openspaceman

Yes if it gets re wetted. The main problem I found with birch was that even small bits need to be split as the bark is so waterproof. Until the moisture gets below 20%mc wwb various bugs are still actively devouring the wood, and birch is very perishable. So as the products of decay are water and carbon dioxide if the water cannot get out it keeps the wood wet enough to continue into mush. Having just split half a Canter load (definitely overweight so maybe 2 tonne) of freshly felled birch I hope to get it dry enough. Will set to with the axe to deal with the rest next week as this is half of my yearly requirement.

Yes this would be typical of failed seals but it's only a weep because the seal on the rod isn't pressurised. There are various DOT fluids, some are poly ethylene glycol based with organic copper compounds and others silicone based, not at all similar to the mineral oil that the back axle or hydraulics use. I'm certain the glycol ones will damage seals meant for mineral oils.

With dry wood the temperature in my firebox is likely over 1200C at the flue exit, the grate and auger are cooled by incoming air. I moved away from retorts for a number of reasons but yes some sort of recirculation and after burning the excess offgas in a separate firebox would make sense. As to temperature, we have to remember that unless the wood is dry whilst some of the charge is charring some other bits are still coming up to temperature but I'd guess by the time all the charge is about 330C its charcoal . The thing is if the temperature is rising uniformly through the charge then at this temperature it autolyses, i.e. as long as heat isn't lost it continues pyrolysing by itself and the temperature also rises till about 440C at which point some of the carbon changes from chain like molecules to ring like ones, I think this absorbs heat so without further heat input it would stop. In practice the load isn't homogeneous nor very dry so more complex things are happening at any time. People here seem to be reporting temperatures of 550C inside the retort.

Mine lends itself to this although I've never tried it.

Yes I shouldn't have been so hasty, I'd say sitka now.

Horse chestnut

For future reference : master cylinders seldom fail leaking fluid as it just goes back to the reservoir and the rod seal isn't under pressure, so if the fluid level is going down it is most likely to be a slave. I've not experienced Valtra's other than driving one. Take heed of what Nick says, someone put brake fluid in our JCB telehandler and it caused the seals to leak and this was one case where the master cylinder was remote from the reservoir and did escape, £900 for the part and no seal kits available.

Yes but if there is oil present in the crack it will contaminate the weld. We had the barrel end weld develop a crack on an Awhi, it was a difficult one to find being both small and under the cab. It was spraying a mist onto the spool block which made it appear the spool block was leaking but eventually with me in the cab tilted forward and forehead on the windscreen I could operate the main lift and the mist was spotted coming from the ram. It had to be taken out, dismantled and thoroughly cleaned before it was re welded.

Not much chance, even off the machine and cleaned it's difficult as oil will be in the crack so it needs grinding right back. I've done it with weld but wouldn't advise it on a lifting machine.

Peter principal I never got past the first rung

Here's one I've been watching for over 60 years. As my mother walked with me in pushchair and my, older, sister from my grand parents to home I would run to get to this tree first and my sister and I would look through the hole formed by two coppice stems crossing at about 75cms from the ground, unfortunately I never thought to take a photo as the hole was closed by the growing stems until now.

Not that I can think of, plus the reduced yield.

Once you get above 550C there's not much change as you get hotter, just the residual Hydrogen and oxygen elements are driven off with some carbon as higher tars., the biggest change is in the 330-440 region.

