openspaceman

I've been doing small experiments with air drying, where essentially the sun is heating air and increasing its capacity to absorb moisture, and in free air (i.e. log standing by itself) and seeing oak dry from green to 20% mc wwb in 44 days.

So as heat speeds drying up and solar heat has no fuel cost I started looking at small scale solar drying. I found just using cheap corrugated acrylic sheeting I could make a simple greenhouse where in the last 2 days the temperature has stayed above 40C for much of the day in sunshine with relative humidity falling to 24%. This is consistently more than 10C hotter than outside in the sun. RH is about the same because there is free air flowing and out.

Last week I was employed dragging tops and stuffing an ancient chipper on a commercial refurbishment where the previous tenants had allowed the Leylandii and mixed broadleaved hedges run away. I noticed a pair of old cycle racks had been removed and set aside.

I mentioned the possibilities of these being the beginnings of a solar log drying kiln for the boss's son, who runs a log round with about 40 customers in his college holiday.  Boss being a petrolhead was not at all interested. I made an enquiry and they were available for sale (these things new cost about £5k erected) I sent a photo to the son and explained my thinking and he was interested. At this point father and son took over and bought the shelters. Now I'm not sure if they are going to implement the idea but I estimate placed side by side and south facing they will intercept 18kW(t) in sunshine. This is enough theoretically to evaporate nearly 30kg of water an hour if the air circulation is good enough.

With the shelters side by side and south facing and a roofed area behind and the back being a curtain side from a lorry he should be able to stock about 20m^3 of split logs in stillages.

I think wit a few low powered circulation fans and  a differential thermostatic switch only running them when  inside temperature is 10C above outside and a humidistat controlling a vent fan he should get good drying. If I am kept in the loop I will update progress.

On 4/12/2018 at 06:21, Billhook said:

The Stihl had been used a bit but the "Florabest" Lidl was straight out of the sealed packet!

Then it's not surprising the Stihl did better, the blade was hollow ground with a finer finish and the points on the teeth were well formed, the florabest one was coarser finish and you can see burrs on the points. Now if the steel is as good as the Stihl's you may be able to bring the Lidl saw back into shape with the judicious use of a diamond feather edge file.

9 hours ago, Baldbloke said:

As a near sixty year old who doesn’t have to work by the ton nowadays I don’t need something that has the highest spec. However, I can certainly understand the preference for the newer saws but personally prefer the simplicity and reliability over years of use of the marginally lower performing older professional saws. A damn sight easier to rebuild too.

When I was asked to help out on the railway I took my old Husky 262 but soon accepted a MS261 for its better power to weight when trudging in hundreds of yards. Now helping out on domestic arb jobs I far prefer to  pick up the Husky 245, I have lost quite a lot of muscle mass in the last 2 years so weight has become important.

For logging I'll stick with the old Husky and the little einhell I was given (for its lightness).

47 minutes ago, Jonny Burch said:

 

Evening all.

 

I’ve got a job coming up taking down two big Oaks. It’s all got to be rung up as access is not big enough for all the toys we have!

 

I’m guesstimating at two big Botex chip bins full.

 

Is that about 5 transit loads?

I'm up for a couple if I can borrow or hire a truck.and can help ringing up, give me a bell if it's not all promised.

Just now, Stubby said:

Was the flip side " That Fat Old Son " ?  I had the single

Pass I didn't buy the record it would have been a friend's. Emily is an acclaimed artist now

29 minutes ago, Stubby said:

Interstellar  overdrive 

I can believe you could see Emily play but Timon? Was he born then? I was 16 and humming it on my RE 250. I lost interest when Gilmore joined.

10 minutes ago, jjll said:

Sorry forgot to mention - yes it’s petrol

I think the gasket idea is likely to be best but I find UHU from the pound shop is petrol resistant.

13 hours ago, Shane said:

It really pees me off that Insurance is supposed to be a service where we all pay a premium into a pool then those who need to claim are paid out of that pool.

That was the original ethos for the welfare state and has nothing to do with insurance, insurance is a bet just like the lottery or a betting shop. Just look on insurers as being posh bookies, they quote the odds so they will always win.

1 hour ago, Mark J said:

I love a 335. I have Ephie (Epiphone 335).  My mate's recently bought a Heritage 335 though.  It's delicious.  Heritage are the orginal gibson builders with a new brand.

 

https://heritageguitars.com/

 

The mid range grunt is unsurpassed.

 

 

I know nothing about guitars but I was at the concert with a Dylan fan, she was most disappointed with his hoarse whisper, Alanis was great though.

