openspaceman

I was brushcutting some brambly verges today and came across this old beast, A Dominion BM I think. It needs a new home but will it fetch more as scrap? It will need a bit of fettling. If there's some interest over £100 I'll put it in the classified ads

I've reverted to this as my local Stihl dealer (a hire shop) no longer stocks the ultra, mind I only get through about a litre a year (and 10 litres of Aspen 2t in the hedgecutters).

I once ran some numbers on this using the necessary air changes over a summer for a cubic metre of stacked wood. It turned out that a PC power supply fan would pass enough air, not that that implies the air circulation inside the wood stack would be distributed well enough.

It wasn't quite as straightforward as I said, I found a squash bottle was too big and a bath foam one too small, so I made a slitting jig I saw on the internet and started to unwind the PET into a tape, I had problems and could only maintain the cut a few feet instead of unravelling the whole bottle. I think a Coke bottle would be easier as it is totally smooth. Then I wrapped the tape into a whipping and heat shrunk that at 250C. I have yet to see how it will fare.

Did you fell for Alphonse too? Mind he never asked for permission and I was appalled.

That was the long reach 360 the rivers authority used. My dad drove a Priestman cub doing the same job a few decades before, I still have the manual.

They don't need to in the case of an older piece of plant, they can check the engine is in Euro 5 and below and just ban it if below. If you mean how would they check a compliant engine that is then de restricted I don't know but most ISO 9000 and 14000 companies tendering for such works would probably not allow their machines to be modified. Anyway as someone has said if you restrict the engine by moving the output to a lower rev range you will need to change the gearing to get the flywheel back up to speed.

I've both whipping and an inner tube but I have used a section of tractor inner tube wrapped round and whipped over with fishing net string, which seems to be about the cheapest and most durable. I have recently heat shrunk a PET bottle on to hold it all together and will be seeing how that lasts, mind I don't see the damage now the volunteers don't get to use them.

We had a briquette machine on the firm but I never saw it working, the briquettes were fine to burn. When the pellet mill was being installed it needed wood at about 10% mc but part of the process involved adding steam to the sawdust to aid the process, it coated each particle rather than being absorbed into the particle and the friction in the dies flashed off a couple of % moisture off as the pellet went through the die. Each machine needed a colossal horsepower to run, probably over 500kW per 5 tonne/hour machine. I never had the opportunity to get hands on with this either. The sheer parasitic electrical load of the plant quite put me off pellets but they made a lot of sense in increasing the bulk density to maximise the tonnage for shipping long distances.

We could talk for ages about how cheaply manufactured items are difficult to repair, anyone who has taked a cheap chinese chainsaw to bits will vouch for that. I actually was not considering a modified or tweaked machine, just a standard machine from a few years back simply refurbished to an as new state. As it wouldn't meet modern emissions or noise standards it would not be allowed on site, and yes there are people employed to vet machines on big civils jobs in just the same way they check lifting equipment.

You two nippers can stand in line and await your turn.

I agree and would do any fettling myself as I enjoy resurrecting broken things. This is why I support the right to repair agenda. Interestingly there was an article about how repairing things has become more difficult as manufacturers strive to compete and use cheaper parts and methods of construction. How can we make washing machines last? WWW.BBC.CO.UK Sweden is trying to encourage consumers to repair household items like washing machines. One would have to be aware that on a lot of civils jobs the contracts will exclude use of older machines as part of their ISO 14000 requirements.

Or the bud, cerris will have a hairy bud. Bark looked english to me

Just in conversation with someone at the agency and mentioned this tragedy, she is devastated and asked if i knew him, I didn't, he had been with them and presumably their predecessor river authority for 30 years.

I haven't knowingly seen one since the 60s when one flew into our French window and broke its neck.

I thought pear too

Granted as long as frequent viewpoints are maintained.

Yes but they also radically redesigned the dimensions and accuracy to make it much easier to assemble without skilled fitting, this upped the ability to produce them quickly and cheaply, they also fitted the pressurised carburettor to prevent problems transitioning to a dive. The original mustang engine had poor altitude performance so the two stage blower of the merlin enabled it to stuff more air in at height. Apart from its flying characteristics it benefited from range due to carrying brtish designed disposable paper mache drop tanks. The spitfire being a pure short range interceptor early in the war and developed worse characteristics as it was upgraded into a much bigger aircraft in later versions. In the meanwhile the americans were developing the ultimate piston engined fighters with range, clout high hp radial engines and robust armour like the Vaught Corsair and older P47 that may not have been quite as agile but could pounce on any opposition in numbers with only a few hits from the lager calibre ensuring success.

Ethanol has a higher octane than pump petrol so I wouldn't expect it to change that, in fact I always thought it was the component with the lowest ocane rating that dictated the octane rating of the mixture. It has quite a few less calories per kg than petrol and I would expect less per litre too.

Hell, yes please

Thanks all. My saws are all left overs from contracting so over 30 years old so I don't get much experience of new stuff. What prompted the question was I was working with a newcomer with a new Husky 550, a saw which I have used and like, it's as fast as or faster than my comparatively heavy old 262, and she set the choke from cold, fired it and choke off then started it and it ran on tickover with no strain against the set chain brake. Thereafter it always started on tickover. I guess she didn't pull the choke knob up hard enough to set the fast idle.

That's not how I understood the judgement. AIUI she cannot return to UK to proceed with her appeal on being deprived of UK citizenship, she can attend a hearing outside UK and away from the camp where she is being held. The crux will be with the other country (bangladesh?) denying her citizenship, in which case the UK will be making her stateless and that is against international law. A get out for UK may be yet another country offering her citizenship.

Yes but not kg rather km

The relative humidity of the air is related to the equilibrium moisture content of the log but there is a time period over which this equilibrium is established, it would take an experiment to see how this affects a log as we in the SE England are in a bit of a rain shadow so the humidity is often below 90% RH , which is a drying condition, albeit very slight in the winter. Also re hydrating slightly lags drying at the same RH. Also consider what we have been discussing about moisture meters, I suspect the tables one sees about RH, temperature and moisture content are based on moisture content on a dry weight basis and even in a wet place, like Dartmoor a 90% RH gives an equilibrium moisture content of <20% dwb which is between 16&17% on a wet basis. Of course you are nearer the sea than I so probably a bit more humid.

Do all the newer models start from cold on tick-over, i.e. there is no fast idle position when the choke is pushed in thus the chain does not spin?