openspaceman

That's interesting. I have just started helping out our local environmental action volunteers on what was up till 1945 a working farm. The main parts became council housing in the early 50s but the riverside fields were left as open space and have developed into marsh and carr. Laurel and rhododendron have invaded from the posh victorian houses adjacent. They have been hand pulling and tree popping, What is left is stems of over 4" diameter and we are topping them at 4ft, piling the lop and top, then I am pulling the stumps out with the Eder winch. No herbicides considered. It will be interesting to see what groes. After 80 odd years the alder are beginning to wind throw. I have advocated coppicing but that has not been well received.

I would have done that but as you never get it back completely upright I would fell it sideways but then I was always wanting to preserve the maximum amount of saleable sawlog. Most times when we could get the tractor up close we would cut it off at the stump, winch it high up to the butt plate and drive away.

Story of my life, never did learn. Best of luck Tom, I hope you use some of those things you have learned to advantage.

Sounds very high, what is an 8 wheeler costing for a load over a 40 mile radius nowadays?

I couldn't by using HI. Nor could I judge the cone size but I did immediately think of pinaster as I planted the seed from one and we grew it on to be the tallest tree in Littleborough Cross.

takes the buscuit. It's over 50 years since I planted a hedge with that flowering redcurrant but the smell didn't leave me with a memory, hedge got ripped out within a few years too.

I thought that was box foliage 🙂

I feel the same but have not measured the difference on split pieces when I did tests. I am likely to run short of dry logs, so while I was restocking a bay in the log shed for next year I measured the moisture from a 10" ash cheese I cut in the autumn and it gave 36% moisture content. I was surprised so have weighed it and will dry it by the stove. The wood that is only a bit higher water content than ash is sycamore, it seems to dry fast, perhaps as it is diffuse porous??

I well remember my mate and I felling, skidding, crosscutting and hand stacking pine newsprint with our shirts off in 6" of snow at Hindhead when I was 28 but yesterday after extracting about 6 tonnes and repairing a hose burst I gave up at 14:30 and drove home with my jacket on (vitara heater is a bit lacking). Trouble is I can no longer keep up enough pace to warm myself up. I'll return next week when it is forecast to reach 8C.

Same with my morso

Nor me, I never have used a corded chainsaw and the lst battery one I used was the first Husky top handle. When a tried to cut myself out of a predicament and touched my trousers the 262 stopped pretty damn quick,

I read the corded electric was more difficult to stop as the spinning electric rotor was directly coupled to the chain and so had more inertia pulling the chain. The petrol saw clutch slipped and released faster. @adw may know more. Skin, pull and rice pudding come to mind when talking battery saws.

I wouldn't put up without a heated/cooled cab if I had 10 years working life in front of me. I never really enjoyed full time machine work, so mixed with a bit of cutting suited me. As to modern harvester or forwarder driving, I am not interested especially the 12 hours in the cab daily. As it was I gave up contracting 15 years ago but, mistakenly, hung on to the machines for pootling around with. The County with crane and winches is ideally suited for the current job, pulling ash off a hill which machines are not allowed on, converting then forwarding half a kilometer. It would be better with a 360 with a grab-shear and a modern tractor though.

Heating and aircon are very necessary to maintain productivity nowadays. I shall be dreaming of such things as I sit twiddling levers in an open cabbed tractor today, assuming I can get it to start after a month's lay up.

Essentially yes, the saying is that you need the 3 Ts for good combustion: Temperature Turbulence Time Just thinking about temperature and wood burning the consensus is that one needs the firebox to reach 800C to completely burn wood. Hence the firebox in modern stoves are lined with insulating bricks. This is easy to attain with wood at sub 20% mc but when you have more moisture the heat required to vaporise it means the fire can struggle to get hot enough. The turbulence thing is so the air and combustible gases mix well enough and the time is the 1.5 seconds that the combining gases dwell in that 800C temperature to burn completely.

I think the wording used is "supply" but the notice that has to accompany a non registered, none woodsure supply says ambiguously: If you sell wood in volumes of 2 cubic metres or more in England you must provide customers with this notice: “This wood is not suitable for burning until it has been dried. You should not burn wood until it has a moisture content of 20% or less. “Wet wood contains moisture which creates smoke and harmful particulates when burnt. As well as being harmful to your health and the environment, this can damage your stove and chimney and is an inefficient way to heat your home. Dry it in a sunny, well-aired space for at least two years, keeping rain off in the winter. “Radial cracks and bark that comes off easily suggests wood that is ready for burning. Test the wood when you think it is ready for burning, ideally with a moisture meter. First calibrate the meter and then measure a freshly split surface to get the best reading.” To my mind this means if you stack roundwood in a container(s) of 2m3 and display this notice you could sell it to a customer for domestic burning. They could take it by the boot load until gone. The question arises of how much work is economic to process it a bit smaller to make it attractive to the ordinary punter and how much extra you would have to charge. I would say not worth it as the labour cost would probably be greater than half the sale price. If you were near my home I would do some voluntary labour for a couple of hours for a boot load but wouldn't part with any of my pension for it. I would not put willow or poplar in a load as this will devalue it.

Whitebeam is a good shout. I would be more concerned about the shade on the house in the afternoon. You could just cut it back to the previous cut points.

add 10% petrol when you fill in cold

That's to control reverberation (an-echoic) rather than reduce transmission to the outside.

sand might be better

The wooden "rounder" in the video I know as a "stail engine"

Too posh for me so I use https://www.robertdyas.co.uk/kitchencraft-stainless-steel-steaming-basket-23cm and cook all the veg in it. It is flimsy .

I've knocked more than one fingernail off from circular saw kicking back but the cone splitter tried to rip my arm off.

I wasn't asking, just observing ;-). Mine was an imperial thread but I fitted the hycrack replacement by tapping out the hole as the thread pitch was very similar.

Do you mean this pin marked red? My cone splitter has a threaded cone tip at the bit marked in light blue