) but have relatively high consumable costs (Aspen, chain oil, saw bands). My production rate is relatively low, although bearing in mind timber is priced in cubic feet rather than square feet sawn, I can improve daily production significantly for thicker sections. The bandsaw is much more efficient but limited throat. My non-productive time is spent sharpening saw bands and transporting equipment (mine is designed to be portable) and I have a mix of time and costs for servicing/maintaining saws and chain. When I balanced up all the above, it worked out that if I buy wood at firewood prices I end up with an acceptable hourly rate if I sell at £15/cu.ft so that sets a base price. Oak generally costs more to buy in than firewood prices, as do some other desirable species such as walnut, so to achieve the same hourly rate I need to sell for more. Most of my milling is either for my own use, or on a day rate for people. If I am supplying timber then I tend to end up trying to set up three-person deals where someone wants something and someone else has the appropriate butt. I then act as a midde man and buy the log, mill it and sell it straight on. This works out as, being pre-sold, I don't add time for stacking, marketing etc. so effectively 'free delivery' is the added benefit to the customer since I can mill it and transport the timber straight to the customer, rather than hanging on to it. When you start selling from stock, it gets more complex. Firstly, you have to add in costs for marketing, including your time, plus the significant time spent selling boards - you can guarantee that the customer will want to see the whole stack when choosing their board, even when they end up wanting the board on the top! You also know that the wider boards will sell more easily than the ones from further out, so you end up with mixed pricing, residual stock etc. I don't really try to do this, but sometimes when I end up milling for my own use I will have spare boards which I will sell on to recover costs. I tend to go for £20/cu.ft for these, to cover the above (£25/cu.ft for the more expensive species to buy in). All the above is based on green timber. Seasoned goes up further as either you have the time of air drying or the cost and effort of kiln drying, plus an amount of spoilage for both. In different set-ups, the above factors will move around. I would guess that an lt15 may work out similar to the above as you increase production but also increase capital costs (depreciation) which in part time operation will add enough per cube to balance out. A small commercial set-up such as Big J's clearly enables some economies of scale and he has run at slightly lower prices - probably equivalent overall at point of delivery to my pre-sold logs. When you get into really big production set-ups such as the continuously operated softwood production plants run by BSW the costs do drop significantly but they supply a different market of course. Slightly rambling thoughts there, but might help in considering the right factors. Alec

Reptilian

I got my hands on some Norfolk Beefings this year to try it. Oven was slightly too hot and they split before I got as far as squashing them, but the flavour was excellent and I will definitely do it again. Did you try the Mere de Menage? Alec

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This will do it: SNHL20-50WR 20" GB Lo Pro Milling Bar For Stihl 026, MS260, MS261, MS270, MS271, MS280, MS290, MS291, MS360, MS361, MS362 - Alaskan Mill ? Mobile Chainsaw Mills It isn't advertised for the MS661 as it is shorter than standard but Stihl uses the same bar mounts from the MS261 all the way up to the MS661 so the bars are interchangeable (as long as you fit the corresponding drive sprocket to the saw). Alec

Having no nose sprocket, the Duromatic bar allows you to run whatever pitch chain you wish. 0.050" is a narrow gauge bar (compared with the standard 0.063" for Stihls of this size) so it is designed to enable you to run 3/8" lo-pro chain. This should increase milling speed. Ideally you would fit a 3/8" lo-pro pitch, 0.050" gauge, sprocket-nosed bar but these have not always been easy to obtain, certainly not directly from Stihl, as although in theory the nose sprockets are interchangeable they are not always available in the right diameter for a given bar nose. A hard nosed bar is therefore a universal fit. You can find suitable sized GB bars on the Alaskan Mill website: LO PRO MILLING BARS FOR STIHL Archives - Alaskan Mill ? Mobile Chainsaw Mills Alec

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