Beardie

I reckon it's Serissa foetida, or Tree of a Thousand Stars. It's one of the most popular species for indoor bonsai. Try bruising a leaf and sniffing it. If it smells fetid, that's what it is.

Try this: Fears as second tree crashes down in two weeks (From Swindon Advertiser)

Swindon seems to be a bit of a blackspot for this, or so the local media would have you believe. I fact, I had to report a fallen tree myself only a couple of weeks back. On my way to work. I saw that a tree by the cyclepath was leaning more than usual, then on my way home, it had blocked the path. Root rot was obvious, but what caused the root rot I cannot say.

I expect the local arboricultural officer would be able to give you a better idea of the likely cause of the failures.

I bought a Kodak V610 about 4 years ago, and I've never been anything other than happy with it. It has two lenses, giving it a 35-350mm focal range, but they are entirely contained within the body, so don't protrude as you would expect. It's dimensions are 11x5.5x2.5mm and takes standard SD cards. I don't know whether it is still in production, or if so what the price is; mine was £350.

It's the very rare cannonball tree, the fruit were highly prized during the Napoleonic Wars, to the extent that attempts were made to cultivate them on board ship.

Actually, if you want to see a really good bricked-up cavity, try Cambridge Botanic Garden.

Looks rather ominous, I must say. The second picture clearly shows splits in the wood under the bark. That first branch may just be the start of it.

I didn't know South Yorkshire had 'vast amounts' of walnut.

Last year back in Burnham Beeches, I thought these were a nice rack of Fomes fomentarius..............from a distance

 

 

 

 

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What's the matter? Everyone knows that some fungi glow in the dark.

I just loved the close-up of the chainsaw where it said "32cc". Not adequate capacity in the cranium, either.

Im interested to know at what point a saw is beyond repair.

You're going to find out pretty quickly at the rate you're going!:laugh1:

That was beautiful. I want a job building longships!

Very impressive, Baggy. What sort of oil do you use and how do you apply it? Someone of my acquaintance immersed his totally in molten beeswax and found he'd overdone it slightly.

The tyre is a great idea; wearing gloves whilst using a swung tool less so.

I reckon the first one is a holly cultivar that just happens to have smooth leaves. It I could see more of the twigs, I'd be sure. The second one could be black locust or tree of heaven.

Dump? There are boilers that run on woodchip. Or you could get it converted to biochar.

There are people making charcoal on a bigger scale using expensive retort kilns and mechanised bagging plant but you'll need to be selling a lot of charcoal to justify the cost.

It ain't necessarily so... the Centre for Alternative Technology does a one-day course using retorts made from welded-together oil drums resting on flat-bottomed rail in an old diesel tank. It would work out far cheaper than ring kilns, as oil drums and diesel tanks can be bought at scrapyards. The next course is in August.

www2.cat.org.uk/shortcourses/ then click on Woodlan Crafts tab.

a real horse would also be perfect but using one as and when i needed it would not be ideal ( for me and the horse).

Why not engage a professional horse logger as and when? A lot of them are set up for doing exactly the sort of work you describe.

Les, your avatar photo had me confused for a moment there. That would have been one hell of a tree, but those are strange uniforms for service station workers.

i'm worried i'll have a brain fart

Let me know where the assessment is being held; that's something I would love to see.

Seriously, I did mine recently, and though I passed, I nearly tripped up on checking the chain oil flow and got the angles mixed up when doing the split-level cut. When training, I was always forgetting to put the visor down. Mind you, don't worry about getting the six snedding cuts in precise order, as the assessor acknowledged that trees don't always grow that way.

these people Fuel - Woody Wood Products.

I just visited the website. Hardwood logs shrink-wrapped in plastic!! they certainly have the 'added value' thing sorted. The thing is, by making it seem as though wood fuel is this expensive, the strategy may ultimately be counter-productive.

By the way, a pallet of 'heatlogs' is £300, not £500, so if that's what pie-eater Pete's folks get, they may have cause to complain. I somehow don't think it's going to be '2 transit tippers level loaded'.

Really! I would have bet that was worth a small fortune!

The thing with having all those branches coming off the trunk is they mess up the grain and cause the timber to warp when it dries. That's why you don't get useable timber coming off trees felled in parks or other open spaces, no matter how big they are.

Having said that, I reckon there are some clear sections of trunk on that which could be split for roofing shingles.

I was outside a distribution depot in Swindon last week and saw some pallets of firewood outside. The addresses on them were in Teeside and southern Scotland, not places noted for being short of trees. Someone round here knows how to sell coals to Newcastle, so to speak.

Apparently, beech do collapse like that sometimes. Alan Mitchell (1996) says that they will go from apparently healthy to rotting heap over the course of a weekend. Beech only live about 250 years, so it looks as though yours had a good innings.

Won't they eventually develop radial splits, as the wood dries out?

I was interested by the first log. Wouldn't the large branch cause problems re. warping when it was seasoned?

I have a pair of those ratchet secateurs with the nylon handles. They will cut through anything you can get the jaws round. I have to keep my old ones going, though, as the version currently sold in discount stores isn't nearly as good.

If you want to make it look impressive, try makng the cuts with a billhook.