3 hours ago, Alycidon said:

Companies Phoenix all the time,  gone one day and back a few days later under a similar name doing the same thing. 

The ones in the know with a tame liquidator keep the same name: owner changes name of company and goes into voluntary liquidation, gets 3rd party to buy back assets from administrator and buys a new company off the shelf, changes name of new company to the old company name which is now available.

2 hours ago, Woodworks said:

Once the wood has fully dried throughout, the whole piece will have shrunk by the same amount. With the center of the wood as shrunken as the wood near the ends, the cracks will mostly close up again. 

This is the salient point and where the art/science of kiln drying for lumber comes in.

Most of the problems of cracking occur because one part of the wood dries before the rest. Shrinkage occurs once the water in the cells is gone and the water associated with the cell walls starts leaving. So if one part is still full of water and the other  dries below its fibre saturation point then the wood is strained and pulls apart.

What kiln drying or air seasoning does is to only allow water to leave the cut surface at the same rate  that water is able to migrate through the wood.

Thus a ring dried homogeneously  can stay as a ring without splitting as Silkyfox says.

It will be species dependent though as every species has a different ratio of tangential to radial shrinkage, when this is high the tendency to pull apart down the radius will be higher and it will also be influence by weaknesses, like those associated with parenchymous tissue (rays and figure).

Impressive and says something about the construction method with such a perishable timber

18 minutes ago, Mark Bolam said:

You did the right thing.

I’m going with fire service or police.

My thoughts too

1 minute ago, dent said:

 

I dit think you would need the spring pieces or  anything  just a c shape of the thick metal welded to a headstock mount with the inner c  slightly bigger than the posts 

Drive up to post so the c shape is nextto post turn wheel so post enters the c crowd back and the post be gripped lift post out ground uncrowd and post will become loose 

Simpler is better to my mind

4 minutes ago, Daniël Bos said:

Sure, the cut needs to be deep enough. A gentle scratching won't do much!

I've done this quite succesfully before though.

I've done it on pines in heathland restitution but  whilst the tree dies it takes longer than expected. I have also posted a picture of one where the tree carried on living because of root grafts with neighbours.

Sour felling works though and now the trees will be actively transpiring.

58 minutes ago, Gary Prentice said:

What about applying ecoplugs to standing trees, instead of ring barking?

Gary has anyone ever suggested you might be a trouble maker?

1 hour ago, Daniël Bos said:

It's perhaps worth noting that in the eyes of the law, intentionally killing a tree also counts as felling, whether you cut it down or not...

This means you could nip in, ringbark 5CuM worth of tree each quarter -without needing a felling licence- going in in the fourth quarter to fell and process the lot.

This also has the advantage of drying the timber whilst standing (it dries very quickly this way, as the leaves suck out any moisture they can) but perhaps in this situation it's a moot point

Not in my experience as you would need to sever the sapwood, just cutting the bark and cambium stops the roots being fed but not the sap flow for quite a while.

2 hours ago, benedmonds said:

How much do can folk get for biomas? We sell all ours for £10 a ton. 

When I retired 18 months ago it was £5/tonne but I think it's shot up since, a big chip drying and reselling plant at a power station on the coast takes it for RHI boilers. It dries from green to below W30 in 16 minutes.

Anyway with the chip maybe worth 400 but probably much less mass than that in the stand because of open spaces do the costs of moving machines and operating them for a day work out?

How about 3 days over 3 quarters one man and a mini digger plus bonfire

Or manually fell over same 3 quarters, leave trees whole and then take chipper in but accept the wood for free

2 hours ago, benedmonds said:

Thanks for the info.. Is a felling licence likely to be approved do you think? 

Yes but with a replant condition for on the crop for the next 10 yars.

2 hours ago, benedmonds said:

The trouble is if you do it in bits the the economies of scale don't work.. 3 or 4 days with a big chipper and a digger job done.. 

I know but needs must...

Anyway it's 2 hours with the Plaisance tops and what's 40tonne of chip worth standing?

17 minutes ago, daltontrees said:

You mean any trees at 8cm or less DBH don't count? Branches less than 8cm coming off trees that are greater than 8cm DBH surely count? It's "aggregate cubic content", ingoring exemptions.

Yes as I said, and from experience, FC measure any bits of the tree over 8cms including branchwood.

1 hour ago, benedmonds said:

I have a client with a large plot.. The previous owner planted 1,500m2 of conifers approx 100 trees, 15-20 years ago. 

