openspaceman

The one Michael Fish said not to worry about in October 1987

The roadside work went on for about a week when my wife and I backed the County and grapple loader up the road to the highest point in SE Englad and down the other side to access the dozen or so houses.

I know the feeling and I still smile when I see the different coloured tiles on the roof of a hose which we lifted a sycamore off 34 years later.

Quite frequent on the chalk downs, a particularly good patch of them on the Sheepleas between shere and East Clandon

It show's the limitations, may have been ok for an ornamental cherry or sorbus but not enough for a gum tree

The bud at the front looks scots The paper curled scales on the back one corsican

They do, see the line "By clever design" the offgas is led back under the vessel into the fire, Beau's design does this as do the various models based on the south african two vessel retort (which was brought into the country by an estate in Kent) which itself was developed from the Lurgi coal gasifiers of the pre war years. Any excess offgas is carried over and flared in the stack. The thing is it means around 70% of the heat is wasted. If you want to make biochar from woodchip holistically then a biomass burner with a chip stoker (like and auger) can be configured to NOT burn out the char by cutting primary air once the fire chamber is up to temperature and speeding up the de ashing system to remove the hot char. This reduces the yield of char a bit but does mean you can continue to enjoy the benefit of wood heat, albeit the heat output is reduced because the char no longer contributes. The biggest retorts seem to be based on the Lambiotte retorts though they in fact are run as kilns as the fire is in direct contact with the logs. The biggest one I know of does 27,000 tonne a year and the char is used in an industrial process. This achieves 27% yield of the dry matter. I have had my own ideas for producing biochar from fresh arb waste and simultaneously heating a building and recently see that Pyreg , who make a carboniser for turning sewage sludge into fertiliser, have entered the market with a similar idea to mine but with some parts (including heat recovery) missing.

yes and a decent view of the buds. The one on the left has the blue tinge of a healthy scots pine

Kilns can be more efficient than retorts as they need no support fuel. The reason ring kilns are so bad is that until right at the end of the burn the offgas cannot be flared. Then it tends to be carbon monoxide burning but earlier in the cycle CO2, Hydrogen, methane and a lot of other organic vapours are driven off. These latter and methane are bad for the atmosphere.

I didn't have TCT blades on my log saw but the practise is probably the same; when the sawblade is made the saw doctor "tensions" the steel near the teeth by stretching the steel slightly. This has the effect of stopping the steel plate from wobbling. Over time and use the effect wears out and you get the wobble you see. I would hand sharpen mine a few times and then send it back to be gulleted, tensioned and sharpened

It would be interesting to see and I don't know what those heat storage bricks are made of but generally when you crush something it takes up more space. A bit like chopping a log, the resulting pieces can never be fitted back together in the same space. Think about how the ballast in concrete is stones of various sizes and then sand to fill the gaps, the cement then fills the remaining gaps and displaces any air. I'd use the biggest sizes and fit them as accurately as possible then sand to make the thermal connection, then the bricks can be removed in the future.

Dunno but it looks like it uses propane as a support fuel

And fill any gaps with vermiculite beads . Vermiculite is an insulator but you want heat to pass into the bricks when the range is fired and then pass out again as it cools. So I would think cutting the bricks to fit well and getting dry sand into the gaps would be best.

Yup that's the type I would want to use. nice and dense and heavy

That reply hung fire for a long time Paul, do you still have a camaro engine sitting in the back of a landrover?

Think of all those glamping tepees you could sell

I was never against hunting with hounds and would not participate but yes the mess was enough to never want them on land in my occupation. Similarly I would never go to a driven shoot but happy to accept the odd brace, it has to be very occasional because of the lead risk . Mind unless I can mount and fire off my left shoulder my shooting days are over.

I'll go back to cooking some when I know the shoot uses steel shot

I was wrong about the poles on the rotor, it is one field coil but the iron is shaped to give 6 poles so the W terminal will see 3 cycles per revolution, . My guess is 3 if it senses ac with possibly just one diode. none of my working alternators have a w terminal.

Yes me too, not having played with AT carbed saws I didn't realise the implication as it was opposite to which an old fashioned carb would be.

I think you should edit that reply @spudulike

Yes but I thought it was named after the twist in the needles[1]. It grows straight in its home country [1]Just checked and that's what Mitchell said in Trees of Great Britain and Northern Europe

Which is exactly as I found lodgepole pines down here too.

I found much the same with scots and corsican thinnings, if not crosscut and split they go pulpy inside the bark, sitka bark splits and the wood seem to dry hard. Bigger scots have a resinous heartwood, so more heat, but I have never felled a big lodgepole.

Vic and Chris used to tie with birch withes not plastic baler twine.