sandspider
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Everything posted by sandspider
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Friend of mine went to school with a boy called Russel. His family name was Sprout!
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I tried Nikwax on my old waterproof (plastic type, not wax cotton type). It was better afterwards, but not as good as a new coat! (Having said that, new coat was 10 years or so newer, so better technology etc. I imagine)
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Yeah, I like it. In fact, I put it in my signature after posting it yesterday!
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Wish I had the room to plant trees - hopefully one day. I make do with chilli plants for now! “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” - Greek proverb.
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Will do. Probably won't be until later in Nov though as I'm going on holiday soon. To be fair, only had a few bits that I actually couldn't split with the Toolstation maul - and I don't know if anything else could split them either. I'll find out! Got the fiskars as a birthday present, and I've got some holly to split, so that should test it thoroughly. (It blunted my saw chain quicker than anything else I've sawed up until now!)
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Hope those aren't your feet! Flip flops, socks, and goose-stepping?!
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Well, ordered the Fiskars. Will see how it compares to my £12 Toolstation maul! (Which, to be fair, has done a good job for the price).
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Cheres. I can find it for £49, but not less than £50...?
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Whoops, just figured out the shorter one is the X17, not an X27. So people prefer the 27 to the 17, it would seem?
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For the X27, do people prefer the shorter version (122460, 722mm) or the longer version (122500, 915mm)? I'm guessing the longer version has more splitting power, but you need to be a bigger bloke (or lady!) to use it efficiently without tiring?
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Just harness the collies! Sorry, can't offer much actual advice...
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Well done, that sounds like good value. Out of interest, where did you find the land? On the internet?
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The ends will be drier as they've been exposed to the air, and you won't get an accurate reading from them. You need to split the log / saw it in half then measure the fresh cut surface. <20% moisture is generally supposed to be good to burn. Having said that, I split / cut my logs to the size I want to burn them at, so I don't usually bother to split them again to test moisture! I generally have a figure of about 12% moisture at the ends after drying, and none of my logs are too big, so I'm happy that they are also <20% in the centre. They burn well, and don't emit too much water / steam anyway.
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We do the same thing! Maybe that's why mine gets through batteries so quickly!
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That's a big one! Where in the UK are you? Not really much wind here to speak of - certainly nothing like as apocalyptic as we were promised!
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I've got a Stihl one. Fairly pricey I think (£40 odd) but seems to do a good job as far as I can tell. Does get through batteries quite fast though...
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Get a maximum price in mind before the auction, and stick to it! It's easy to get tempted to bid higher than you can afford...
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Good luck! I went to an auction for a small plot of woodland near me. It was right at the top of my budget, and I'd probably have been surprised and a bit scared if I'd won it! I didn't. No bids near the guide price, so they dropped it and dropped it until people started bidding. Ended up going for about 5k over the guide price of 20k IIRC. (Or possibly 10k over the guide price of 15k).
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Good idea - saves the hassle of sorting the final log length for chopping. How much roughly does one of those cost to make / buy?
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Planning a Firewood Coppice
sandspider replied to pendleton8471's topic in Forestry and Woodland management
The internet suggests that SRC with willow can produce around 13 tonnes of wood per hectare per year (depending on lots of factors, obviously). 2.5 ish hectares to the acre, so approx 5 tonnes an acre. Other woods will vary in productivity, but generally lower as willow is one of the highest (the highest?) yielding tree in the UK. -
Also worth looking at the national hedgelaying society website: NHLS - Home page
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A basic how to video here: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Andv7a0NPEc]Hedge Laying with bill hook - YouTube[/ame]
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YR.no looks good - nice format. The BBC does do a rough hourly forecast, but has no accurate info on likely rain levels - just a graphic...
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Thanks guys, I'll give em all a try. (Looking out of the window (not at 6am!) is good, but a bit more advanced forecasting would be useful!) I live in Bristol, and it goes from sun to rain and back 4 or 5 times a day. Agreed, none of the forecasts seem to be that accurate, and even my barometer can't be trusted...
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Hi all As the title says, really! What site(s) do you use for your forecasts? The BBC seems pretty accurate, but they don't offer an hour-by-hour breakdown (except the video forecast thing - I just want a static page that I can refresh). So, I mainly use netweather and xcweather, both of which have the hourly breakdowns. However, they don't seem that reliable, plus netweather crashes my phone web browser quite a lot. Anyone got a better website? Cheers.
