agg221

Your pictures are a bit small to be definitive but the signs you have picked up on are consistent with an 075 or first generation 076 (top oil filler). Given that you already have it pretty well stripped down though, the quickest and easiest way to be certain is to unbolt the carb and the spacer block below, then measure the bore with a piece of stick or similar. 051 is 52mm, 075 and 076 are 58mm so there is enough difference for it to be clear. Alec

I bought my mill for my own projects - initially to cut the timber for repairing a couple of wooden canal boats. This was long before the firewood boom when offering a farmer £50 for a standing dead oak on a field boundary made their day - I borrowed their teleporter for the day and we were both very happy. Since then, I have still mostly milled my own timber, most recently to build an extension on our house. Next major project will be taking out the concrete from the sills and the bottom of the posts, seeing how bad it really is and then renewing a lot of the lower timbers. I also have some stock for building a 1690's style longcase clock case in ebonised pearwood and an collecting up plum whenever anyone has some available, ultimately to build fitted bedroom furniture which will go under the slope of the ceiling in the original part of the house. I want to build an open fronted bookcase in walnut to go against a particular wall (log for this is arranged) and a few other things with field maple for the new kitchen. I also mill timber for people on an occasional basis - sometimes people have a tree taken down, often in a back garden where access is poor and it will need cutting up anyway so they would rather have planks than firewood (as above, probably a fair amount of this ends up rotting but less so with oak in particular); sometimes it's an unusual species or an exceptional specimen and someone has a use for it. I do very little speculative milling 'for stock'. Although I do sometimes sell my surplus, I don't have the time to market it and you can guarantee that if you mill 1.5" boards, the next potential customer will want 2", or you will quartersaw and they will want wide slabs etc. I have some 'spare' oak, cherry, pear, black poplar and elm but I will probably end up using it for something before I get round to selling it. Alec

When I was rebuilding my first wooden canal boat (72' butty built by Walkers of Rickmansworth in 1936) I was paying rent on the boatyard space and wanted to finish as fast as possible so I compared methods. For some jobs, such as drilling holes, power tools were much faster and a power plane was much faster than a hand plane. Other jobs, particularly where shapes were more complex, it was a much closer run thing - for a one-off operation it was often faster to pick up a hand tool and do it than to set up a power lead and put it away again afterwards. Some jobs I never found a faster powered method for, notable ones being removing half an inch or more of width from the edge of a 2" thick plank and shaping of complex curved and stepped profiles in a stem post, where an adze was the best tool and cutting mortices in-situ where a saw and chisel beat any alternative (a chain morticer would not have done the necessary shapes or allowed the access). On the current extension build, timbers have been dimensioned with power tools but most other jobs have still been quicker an easier by hand. Really good tools, not necessarily branded or expensive, but which start off sharp and hold their edge have, in my opinion, been the key to this. It's why I have tended towards japanese saws and chisels and pretty much all of them meet these criteria. Alec

The Contra models were the forerunners to the 070 and 090 (the 1106 series saws). This one is basically an 070 with some differences (different layout of pot, piston and exhaust are the main ones). The price looks OK if it is a runner. Is it any good? Well, they are big heavy torque-monsters with no chainbrake. This makes them very good milling saws, although parts availability can be difficult so it's the kind of saw you use for your own jobs when you can come back to it if you have a problem, or when you have a backup saw available. Alec

Evening Paul, It's off and set up but not done - I had to go out this afternoon to mill an oak which has been drying for about 5yrs with no bark or sapwood. Made the maple seem easy (and a 4" thick lump of it x 18" wide and 12' long was seriously heavy even compared with the whitebeam). Yes, funny we were talking about big saws. I did figure why mine was playing up though - clogged air filter from the maple. Alec

I had the 090 out on the mill today, one lot this morning, another this afternoon. Certainly feel it after lugging it back at the end of each cut. Alec

I am creating pollards at ours. In some of our hedgerows there are sycamore of a suitable size and they will end up on a 7-8yr rotation for firewood. I have done some for the past couple of years and will do some more this winter. There is a big difference in appearance between street tree pollards and rural pollards but I think both have their place. Alec

