openspaceman

I'll put that to him. TDUB?

Actually I think we agree on all points

If it's three my first stop would be monterey (P radiata)

I'm having difficulty in counting the needles per spray.

Okay but the point I am trying to make is that after allowing 30mm to clear the gear head with a 200mm blade you have at best a depth of cut of 70mm so you can sing through 70mm stems, have to have a couple of cuts (once with a pushing blade which is a bit more awkward) above 70mm and a 150mm cut is a bit much. When respacing ( thinning to waste) I would use the brush cutter but would walk back through with a chainsaw for the large stems and spear cut them at 4ft just to drop them below the canopy and leave them hung up if necessary.

I'd still say clearing saw, though when I chiefly used them I think we were allowed 9" or bigger blades, so a depth of cut of 3.5" was possible. I have a feeling you are limited to 8" blade now, or can you get bigger on the 50cc brush cutters?

Much more fiddly to get out but you're probably right.

There seems to be some disagreement about that as @cessna has it from the horses mouth.

Define decent. The chap I pulled 50m3 of alder out for in mid Hants doesn’t appear to be getting much interest.

I'm sorry to hear that Al, I had been hoping to meet up to discuss logging.

Where's the fun in that? 🙂

I won't rush in on the basis of a couple of measurements, that robinia was either an anomaly or I didn't push the pins in far enough, it has oven dried to give an initial 31% wet basis. The other piece of beech, also from this year's felling and reading 24% on the fresh face, I microwave oven dried and it was 19.83% wwb. So I am still a bit undecided on what basis the valiant indicates moisture content.

Well it all looks good and I did use this particular saw from new, it is proper old school with a normal carburettor so I'm keen to see how it compares with the 550mk2. The newer saw has an advanced engine which should be both more economical and less polluting, as less unburnt fuel should carry over into the exhaust but I suspect this is at some cost to grunt. Trouble is L&S whilst being amazingly quick at delivering the missing nuts and screws have sent plain M5 25mm Allen screws 725 53 33 55 for the cylinder but the motor uses the coarse 5mm allen screws with the strange open thread form which a bit of research shows are 503 21 55-25 and these are not available. I ordered two but only need one. As a result I haven't tried the saw yet. Not the dispatch department's fault as on their exploded parts diagram only the standard M5 screw is shown.

Why dream? According to my valiant moisture meter the robinia I cut and split last month is 13% on the faces and 24% in the middle when split.

Yeah I thought lawsons, crushing a frond is the clincher.

Removing or respacing?

7.5+0.75=8.25 with the 107 note

I have reassembled the 346 but won't attempt to start it until the 4th cylinder bolt with the various handle bolts and bar nuts arrive from L&S. I had an old chain but as there were no markings on the bar I wonder if the bar is .058 or.050 as it is quite worn. I'll run it for a while then decide what to do with it.

Lesser celandine is out about the same time as coltsfoot here, early April. We call your cuckoo plant milkmaid, I hadn't heard of most of the other names

Thanks @Conner that's it

Thanks for that again but as long as the shed is rain tight and moisture cannot get into the logs form underneath I d I think the equilibrium moisture content in the UK means it will not uptake water to above 20% wwb. I think the reasoning behind the regulations are that sellers will leave the market and generally less solid fuel will be burned in smaller stoves.

Good to hear your experience, Do you mean you never used heat when drying grain, just blew when the ambient RH was low? This wet layer migration upward is what I meant when I said as the moist saturated air from drying the lower layers rose and cooled moisture condensed, as I said with wood chip this layer was visible.

I wasn't feeling too lively after my second jab, maybe coincidence as no trouble with first, so I got stuck in to some saws rather than completing the little alder bog timber extraction. First was a Jonsered 920 from 1984, fair condition but lightly nipped up, plug was showing a bit lean. As I was ordering other stuff I just decided to buy 2 rings as the saw is a big heavy old thing and probably not the sort of thing for everyday use and I wasn't sure what caused the problem so didn't want to do a full on repair. You can see how worn the ring was from the large ring gap compared with one of the new ones further down after I cleaned up the bore and piston lands. I snapped the fuel pipe getting it off the carburettor so had to replace that. Hard work to pull over and the only way it would fire, just once, was with petroil sprayed in the intake. I will have to have the carburettor apart. I found it very hard to pull it over with the new compression and that plug does seem to protrude a bit far into the combustion chamber but is spins freely enough with no plug. Next was one of my 262s which was cutting out randomly: Easily solved and I have had this happen before, long ago, but can't understand why the piece stayed on the plug to cause the erratic behaviour unless it was magnetised in some way. I noticed a slight weep of fuel from the joint under the fuel tank, a job for the epoxy I suppose, unless I have a spare 262 or 254 tank somwhere, Next was a box of bits from a damaged Husky 346xp, this is an early one with the 42mm piston and no decompression button. It had a badly melted piston but the bore felt okay so I ordered a new Meteor piston from Greece, it arrived 10 days later along with the rings for the Jonsered, no import duty but a few quid more than I expected £38 all in. This saw had been thoroughly disassembled, the sort of thing a local dealer may do to put you off the repair but this was done by the owner's son. So far I have found a missing cylinder bolt, 725 53 33 55 Screw Ihscm, this is a coarse thread allen screw but is it available other than the Husqvarna part at £1.40 and a few quid carriage? I cannot see how the ignition cut out works as it looks like a metal contact plate for the spade terminal, shown loose blue wire, is missing from the red plastic ignition switch, anyone know? It's unclear from the parts diagram. More fun and games figuring how the chain brake handle goes back on.

Back in the day of british railways the coaches were all panelled with sycamore. no one would believe it because they went mahogany brown with tobacco smoke. Back in 1972 or 3 I went to fetch the cows in by the bluebell railway, the cutting was being filled in with municipal refuse then, since re excavated and sent to Bedford. A large sycamore had fallen across the farm track so I got Tom, the boss out of bed and he cut a way through. As I was not allowed to use a motor saw (despite being amazingly proficient with a DDA110 😉 ) after milking I selected a bit out. I really didn't understand the significance of knots or I might have chosen a cleaner bit. Anyway there was a blunt handsaw there which I ripped this 12" ring of pure white wood into a few bread boards which I planed and sanded and gave to family members and the mother of a friend. I know that survived with her as she moved back to Dodsworth as I saw it there 40 years later. Any way the end piece had this defect but 50 years later you can see how it has mellowed and the sheen from the grain as it curls around the branch union. The other side reminded me of a bird so I made a gouge out of an old half round file and roughed it out, it has stayed that way on various walls here since. After that I didn't attempt to mill sycamore again, preferring to sell it in the round but I still think it has become underrated.

I really don't have much space along with my other junk, this is a small suburban garden. I think I can squeeze a few m3 of short billets alongside the garage under some roofing felt. This is why I have a hectic period at the end of the heating season and the time it takes to refill the store and why I only have the summer months for drying.