openspaceman

To my mind softwood over 200mm was worth selling as bars and sawlog. Many years ago I saw the Bilke wood processor with a shear cutter and splitting action processing wood fast but rejected it for my commercial use because the logs weren't likely to please my customers on aesthetic grounds. In your case you just need too cut and split to suit your boiler and for seasoning. It will manage up to 250mm. A cone splitter could half the bigger ones as it will take 340mm slabs. I have no idea what they cost. When I saw this earlier version demonstrated it was running much slower than the modern videos I see, slow enough for the lengths being handled in to the cutter to be rotated 90 degrees between cuts which enabled the splitter to split the pieces twice as the split propagated up the log. The modern version is slightly different as the splitter no longer leads the cutter. You could quickly build a square store with your 4m lengths built into a box with alternate layers on each edge, fill that and cover it with a tarpaulin.

Yes but you would still need to be registered in HETAS's woodsure scheme to avoid a summary fine if caught. The only get out seems to be to supply 2M3 of 20%mc wood with the warning words that it might not be seasoned as that would be within the payload of a 3500kg MAM vehicle. The use of the word "supply" in the regulations is interesting because it might mean someone giving me wood for burning in a domestic fire may be in breach of them.

Strikes me it's remarkably similar apart from a safety aspect,

I'm surprised it's a bush and not a needle roller bearing. I cannot think of a two stroke I have taken apart with a bush. Anyway if you buy a bush and press it in you would normally need to ream it to fit the gudgeon pin.

I was trying to point out that if any meter gives a consistent result it is still usable even if the result is wrong because a correction can be applied, whereas if it gives results with a wide scatter even if they are centred on a single result it is worthless. Not having used one I am still in the dark. Take target shooting, if you strike the target in the same place and every time it hits the same spot within a couple of inches but several inches from the bull it is precise and you need to offset your point of aim from the bull to be able to consistently hit it. If the shots scatter randomly around the bull by a couple of feet then it is accurate but imprecise and not usable.

That's a posh meter then? I've been using my multimeter and it's giving readings in the 15-30 MOhm range with the pins about 10mm apart on dry wood and about 6MOhm on fresh. I dry smaller samples in the microwave but back in the day I would leave a whole log in the fan oven at 125C, I would log the electricity use and this gave a direct relationship of the constant heat loss from the oven plus a close match of 0.7kWh per kg of water lost

You need to define accuracy. If the log has been drying the reason you split it is so the meter measures the wettest (worst case). Not having a meter I cannot experiment but I imagine one could get a feel for the average moisture content by comparing an outside reading as well? If readings taken by the meter are consistent and the logs are then oven dried one could decide with what precision the meter measures. For most cases we are discussing here we just want to assure ourselves and customers that the product is less than 20% mc wwb so a reading of 25% mc dwb is good enough for that. Anyway if the reading is marginally close just keeping a sample log in a normal room will increase its chance of passing the grade for a few hours till a second test 😉 I've no way of telling but it's easy enough to check as @Woodworks did recently. It only takes minutes with a microwave but get it wrong and your readymeal has a wood-fired flavour till you buy a new cooker. This article implies that his meter also uses a generic chip that measures the resistance of the log and has a look up table that compares the resistance with known moisture contents and displays a dwb reading. There are other ways, like dielectric that can be used. These chips were developed by companies selling snake oil damp proofing products to otherwise intelligent but gullible home owners. They were so successful that home insurers fell for them hook line and sinker and old houses which had been inhabited for centuries became difficult to insure unless work was done The moisture in a log (sap) has various dissolved salts in it, pure water is a good electrical insulator but the salts plus water make an electrolyte, which conducts electricity. I don't know how the resistance of this electrolyte varies as the concentration changes as the water is lost but imagine it gets higher resistance as it dries. As the pins are a fixed distance apart this removes one variable. So with lots of measurements one can see a correlation with resistance and dryness. This can then build a table by comparing resistances of logs that are then dried in an oven and comparing this oven dry weight with its original weight, the difference being the water.