Before you do, if you want to take the highest magnification close-up of the fracture face and post the picture on here I'd be happy to comment (this relates to what I do in the 'day job'). If you do want to send it off, try not to touch anything against the fracture face, and if you find the other half, resist the temptation to fit the two bits back together The failure will almost certainly be due to a fatigue fracture which progresses in bands per cycle. These are visible on the surface of the fracture but sometimes need microscopic examination as they are so subtle - fit the two together and you will rub the surfaces enough that the bands can be destroyed which loses a lot of the information about why the failure occurred. Alec

Steve, how aware are you of the current status of work in enabling the reintroduction of disease resistant elm? I don't just mean in the UK, I am talking Europe-wide. In summary, it has taken 40yrs of analysis, breeding and testing to get to a point where some very limited field trials are underway in a very small number of locations. Yes, there are some other projects which are very unscientific and based more on hope than analysis, but the underpinning work is showing results. Half a human lifetime but barely a tick in tree-time. The point is that sometimes when man makes a problem it is incumbent upon him to fix it. Not all fixes are good, some good (valid) work is not successful in achieving the desired result, some well intentioned but under-researched approaches make things worse. The latter point is a very good reason why unless you have some solid data behind what you do there is no good basis for understanding why you get a particular outcome. Without the level of research undertaken, re-introduction of elm would not be a realistic proposition now. Left to its own devices, other human factors (such as development) would have prevented the route forward which has been identified from being achieved by natural means. If the results had already been known it would have been possible to undertake the 'one' trial which gave the desired outcome, but to predict which one you would have to be a fortune teller. Under-developed research would have resulted in the release of a clone into the field which suffered from a completely unrelated condition which had the potential to cause even more damage. Whilst ash has a lot of potential to be self-selecting, saplings will sometimes grow to a reasonable size before they are affected. Thorough trials will give better understanding of factors such as dependency of variables, e.g. is there a correlation between resistance and vigour or growth habit? This gives a much better opportunity to minimise the impact than a random approach. Alec

There is quite a lot of misunderstanding around thatched roofing and fires. The usual causes of fire are mice chewing wires (which is why new wiring is discouraged and has to be armoured cable or in conduit) or idiot plumbers with blowtorches (yes, really!) The issue with fires is not sparks but creosote soaking through old brickwork and mortar which can eventually be ignited, smoulder right through and set the thatch slight from the inside. Open fires, being inefficient, pass hot gas up the flue so the creosote doesn't condense. Log burners have much cooler smoke so the creosote condenses more easily. The solution is simple - use a liner. Spark arresters are actually discouraged as they tend to clog up and either cause problems with draw or the soot can catch fire. Alec

I'm near Haverhill but work near the southern edge of Cambridge so Duxford Hire & Supply is very convenient. Alec

I have a large array of old saws, most of them really old, all secondhand. I literally just chucked in Aspen instead of pump fuel, in some cases on top of pump fuel (not old and stale, just what was in there when I picked it up and it was demonstrated) and away I went. I have had to rebuild two carbs and replace a fuel pipe when they went brittle, but otherwise nothing, not even a retune. I am fairly near Spud and he has checked several of mine after switching and none of them have even needed tweaking on the screws. Just been milling this morning with the 090 which runs on Aspen - a much more pleasant experience than pump fuel would have been. Alec

No idea why it's doing it, but I share your pain. Mine has started throwing its bands forwards for no apparent reason: http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/milling-forum/93505-bandsaw-throwing-bands-forwards.html There are some good ideas of things to look for on this thread. Alec

