openspaceman

I'm sorry Neil I was confusing you with @nepia. Yes the only reason the post war labour government went down the magnox route was to produce plutonium (because the air cooled core at windscale overheated due to the graphite core suddenly releasing its stress and burning the uranium being bombarded with neutrons. It is doubtful that any of these and the later Dounreay fast breeder ever covered their build and operating costs let alone their decommissioning.

Funny you should say that as I have turned my thoughts to a simple electrostatic filter that you switch on when you light the fire and it switches off when the flue temperature drops to show the fire is out. Servicing it at the chimney pot is the biggest problem plus the only firm that sells them wanted £1800 some years ago. The thing is the percentage of particulates in the air due to wood fires was bound to go up as other sources of combustion derived particulates were reduced. Think back to 1990 (if you are old enough) when straw burning filled the air with smoke in late summer, now not done, garden green waste collections have cut bonfires and then we have diesel particulate filters, adblue and catalytic converters reducing pollution from transport plus EVs becoming popular. I am adding insulation to my house, mostly because I may not be able to collect logs and when I am gone my partner definitely won't. I have left it too late really as it has been amazing how much my gas and electricity consumption has dropped.

Good post with some interesting thoughts but you don't qualify as an urban dweller. I do and have received comments from locals about how bad I am to burn wood, so I am paranoid about emitting smoke. Luckily I supply both near neighbours with illicit logs.

I don't believe so, the faster you dry the log the less dry matter is respired by bugs and the more energy is available for combustion. Wood essentially burns to carbon dioxide and water as long as the three Ts are catered for Time for the combustion to complete (in the order of a second for a flame) Turbulence to allow for better mixing to increase the chance of a fuel molecule meeting an oxygen molecule (within the time above). Temperature in the combustion zone which every molecule is subject to (in the time above) and its 850C. Plus supplying enough air to do the job (about 200% of stoichiometric for a simple stove).

Nooo. Now we have gone down the renewables route the cost and time delay of new nuclear is not worthwhile even before you consider the moral dilemma of leaving the radioactive waste for later generations to sort out. Wind power is proving cheap, even if the profits are all going to foreign companies so storage is where we need to be investing.

Vast majority of Londoners support ban on wood burners | Air pollution | The Guardian WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM Exclusive: Poll shows national support for ban in urban areas, where burners have worst impact Picture seems to show someone burning wet wood and doesn't look like it is in Britain. This is something I seldom see now near me and generally only notice white smoke for a short while as the stove warms up.

If the cracks are caused because the outside is drying faster than the core then put it somewhere colder with a higher humidity. You need to dry it evenly so water is leaving the surface at the same rate it is migrating out of the core. OTOH the chances are it is the difference between tangential and radial shrinkage that is causing the cracks and there is not much can be done about that.

We retrieved my mate's dad's pimp clamp from the bonfire his sister threw it on. All the wood parts gone but the ironwork still exists. He used to do it with his dad as a Saturday job but it was basically a vertical vice which squeezed the bundle and then a wire tie was wrapped round. If I were to try it I think I would go with two sticks with a chain between then, lay the wood on the chain, fold the sitcks over and tie the bundle.

Doesn't Brinsbury do stuff anymore?

Just think it used to be tulip bulbs, then stamps... It highlights the difference in wealth that we have

And don't try and work wet clay, even when dry you can overwork it into too fine a tilth.

There are others: This clearly shows the taper but the alternating advancing mechanism is a bit hard for me to follow still

Marvelous machine. I noted the larch shingles I recently saw were parallel and this machine made proper tapered ones. I liked the way it advanced the billet in alternate steps but wondered how it managed to clamp at the same time. Someone previously posted their machine to do taper cuts on a woodmizer and I could see much the same thing being done to cut shingles from multiple billets.

A long time ago much was made of tomato growing using waste heat from Tolimore (spelling?) distillery. My guess is cheap air transport put paid to growing vegetables under glass. Back in the 70s New Scientist proposed converting redundant supertankers to grow tomatoes with a constantly rotating rack system, planting up here then cruising to the equator till ripening started and returning home.

theoretically the cleft ones will last longer as less exposed end grain for rot and weathering to take a hold. In practice I have seen cleft oak and imported sawn cedar cedar ones last over 70 years which is better than many clay tiles. Definitely uk made larch ones are available, I cannot share the picture for privacy reasons but a young chap has roofed his discreet little new build house with them. Pass but the 1930s build cedar house near me has a much steeper pitch than my tiled roof.

Nothing wrong with disagreeing with me we can all live and learn. Firstly I dislike ecoplugs, they are expensive and long term plastic litter. The bloke that sold the idea to network rail must have got a good bonus, especially for getting them to specify them for all broadleaved species stumps. I only inserted a few hundred myself, with Stihl bt45 drill (which was good but discontinued I think., but the firm bought them by the thousands. As you say the cost of drills was insignificant so despite my efforts to get them returned for sharpening few came back. Profits were so high upper management were not interested in looking after the pennies. It is ten years since but I bought the brad points by the dozen and they were cheaper than jobber twist drills. Also easier to sharpen using two faces of the grinder stone, just two grinds and done. For a short hole there is more clearance at the cutter and the frass drops away between holes.

In that case forget the herbicide and just mow

I disagree as the brad points are cheap and easy to sharpen, no welding required with this: https://www.bearingboys.co.uk/Single-Split-/CASB13Z--13mm-Shaft-Collar-Single-Split-40324-p and it can be moved when the tip wears

I ground 3 small flats on the 13mm brad point bits for the Stihl BT45 when they needed sharpening, trouble was many of the utility arbs they were issued to just discarded them when blunt.

Standard aluminium tube is a bit malleable, the shaft tube on pole saws is tempered in some way, which is why it is difficult to straighten a bent one.

I last used one slung over my shoulder and an arbrex can and brush hanging from my belt, then silky saws arrived.

They are Italian, Active IIRC.

Yes and Yes Parts diagram shows arrangement https://www.eder-maschinenbau.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Bauteilübersicht-Baujahr-02.2016-05.2017.pdf

That looks like a parcel of tops and sawlogs after the veneer butts have been taken for export, We used to end up with stuff like this and I always wanted to try it for flooring for the colour and contrast.

The actual commercial value of the logs in the photos is roughly nil. Yes and I would be wary of the long down ones being riddled with platypus pinhole oak borer if down south OTOH the recently felled one is a nice looking butt.