agg221

I like the idea of a wood/timber buying and selling area. On the subject of Arbtrader though, it doesn't quite work for me. I think it's because it is too detached from the main site (doesn't even appear in the top menu bar of Arbtalk) and doesn't really let you scroll through listings by date etc. Is there an opportunity to make it better integrated alongside the site redesign? On the tip site question, it would probably be enough to list general area of the country. I am always able to take chip, as are some others (eg Felixthelogchopper) but knowing to drop me a PM to get exact location if you need a site in the vicinity is probably enough. Alec

Conveniently, the local thatchers to here have their own reaper-binder I know it normally uses traditional long straw varieties but I am looking at whether you can use the straw from some of the modern F1 hybrid varieties which get higher grain yield from slightly poorer soil. If I can combine both then it will offset the cost of the F1 hybrid seed. Alec

Tomorrow we complete on 4.75 acres of field which adjoins our house. It's grade 2 arable and we have had an access agreement with the owner since November (the hold-up has been due to their solicitor rather than any of the purchasers and we will be the first to complete). We have an arrangement with the local farmer - he is farming it for us on a contract basis and we currently have a winter wheat crop coming up nicely. We are a registered agricultural holding and get the single farm payment entitlement that comes with the land. The plan to start with is mostly to sell the wheat crop in with the farmer's, however I am intending to hold some back and see if there is a market for locally grown stoneground flour. I will also be in discussion with the local thatchers to see if there is a market for thatching straw. None of this will make us a fortune (or anything like a living!) but it will make us a bit and let the land cover its costs. In the 'off' year of rotation we will investigate high value, small demand crops which may be a little more labour intensive and see what we can do. Coincindentally, since we do border a river, we also have a secondary crop of cricket bat willow, planted and maintained by JS Wright, so one day in the future we may be able to say that it was our willow that helped England to lose the Ashes! Alec

Looking your pictures, the roughness is straight across so you are not rocking the mill (this is a good thing). The side of the log is pretty smooth so I don't think you have problems with the mill catching (assuming you have set the powerhead end post up the right way round...) I think it's a chain issue. I have had this in the past and it seems to be when you have too much hook on the chain. How did you sharpen it? If you have a precision grinder I would lift it up a bit to decrease the hook angle. Alec

Where in the country is it and what is it currently used for? Alec

There are at least two sorts. The early one had three lugs on the back of the starter cup and a nylon ring insert; later one had a single pin in the side of the cup locating into the flywheel. The inserts are not interchangeable so you would need to change flywheel, cup, insert and starter assembly. May be worth looking on eBay.com as some of the big secondhand parts sellers have more stock than they lost and will ship to the UK. Alec

Not sure if you've put up what saw you want it for somewhere else, but note that different saws have different mounts, ie the bars are not interchangeable between all makes and models. If it fits, Cannon bars are good Alec

Not green, but I understand some people prefer 15-20% mc anyway as it isn't quite so brittle (although I'm no expert this is certainly consistent with what I've found). If the branches were standing dead for long enough to be stripped to heartwood and are only a few inches thick (proper bleached stags head stuff) then I would expect them to be dry enough for outdoor use. Alec

Be aware that only the heartwood of your fallen oak branches will be durable. Some branches from an oak that has gone 'stags head' would work fine. They will also probably be seasoned enough, as would a bit of oak firewood (which is what I made most of the pegs for my extension from!) I wouldn't use ash or hornbeam outside, they are really not durable. Alec

Now looking like being Saturday the 15th (although I might go back down on the 22nd to blitz the last of it). Alec

I could do you some of the second bit of this lot if you want - 6' wide enough? http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/woodcraft-forum/68851-oak-available-milled-your-spec.html Alec

It shouldn't be that rough. It won't come out as smooth as a fresh bandsaw blade but it can be pretty good - try looking at the milling pics and vids thread to see how it can come out. In what way is your cut rough (any chance of a photo of the board surface)? It may then be possible to work out what is wrong. Alec

Yes, the Sugihara bar is very good for both. It's particularly stiff which both helps when milling as there is less vibration and when felling as the nose doesn't droop so much. It is also fine for cross-cutting but the benefit is less here. Glad you like the website - it's all in the quality of the tech support you know Alec

