openspaceman

I would agree that extreme wealth is one of our societies problems but would love to see how it could be addressed. Governments have been slow to react to predatory american based companies like microsoft and amazon filching untaxable income because we have been sold the idea of free trade by America, the African countries are being devastated by the american controlled IMF forcing them to drop any protection of their nascent industries Yet all along US has discreetly managed to protect its own companies from foreign competition under the guise of national security. They even managed to foist their toxic debt onto our finance sector who were gagging for free trade to have access to their banking, at the expense of much of our wood industries as tariffs on imports were dropped. This has led to the US economy having a much higher differential between rich and poor than europe. And therein lies another topic, Average incomes in US...

About the same as a seat in the local Odeon. 6d got me a bag of chips on the way home. I didn't buy beer till 68. It does show that inflation really only hit after the 70s. It was also the period which saw the demise of the traditional industrial company that held stocks of raw materials for a rainy day, they all fell foul to asset strippers yet firms like that would have been a more robust means of seeing us through the current crisis.

I am sure your experience is better than my knowledge of the process but let me explain a bit about the theory: Wood starts off at ~40% moisture content, about half of the moisture is liquid and occupying spaces in the wood, this migrates to the surface fairly quickly where it can be carried away if the surrounding air is not saturated. The rest of the water is weakly bound to the wood structure and this doesn't start moving until the surrounding cell water has gone. It is the removal of this bound water that causes wood to shrink. Before kilns everything was air dried and milling was often done in the winter when the air relative humidity was high, i.e. it has a low capacity for evaporating water from a surface, and the ambient temperature is low, so there is little heat available to supply the energy required to turn the liquid water at the surface to a vapour in the air. Also as it is cold water takes a long time to migrate from the middle to the surface. So everything starts slowly and water migrates evenly from the interior. As summer progresses the temperature goes up, RH goes down and water moves more freely in the wood, so everything speeds up a bit. On large sections it becomes necessary to control how quickly the wood evaporates off the surface because if the outer bits of the wood dry down to their fibre saturation point (the point at which cell water is gone and only bonded water remains) and starts to shrink before the middle has lost its cell water then you start to develop surface cracks and other defects. This control can be done with stickers and shade and isn't largely a problem in our climate. We mostly all know that things happen faster as the temperature goes up so kilning gives us the ability to speed up the process but the increase in temperature is mostly speeding up the way moisture moves from the wood to the surface. The problem is this heat also decreases the RH of the air at the surface and thus increases the rate at which it removes water from the surface. Kilning schedules aim to ensure water removal from the surface never exceeds the rate of water moving out of the wood and this is done largely by increasing humidity in the kiln. From my experiments with drying logs in a greenhouse structure, where one is not concerned about defects in the wood from drying, I thought the solar kiln would get into the temperatures and low humidity which would cause problems unless coupled with some way of controlling humidity.

Were you 15 when you got your 11d pint? Actually I think working men's clubs sold a cheap pint but I don't remember beer being that cheap.

I would expect control to be more of an issue for sawn wood, the hotter the kiln gets the more important the control of humidity becomes.

What year was that? Inflation started ramping up around 1968 but my figure for a pint was in 1973 when we joined the common market, we subsequently had a referendum 2 years later and inexplicably stayed in. As you are a few years younger than I...

<pedant>All estimates are likely to be verbal, after all verbs will be used, if it is by word of mouth it's an oral agreement /<pedant> ?

One needs to be careful in whether it was a quote of an estimate. A quote is binding.

Primrose and coltsfoot from Friday, they are in my extraction rack so I toyed with potting them. The coltsfoot may well like the disturbed soil if it sets seed before being crushed.

I liked the shootist except the ending went a bit wrong. Ben Johnson and the last picture show, Clois Leachman an he made it for me

40 miles away so too far and I only have my Vitara , which is okay a couple of hundred kilo at a time but this would mean hiring a truck so uneconomic.

Yes that's them but they are 40 years old now , I've considered putting new axles on but not found a need so it's quietly rusting away at the moment.

Ah my mistake, it shows my prejudice though as I dislike towing. My bateson tipper would easily handle that and was quite low but you can't get tyres for it now.

You'll be lucky to get a 3.5 tonne tipper under 2 tonne unladen so that will only allow a freeboard of 200kg for driver, kit and consumables. Maybe better with just a dropside body, lower too.

That's most likely iron from the chain that's filed off and reacted with tannin in the oak.

I would have been happy to finish that off for firewood if it were a little closer and £250 would easily cover the cost of disposing the sawdust. That looks about 4m3 of solid wood and would sort all my logs for the coming winter.

Me too, I consider it foreign invasive. Not good for much other than if your paid and harvesting by the tonne

Pimp

Touche, yes My first pint was a Double Diamond and I was in school uniform, some years before.

1/11p

IIRC you don't bypass the microswitch on the engine cover as it is normally open and closes to earth when the lid is off. Pess the reset for 3 seconds and try again. @Jase hutch should be along to answer soon.

Gasoil (red) is more viscous than kerosene (yellow) and needs a pressure jet nozzle to atomise the liquid so it will burn. You tend to find it in older and larger installations. At my last work, before I installed gas, if the red diesel tank ran low I would transfer some 45 gallon barrels from the heating tank. As long as I ordered less than 2500litres I was only charged 5% Vat, which is a domestic heating rate. It didn't make any difference in the long run as we reclaimed VAT but it reduced cash flow for a while.

I agree ships and planes may be worse but certainly don't know the relative numbers, trains only use about 1% of our total energy consumption and a great deal of that is electricity, so presumably a small amount of particulate emissions. With fallout of PM2.5 from Planes and ships often being over oceans how much does that mitigate compared with little diesels used in an urban environment? Yes so am I but I have questioned the significance of PM2.5 exposure in the past. Although not a smoker I did have a lot of exposure to diesel exhaust in my working life and do experience breathlessness after mild exertions nowadays but I suspect there is more in it than that. Government takes a vast amount from the population to fund itself and public expenses, they are having to face a massive change in vehicle fuel duty with electric vehicles and loss of rates with online shopping going to foreign (non tax paying) entities. They will be looking at how to fund themselves in the future and this may be a small part of it. We thought we were a post industrialised society having found the holy grail of an exportable service (financial expertise) to cover our balance of payments deficit from importing goods, now that is severely compromised it's going to be interesting times.

Not for cleaning stove glass. probably better for dealing with stray virus at the moment Expense when water is good enough for fly ash and oven cleaner for tarry deposits, which of course don't happen with a good burn of dry wood.

Which is a logical development and why petrol engined chippers may become more viable, having a lower capital cost and the difference in fuel cost will be less. Longevity of engines may be an issue though. Also domestic heating will be excluded and therein lies the problem, whilst there are few domestic properties that use pressure jet burners anyone that does will be able to have red delivered. As I think we established horticulture includes work in domestic gardens (and I wonder if the current position statement on allowing that roadside hedges and trees can be worked with agricultural tractors using red diesel will stay) we will have the problem that if you take your diesel powered machine to work at a commercial premises then you may not use red.