openspaceman

Not really, it's pyrolysis that produces gases, liquids and solids, in proportions that are highly dependant on conditions in the pyrolyser. A gasifier aims to produce just true gases and they get quite close but... The simple fact is that pumping oil out of the ground and refining it is cheaper and as it is capital intensive it is attractive to big investors and that drives capitalist[1] economies. Of course I'm with @Bolt in believing, in the absence of economic markets, that biochar is a reasonable product from arb arisings and well suited to distributed production. My gripe is the soil benefit hype, lack of markets and non holistic production. [1] not a pejorative term but a description

Nah it's a loggia ?

As I said I don't know what happened to it but IME mice tend to dessicate rather than rot, a rat is big enough to rot and stink.

How drastic? DIY fumigation, which worked but whether it died or left I don't know.

I kept seeing a movement in the footwell of the van, I had a bad habit of eating 2 bags of crisps on my way home so there was a build up of food. Finally I saw a woodmouse one morning, so chucked all my tools out and hoovered out the van, but I still kept seeing it. I had to take drastic action to get rid.

Yes and I don't think cavitation would end up with air in the oil, it's when a vacuum bubble is pulled and then collapses. I've seen this where the tank is shallow and oil is sucked in in the same way air gets pulled through the bath plug, and that was several inches of vortex. Also does the oil return above or below the level in the tank?

Yes I'm not knocking "selling the defect" just saying it isn't the sort of thing I managed to sell.

It may be good to mill but it's not much good for joinery or outdoor uses. Your photos show it has a wide sapwood band and when we talk about oak for structural or joinery wood we are talking about heartwood. Also you are selling stuff with "character" which we would only have used for mining timber. I would never have considered putting low grade wood like this on a mill. It's heavy like holm oak with a high moisture content and splits during seasoning but I grant this might be mitigated with a good kilning regime.

Me too However I wouldn't risk doing anything in the back of a container of chipped laurel leaves, if it could reach lethal doses the symptoms would be too late to do anything in the absence of amyl nitrite (freely available at rainbow shops) to use as an antidote. As to headaches; back in the day when we would dust rabbit warrens with cymag the other fellows said they could smell burnt almonds, I couldn't. Thus I was especially cautious and permanently worried, this is what probably gave me a headache rather than an accidental whiff.

It is everywhere near me but that means many woodland trees are receiving large doses of spores which are infecting multiple sites on the trees. I'm not up with the science of how a plant reacts to infection but imagine that it stands less chance under an overwhelming infection, whereas it may overcome a single point of infection and be able to compartmentalise it if it has a degree of immunity. If so then as the bulk of the ash population is removed then there is less leaf litter and thence less spores produced so a stock of trees still alive with some immunity may survive to have progeny. I think I am seeing possible signs of this in local woodlands where nearly every tree is affected whereas there are apparently unaffected trees in gardens only a few miles away.

A long time ago, before smart phones, I felled a large oak in front of what looked like a massive brick built council house, it was the 60s replacement for a local manor house that had become derelict and uneconomic to run or repair on the site. The owner had retained a large ornate vase shaped concrete planter and wished me to flatten the stump on which it would stand. Imagine my consternation when, as I finished off, he brought out a spirit level to check my work. Luckily is was dead flat and level.

There's posh

and if you don't carry a spirit level nixgame bubble level on android seems to work well

...as long as you use genuine parts methinks

A firm in Petworth were still selling explosive wedges in the late 70s, they were charged with black powder. I last hired a chap to blast stumps in about 1988 but there were too many complaints to the police to want to try it again, the reason then was to lift the stumps whole, and cart them to a burn site, so as not to spread honey fungus. Blaster Bates and his pink tinted tissue toilet paper raining down is up with salt caked smoke stacks for alliteration.

Yes the benefits don't live up to the hype in good soils, there is the recycling of minerals though which is making use of the trees mycorrhizal associations to tap deeper strata. It does lock up carbon though for thousands of years and there is no disbenefit. As I recall you have a relatively small carbon footprint. Yes probably better than burning but a relatively short term carbon store. A chap I work for runs an arb business from his farm and has tipped the arisings in a field for the last 25 years, chip, logs and hedge cuttings, if you dig at the original end of the pile it is lovely looking compost but of course has been steadily emitting carbon dioxide and methane. I certainly wouldn't advocate making biochar from everything as returning humus to the soil is important but I do believe it is a more useful route for a lot of the green waste that is currently open composted and then used for landscaping.

There are plenty of pictures from shows of cabless Counties. Also Mark Osborn bought the designs and rights for Counties and presumably can make them, if you can afford it.

Nice looking stick, how much of the other end had the decay consumed?

I doubt it but it would have been fitted with a roll bar as standard for the UK market from about 67, so to be in keeping it would need one. It's a long time since I was an assessor but I would not allow the assessment to go forward if the operator was anywhere in the operating envelope unless he was protected by FOPS and POPS. Also the exemption under LOLER for loaders not to need a full independent inspection is that the operator is protected.

Yes my bet is it will fetch more done up in agricultural spec. Finding a roll bar to replace the loader frame may be a problem. With the loader on the trailer you have the choice of tugs.

I did sink the spades round some bigger trees but as I said my involvement became less as I went into harvesting so never got to see the results. I was totally out on the dates as this picture is of us moving poplars on a golf course development in 1980. I knew Deafhead before I had even picked up a chainsaw and he will remember the next picture: Which shows me planting oak trees on the farm before it became a golf course. I shall try and remember to see if the trees are still there, though I doubt it. The area is tree less because the farm had just been acquired and all the hedgrows were dead elms, which I and others felled and burned. The four biggest butts were felled and milled for farm use. We used to get the GMC stuck so frequently that I ended up permanently attaching an A frame to it and Deafhead reminds me I once pinched his MF300 traxcavator, without his permission, to debog it. It was a bit different to drive as when you started it the throttle opened fully and you had to press on a pedal to cut the revs, I suppose the idea was that it would be working flat out when loading.

Well as AFAIC the tap root only exists for a short while from the acorn and the sharp taper of the TS4a would contain it. In leaf we would spray with a PVA sealant to reduce desiccation, in dormant season 4" and 25' tall wasn't a problem. It got very little use by me as after the storm hit I was mostly dealing with windblow. It was used to transplant trees from a stock ground around the farm but when that got sold for development most of the trees were taken out. One thing that struck me was the trees never grew as well after transplanting as whips would do but then we didn't have time to get really expert at it.

Sounds like me, spade was owned by my late father in law and AFAIK only his son and I operated it. Is there a clue in your username? Take it to PM

The late Judith Rowe at the FC said it was displaced males and they targeted trees with a wide phloem, which tends to happen after thinning as the trees put on a growth spurt as the canopy reacts to more sunlight. The attacks happen in late spring but it's when the branches die that the dead bits in the crown become more noticeable. This is why warfarin should have been a good control method before it was banned but it was largely poorly deployed which meant it became useless over time. Nearly always the stripping seems to start from the ground or a branch union, which is why I advocated early pruning of selected trees

We had one of those tree spades on a 5 litre GMC truck in 86, boy did it use some petrol.