The 46" bar has the large saw mounts, so whichever saw you are using will have enough power that you won't need to worry about skip/semi-skip chain as the bar isn't long enough to need it for chip clearance reasons - hence full comp chain will be fine. You will need a different chain for ripping (milling) and for crosscutting. Whilst you can cut the other way with either chain, it is slower and less efficient. For milling, there are options of Stihl, Oregon and Granberg. The Stihl and Oregon chains are essentially the same configuration - normal chain but sharpened at 10degrees (you can in fact make your own by grinding standard chain down, but it wastes a lot of the chain life). The Granberg chain has a configuration of alternating top plates on each side ground very narrow so they act as scoring knives, followed by a normal tooth which acts to rake out the material between the scored lines. All three work well when sharp. The Granberg is a bit more efficient so takes a little less power from the saw and leaves a slightly better finish. I used to use Oregon chain throughout, but following working with Burrell now prefer the Granberg chain as I am either milling for other people and want to give the best quality I can and sometimes need to achieve fairly challenging production rates in a day, or am milling my own stuff which if it's with the chainsaw mill is too wide to go through my thicknesser, so I want to minimise my hand finishing work. I still use Oregon chain for some of my own stuff, mainly rougher work such as quick breaking down of dirty timber eg with external mud or high risk of metal, as it's cheaper. For normal crosscutting chain, it depends on what you are doing. If it's usually clean stuff then a full chisel chain will give the quickest results; if it's low down, stumping or seasoned stuff then a semi-chisel will hold its edge better. If you go to chainsawbars.co.uk and click on the custom/bulk chain tab, custom chain loops option you can bring up the available chains for your required pitch/gauge. If you click on them you will get a short description of each which may help. I do Rob D's online support, so if you email [email protected] then you get me anyway:001_smile: Alec

I can tell you why I haven't bid on it, which may help in forming a view. I think it's a great piece of kit and will probably be a really good deal for someone. It's a production-capable saw at a price where you can afford it to stand idle some of the time, ie it will do all that is asked of it without holding you up but you won't feel it must be working to pay off the investment. I wouldn't mount it on a trailer - for rigidity I would want a fixed installation and getting the pit in the right place relative to the structure of the trailer may also be trickier than it first appears. A fixed installation works really well if you either sell timber or are milling from your own local source. I sell very little timber, do more milling for other people at their own site and would rather not bring everything of my own back here for preference as eventually I will annoy the neighbours! If you are doing what I do, you tend to end up with oversize or difficult access stuff. I can tackle difficult access but if I upgrade it would be to a trailable horizontal bandmill with a 3'+ capacity as that would best suit my situation. If you are pretty much only milling your own timber of a size which goes through this, and already have the handling gear, I reckon this mill would be an excellent option. Maybe Fred can be prevailed upon for a reasonable consideration to help set it up and demonstrate its operation? Alec

As per Burrell - 46" sprocket nosed bars are made by Sugihara and supplied by Chainsawbars ? chainsaw chains, chainsaw bars and chainsaw accessories. When you set up the mill it clamps to the bar, inside the nose sprocket. This means you lose a few inches at the nose, a bit for the dogs and an inch for each of the two clamps. As a consequence, the maximum capacity through the mill is about 7 or 8" less than the bar length. To get the most out of a 48" mill you need a 56" bar but the next available length is the 59". Alec

OK just checked and the video is actually of my 076. Although I've used the 051 in the past, and it works fine if you stick to a 30" bar, more recently omeone bought a 24" Alaskan mill through Rob D to fit to an 051 and wanted to try it out with someone experienced. I had some suitable sized elm to mill and he came along - we compared the two Alaskans, his 24" on an 051 with Oregon chain, my 36" on an 076 with Granberg chain. Both chains were correctly set - his was new, mine was freshly sharpened with the Granberg grinder. The Granberg chain left a notably better finish. The 051 was slower but not painfully so - it was working at full capacity and didn't bog down but it took its time. The 076 was much quicker; I didn't have means to time it but it was enough to really feel the difference. I would say the 051 is a good choice for a 24" mill for personal use. It's quick enough to not be painful at full capacity and at up to 18" is really good to use. You could go for a 36" bar and 30" mill but don't expect it to be quick and you would probably only do this if you were planning to upgrade asap. With the 24" mill on 18-20" timber you get enough done in a relaxed day to feel satisfaction with it and if you are using the timber it can produce far more than you can use. It isn't such a good choice if you are wanting high production rates or if you are needing to get things out of a site in a hurry. Alec

You can stick a picture of the 090 up if you like No offence taken over the arb comment. I do these things for my own interest and am quite happy with that. I agree that you learn a lot from working with other people, and it also works well when we work together - I do a lot of setting up and optimising the yield and quality - Martin then blasts through the boards. Re. the 051, funnily enough this is one saw I do have some video of. I will sort it out and write a review. Alec

I think this thread is a really good idea - the same questions go round it it should get them grouped together. I'm just no good at taking pictures (always seem to be too busy milling) but I recognised my saw - nobody else would be running a 1970s Oregon hard-nose bar:001_smile: You can pick out which one is my 076 for the same reason... I'd agree completely re. the 52" bar, a much better investment, but if you are only going to use it from time to time then sometimes the 47" Duromatics turn up cheap on ebay. I bought one for £100 in as-new condition and I've seen others. Alec