When we first imported pellet stoves from america 20 years ago we brought in space heaters which we thought ideal for village halls, scout huts etc. large rooms that only needed heating in the early evenings. My boss installed 4 into The Hub, the loft space of a converted warehouse which formed an arts project by Euston station and they worked well. They were nominally 3kW but flat out they moved a lot of hot air with the circulation fan, this fan made them a bit noisy for domestic use. At the time we got pellets for £70/tonne but then the price rose sharply, I kept one in my house for demonstrations but it sits doing nothing in my shed now.

Yes I was confusing reed warbler so not willow warbler and hence no likely link. Mind I'm sure I cannot discriminate any of the warblers though I can recognise meadow pipits and dunnocks

Aren't these two demises linked? I thought the willow warbler was the most frequently parasitised by cuckoo?

In England you should comply with building regulations, part J deals with stoves and flues: Approved Document J | Part J - Combustion appliances and fuel storage systems | Planning Portal WWW.PLANNINGPORTAL.CO.UK Details of Part J (Approved Document J) of the Building Regulations I doubt Scotland is much different. As for choice of burner I have experience of very few but the modern ones approved by defra and meeting the latest standard are the ones to go for, I'd avoid cheap steel or cast iron boxes. Prior to my current Morso 11 I had a Jotul 602 and the Morso is so much better, especially because of the radiant heat given off by the ceramic glass door. @Alycidon knows about what is on the market.

I've got the Gerbing ones for riding and plug them in to the bike, batteries are available but I think they only last 3 hours on low setting. The gloves alone are so expensive I wouldn't dream of using them for work.

The story was that each time a policeman took out his truncheon in anger he had to record the event in his notebook, far easier to carry a D celled maglight around.

A bit like the female cuckoo then

It does reduce the amount of heat lost from the flue gases to the room compared with an uninsulated flue pipe. Whether that is to your loss or not is debatable. Consider the same stove fitted in the recess of a normal fireplace and then into an insulated chimney, the same hot flue gases would be going up the chimney without getting into the room. Also consider if your flue were not insulated it would be too hot for safety without guards and you would need all combustible material to be kept suitably distant from it. Most stoves will have a design temperature at which the flue gas will be entering the chimney when the stove is emitting its maximum heat into the room. Mine is 400C according to Morso, in fact I never see this and aim for it to be around 120-180C to get the most heat out of my wood. Any higher and the heat is being wasted even if more heat is getting into the room from a hotter stove. The intent is that the flue gases leaving the top of your chimney to be above 100C to prevent condensation in the chimney, which is why chimneys are insulated, however mine isn't. I have about 400mm of exposed metal flue pipe between my stove and the register plate of the chimney and read my temperatures near there so my flue pipe is more exposed than yours and must put some heat into the room.

I think there were some Partner saws which diverted the exhaust through the handles but it's all electric now Well it never gets really cold in sunny Surrey but I do switch the heaters on when my gloves get wet from dragging brash, you can switch it off as soon as your fingers are warm again, it doesn't take long ringing a few chogs.

I have read that a bamboo variety grows for a number of years then flowers and dies, don't know about mistletoe but see Distribution maps – Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland BSBI.ORG Type in the name of a plant species to generate a BSBI map showing distribution in Britain & Ireland and changes over time. I read it was birds wiping it off beaks too.

Where are they then? We felled some alder which could be worth milling if anyone interested near Petersfield, the lads whose job it's on could mill it with their Lucas mill. A couple of bits of largish cherry, about 18", a bit bony though, it can be extracted when the land dries out around May.

Certainly isn't holly and as laurel is a prunus plus the end grain looks prunus @Stubby is on the right track but maybe portuguese laurel

I was thinking holly

The main benefit is if you have wet gloves. I never bothered with gloves or heated handles when I started ( never saw heated handles before the 262xpg) but I would advise wearing gloves when using a chainsaw all the time now.

I was just surprised at the amount of hydrocarbons emitted, mostly unburned lubricating oil then. I'll read the article when I get time.

I'm not sure they are not accurate they are certainly quick, I simply don't own one. No harm in occasionally checking it by drying a log now and again. The thing is to sink the probes into a freshly split piece of wood as the middle is likely wetter than the outside.

A more recent one https://arbtalk.co.uk/forums/topic/124043-how-does-one-keep-logs-at-20-at-this-time-of-year/?do=findComment&comment=1856466

THC is total hydrocarbons? and they are gaseous rather than particulates? It's a high figure but presumably includes oil flung off the bar?