That's 1/6 ha so with a yield class of say 12 there would be at most 40m3 and it looks half that

1 hour ago, benedmonds said:

 

They are now a dense stand about 6-8m tall.

He wants to clear fell the site and there must be more the 5 cubic m... There certainly is if we are chipping it..

Only those bits bigger than 8cms count in the measure

1 hour ago, benedmonds said:

 

How do I find out if it is a garden and therefore exempt from requiring a felling licence? Or is it to young to count?

The wording is within the curtilage of the house which in this case is probably the bit from the back of the house to the entrance drive, possibly including the paddock to the front (SE) and probably not the paddock to the west and almost certainly not the bit to the north with the trees in it

1 hour ago, benedmonds said:

 

I want reckon chipping all for biomass is the simplest solution, but he wants me to leave in 2.5 lengths so he can sell the logs to be chipped for biomass...? 

 

If you sell it then you restrict yourself to 2m3 per quarter, we're in the second quarter in 4 days. I'd fell 5m3 of the biggest trees within in the next four days, thin out any less than 10cms dbh in April and then fell 5m3 after the thinning for the next quarter and I'll bet there's not anything left that's licensable after that

10 hours ago, Vushtrri said:

Evening all....

Originally started out with a 7 acre mixed broadleaf wood, mainly Beech, a bit of Ash and about 40 x Douglas. Maximum age is about 60 yrs apart from a 200 yr old Yew which is obviously staying! Over the years I've kept well within the 5 cubic metre felling allowance per calendar quarter mainly for home heating.

I've recently  acquired an adjacent  wood, again mainly  Beech, the same age,  a bit of Ash and out of rotation Hazel copice giving me a 15 and  1/2 acre total. I've looked into acquiring an Alaskan mill and suitable chainsaw and happy with my choice with a few to felling a number of Beech ..approx 15 and use the milled timber for a number of projects along with a number of the Douglas approx 10 for additional projects including replacing the floorboards in my cottage when seasoned. 

Obviously I realise that this will necessitate my applying for a felling licence, my question being...should I be applying for a Thinning or Selective felling?  Apologies if it sounds like  a dumb question!

it's not a stupid question and IMO hinges around whether the trees you intend to take would otherwise  be final crop trees or whether the ones you take  will improve the remaining stand. Thinning  licence won't entail having to replant or expplain you will recruit trees from the  remainder for restocking.

34 minutes ago, Stuart Phillips said:

A proposal from one large employer has been to run a assessment ( to demonstrate that the user is still working in an appropriate way) and to have further (refresher) training only if they fail.

All well and good but "fail" is a pejorative and deprecated word in this context.

"retraining if current work was not meeting the standard" perhaps...

I have had chainsaw refreshers in the last 5 years  plus I attained a couple of NPTC  qualifications but to have refreshed all my qualifications at approaching 65 would have been a waste of money, it's one thing viewing them as an investment when in your 20s but the rate of return diminishes greatly as you get older such that I now only get to do domestic work where no one asks for tickets.

5 hours ago, Gary Prentice said:

our forst chucked a load of oil out this week due to a combination of a severely dirty filter and drawing air in at the pump - due to worn seals around the pulley shaft.

Did you replace the outrigger bearing with the pump? Belt tension correct?

Oil seals are effective in one direction not the other so in cold weather it pays to warm up the machine gently to prevent a depression at the inlet port which pulls air past the seal. Once air is in the system it cannot settle out and hence overflows the breather. Because of the way the side pieces of a gear pumps are pressure compensated often the damage is done as they get forced sideways onto the gears.

Cavitation is a separate phenomena, also worse as oil thickens, where the depression behind the gears causes a vacuum bubble which then collapses,this can erode the metal. The first grapple loaders I saw had pressurised tanks to try and prevent cavitation, perhaps that was because they came from Sweden.

Both result in loss of power.

22 hours ago, PC Treescapes said:

 

Evening all, my 2013 t6 ford ranger crew cab developed a leak in the oil seal on the back of the transfer box (between box and rear prop shaft) just after warranty expired. I paid a Ford dealership to sort as a special tool is needed that local dealer can't get. They did this and 10 months later it started leaking again. This time they changed seal, flange and spine inside, all sorted and no charge. All OK until last month, 6 months down the line. They have replaced seal again and again no charge, but have said they don't know why it's going and will not do for free again. Does anyone know of anything similar on other rangers, as not sure where to go from here. Thanks. Peter

From what Bustergasket says the seal may not have been reseated properly but that only means they never fixed a pre existing fault under warranty.

I wonder if the gearbox has a breather? Blocked breathers can cause seals to blow.