I would buy the 48" mill. I didn't, and wish I had. It gives you the capacity to get around the flare at the root end of the butt without so much edging up and fiddling about. You will only be able to use about 28" of your mill capacity with the 36" bar but you can shorten up the mill for now and when you need it you can get the longer bar and chain to suit. Alec

OK, I started with an 064, then moved to an 066 Magnum, more recently 076, 070 and 090. I mostly mill oak. I found the 064 and the 066 were too slow for my liking in 2ft oak. They get there, but trying to mill 20ft long butts into 2in thick planks was tedious, to the point where I gave up, collected up butts and hired in a bandmill. Having gained access to more timber that couldn't reasonably be extracted whole I started again and quickly remembered what the problem was. I bought an 076 and it made a massive difference. It was fast to the point of being a pleasure. This is also about the point where I realised that I needed a better way to keep the chain sharp and even. For several reasons I have ended up with 070/090s too. The 070 (it's mine in Burrell's picture) has been given some serious work to do and copes fine. It's a bit slower than the 076 but keeps going with wide cuts. The 090 doesn't add much if anything to milling speed on anything up to about 2ft6in, but above that it starts to help and really comes into its own above 3ft or so, as it just doesn't slow down. Bars make a big difference too. I've run hard nosed bars on the 076 and 070 and they are definitely slower. I think the effect is more noticeable the faster the revs, so with an 070 it has least effect but you would really feel it with an 066. Chain makes a difference - I get best results from Granberg chain, but I do also run standard Oregon chain and the difference is small. I also have skip-tooth ripping chain for some bars. I have tried it on shorter bars and it doesn't help but on a really wide cut it makes a big difference. I have run it on a 52" bar and an 88" bar and I would say it was essential for the latter. My favourite combination is probably milling 2-3ft width with an 076 on a 36" mill, with a 46" roller nose bar, running Granberg chain. Alec

I'm about to start breaking this lump down. There are several bits - the first one set up is 18-20" wide, 7' long, although there are some small cracks in the bottom 6" . There is some excellent figuring - boards will obviously get shorter as I go down it. The lump in the third picture is 7' long, 6' wide, but more rustic in character. I also have some smaller lumps which will yield 4' x 4' boards. If anyone is interested in some, let me know and I can send further pictures. For bits that will go in an estate car I can bring them up the A1 as far as Middlesbrough, or down to the Dartford area. It will be £20/cu.ft as it's green. Cheers Alec

I like that. Minimalist Alec

It breaks the UK into its separate countries - Scotland and Wales are both there. I reckon the collective power of Arbtalk could have an influence.... Alec

Hi Eddie, Thankyou for the explanation - apologies for the delayed reply, I had overlooked the updates to the thread. From my point of view, I don't think the changes are likely to have a negative impact and I would guess from the lack of responses that the same is true of most people (compare with the recent outcry over Stihl's change in policy), mainly because they buy in person and anyone who bought by post still can. The change is dependent on dealers being prepared to post (or to make the arrangements for you to post?) and I wouldn't count on all of them being prepared to do so. If this proves a problem it may become necessary to list on the website which dealers will ship. The one area I can see some potential for problems over is pricing. Aspen is currently in a slightly unusual position in that it is not sufficiently widely available to avoid geographic monopolies. The on-line sales may have had an effect of providing a pricing baseline. Aspen is sufficiently specialist that a reasonable proportion of users may be aware of the website, and if a dealer tries to exceed a certain price threshold it becomes cheaper to buy direct. If this is the case then the above factors may enable price hikes to a worrying level from the user's point of view. It may however go the other way. I'm thinking here of the internet pricing model, as used by FR Jones amongst others re. Stihl products. My understanding (drawn from the comments on here rather than any personal knowledge) is that the combination of reduced overheads and economy of scale allowed Stihl products to be sold online at a lower margin than local dealers could achieve. This was resented by local dealers, leading to Stihl's attempts to ban online sales. With chainsaws, the argument was made that these are complex products and a handover is needed - Aspen doesn't have the possibility of such an argument and Stihl's policy has been withdrawn now anyway. I can see the potential for a large supplier such as Jonesies to take up internet sales of Aspen at a discounted rate, making it harder to convince local dealers to stock it as they can't make it competitive (maybe this is Gardenkit's chance to become an oil baron ) All the above is pure speculation, but may be worth considering if you haven't already. Can I just add though how much I appreciate the fact that, with Aspen, I can ask a straightforward question directly to the right person and get a straightforward reply, in a public arena so that the information is available to all interested parties. I contrast this with the policies of other manufacturers. Alec