Some thoughts: 'Best' depends on your criteria (best price, best performance, best durability, best aesthetics etc). You presumably need to comply with building regs, but you could go further and go for Passivhaus. One way to justify your choices is to use a spider diagram - choose your criteria and set them out at the ends of spokes of a wheel. Then draw a series of 10 rings around them so it looks like a spider's web. You can then score each criterion out of 10 (use data where possible, e.g. thermal conductivity values or price) and mark off each criterion on its spoke so 1 is the innermost ring, 10 the outermost. The bigger the area covered, the better the choice, but you can justify it against whichever criteria you select as the most important. The best thermal performance material on the market is aerogel blanket, supplied by Aspen. This means that you can use it at the lowest thickness for a given performance. If you want to go green and decide on a bungalow rather than a log cabin, try looking at Modcell's construction which locks up the maximum possible carbon. One thing which often gets overlooked is that building comfort is a combination of temperature and humidity. Water vapour management is essential and the easiest way to maintain this is through breathable construction. Thermal mass is also important for temperature stability. Concrete is not very green but is the easiest way to achieve it. Managing solar gain is also important - you want heat and light from the sun but it is no use if the building overheats in summer and you need aircon to manage it. You could consider building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) as a roofing solution - there are now photovoltaic roof tiles available. Sounds like a good project! Alec

If there are no old test certs then the mfr still appears to be in business or TRADA would be able to help. Alec

When you use timber in construction a strength grade is usually specified. For hardwood, and large softwood beams, this is based on visual inspection, looking for things like knots, waney corners and insect damage etc. For smaller softwood sections, things like joists and rafters, grading is done by mechanically testing each piece of wood, after which it is stamped as passing. That's what this machine does. Alec

Don't often see these for sale: Cook bolinder SG AR wood stress test machine | eBay No connection to me, but if it genuinely is in good working order and has recent test certificates then it could be a very low cost entry route for anyone considering supplying graded softwood. Alec

You might find this interesting: http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/general-chat/48466-fenland-black-bog-oak.html I vaguely recall it being very difficult to get the drying right in the early stages and a kiln being used right from the beginning to control humidity, drying at fairly high temperature (around 30degC). If you could get access to a kiln at a local softwood production mill then that would probably be about right if you put it in with their load. That kind of kiln drying will give you a turnaround of weeks so definitely possible in your timeframe. Alec

From my experience, if it was fine when it died, it will be fine now. I had a couple of logs which had been left lying for over 10yrs, one of which had been struck by lightning, the other the tree had just died, probably 5+yrs before felling. They were the leftovers from an arctic load that went out from a farm. These two wouldn't fit on and weren't worth coming back for. Apart from the total lack of sapwood (a good thing!) they were no worse than the day they died. Alec

Yes it has. Think of wood as being made up of a bundle of drinking straws. Each straw has some partial blocks across it at various points and some sideways holes like pinpricks. When water gets down the middles of the 'straws' the damp environment is suitable for spores to settle and grow. Once established they can also progress to adjacent 'straws'. The 'straws' are never perfectly straight, so if you saw down the face you always cut in to some which exposes the inside, allowing water in. If you cleave, they tear apart without rupturing the walls. This creates fewer sites where water can get in. I've done some work on trying to develop preservatives which work by blocking up the 'pinprick holes' and filling the walls of the 'straws' with something that fungi can't penetrate. We had some success with it but it wasn't cost-effective. Alec

Very nice! I suggest keeping a look out for either a sprocket nosed or roller-nosed bar as it will take less power from the saw that way. It looks to be cutting pretty well - as has been said you can make it cut bigger chips but the risk is that it bogs down when cutting full width so you need to be careful. There is also a trade-off between increasing the hook (more aggressive cutting, less pushing but a rougher surface) and decreasing it (smoother surface but more pushing). Mine is now going to have to come out to play as the 076 has just started playing up. Overkill for what I'm doing (2ft oak) but needs must. Alec

Worth getting a replacement if you can, but don't chuck the old one. These are one of the easier parts to weld up if you have to at some point (or get it done by someone with TIG - fairly cheap). Alec

The key questions will be: How straight is it? Any sign of rot pockets or other defects from where old branches have been removed? How wide is the heartwood? (the dark bit) How dark is the heartwood? The price will depend on the above and whether anyone wants it. I may be interested if I can tie the trip in with something else. Alec

It's a bit further on than you're looking for but I can take as much as you have, near Haverhill. Alec

It's not about whether they could master it. Trouble is, they are a pack animal which is a classic sign that they're heavily unionised. As soon as you start trying to change their job description they'll be straight out. Alec