Yes but that yield consists of some fixed carbon and some volatile matter, tars etc. As the temperature increases the volatiles are driven off and the fixed carbon increases as a proportion of the now smaller mass. So I am referring to yield as mass as a percentage of the original oven dry mass of the charge. The fixed carbon yield will be variable with species.The volatiles make the charcoal easier to light but they burn with a flame, or if the flame doesn't burn out they smoke a blue colour from the sol of PICs. A large number of people in other countries still cook with charcoal in urban settings and this charcoal would be unacceptable to them as it burns with too much smoke and too quickly. Often their charcoal is made with denser species which makes for a harder slow burning charcoal which burns with no smoke or flame (and produces a fair amount of CO). I know of an Australian family that were used to cooking on the patio at home and tried to cook their Xmas turkey here using lumpwood charcoal, it smoked out the house even though it was on a covered patio. There would have been in the past, for industrial uses such as gunpowder making . In respect of biochar the fixed carbon will be recalcitrant whereas the tars will gradually be respired by bugs back to CO2 and water so on a long time-scale the carbon sequestration will dwindle to the fixed carbon content.

The proportion of fixed carbon increases but the yield decreases, so at 400C you can get a yield of 45% high volatiles char from scots pine but at 900C this reduces to 15% of the initial dry wood but its fixed carbon is nigh on 100%. Also the size of the log matters, small particles will have a lower yield than a chunk as secondary reactions happen within the wood when vapours get cracked back to char but can escape before this happens if small enough. If you blow dry sawdust into a hot chamber such that it's temperature rises to 1000C in a second almost no char is formed, only vapours and gases. There is also a change in state of the carbon matrix around 400C

That'll be why I get no more work then!

Well that sorts out the idea of just having one gas bottle to hold then. I'm intrigued with Bob's idea of having a wire feed to go with my 200 amp welding genset for heavier stuff. Any idea why the MIG gas has to have an "active " ingredient or why COOGAR seems to weld much smoother than plain CO2? For work on cars I find a 0.6 mm wire is necessary plus a very smooth wire feed which the cheap MIGs don't seem to have.

If you make charcoal then develop a market for the fines, Gary P said he had a client that was buying it as expensive biochar. You'd need a stripper in front to separate stem wood. We tried some of Wills branch loggered slabwood in the narrow boat Morso and it was ideal but not competitive with smokeless coal (which was needed to keep it burning through the night).

It's set up fror cross cutting, for ripping it would need a riving knife and properly set packing pieces. The shaf that should hold the fence is missing as the holder is broken off. Once a blade is that badly rusted it's hard to get a good enge on all the teeth the same. I haven't used one since about 1974 but in principle you could make a cradle to hold the wood, albeit losing cutting depth.

I was ok with gas welding steel, I also used it for brazing and cutting. Cutting is easier done with an angle grinder nowadays. I mentioned this XTM 252I Synergic MIG Inverter - Parweld which is only a couple of hundred more than a simple MIG but you have to by the TIG torch. I don't know enough about TIG, like you need to use pure argon but can pure argon do mig as I use an argon CO2 mix for preference over CO2. Also I'm told you need a current ramp up start and ramp down for TIG as well as DC and AC for aluminium. I'd like to try it but lack the opportunity now and no big projects to justify buying any more kit.

And of course if they fail to pay their income tax the revenue will come and claim it from you.

Diesels produce very little carbon monoxide so safer than a petrol engine in that respect

My spraying guru says that too strong a mix traumatises the plant tissue and then it cannot translocate to the rhizomes. We frequently had instructions to spray JKW from network rail but they didn't often allow for follow up treatment so the initial effort was a bit wasted, I used to advise the home owners affected to keep on at NR.

Yes I saw a bit on TV about the "donation". They could do with the money now, I worked there for a few days pyrolysing seaweed for biochar trials. Mine was a Stihl 026 and I retired it as it was very old and beyond economic repair, bought the chap a ms261 which he was pleased with, he had battled on with the 026 since before I joined the old company without complaint so several years. I followed it six months later.

Must have been Karma if you were clearing an orchard Whilst Spud said mine may have been piston slap, as the piston skirt was very thin, I wondered if it might have been the clutch side bearing having a bit of play and allowing the bottom of the piston skirt to touch the bobweight on that side (I suppose the 560 has a disc with stuffer rather than bobweight?) because the triangular bit missing from the skirt was on that side.