Billhook

I think the one thing we did demonstrate was that Poplar is an easy wood to work with using the full scribe method and when kept off the ground it doesn’t rot. It rots very quickly on the ground and I found half a dozen large Sandstones to sit the main bearers on and twenty four years later it still looks good A pleasant surprise were visits by Kingfishers, an Osprey came regularly for seven years and a pair of Otters bred two years running two pups each time Here is one of the pups playing with a tennis ball that I hung from a branch over the concrete overflow

Just look at Dan’s other work on his website, mine is quite ordinary in comparison. If someone is hugely wealthy they would be better to contact him and have one built to their own specifications

Found a whole load of old photos to bore you all with, but the cabin is such a rewarding part of our lives as well as the lake. The field corner was always a pain to farm as well as flooding occasionally. My father had a serious heart operation in 1998 and was having difficulty in finding enough incentive to go out and exercise to aid his recovery. So the lake was a big incentive and he spent a lot of time down there with help from various people directing what and where to plant various shrubs and trees. The cabin was up and running as a shelter later. So this was the part of the field drilled with wheat and a puddle after some not very heavy rain We first dug a trial pond around the Ash tree in the middle Then created a small pond to see if it held water Then started work on the lake with Dozers Cabin to be built at extreme far left. I diverted the ditch feeding the lake at right angles to slow the water down and act as a silt trap which I could clear with the digger. Middle photo shows overflow back into main beck and black pipe sticking up behind is the drain to keep the level of the lake which can be adjusted slightly Log cabin course in Devon with Dan Franklin, here with some pine JCB here very handy for putting it together. My wife adjusted the strap to find the centre of gravity for each log. The logs were all marked and fitted perfectly Relief! Rafters covered firstly with 3/4” ply sheets then corrugated tin I was thinking of having a grass roof but it did not happen Aerial view pre cabin which is now in the top right corner by the road Our neighbours daughter and new husband spent their first night there after the Wedding with the cabin suitably decorated Hope all this may help

And third photo with swans

Log Cabins | Woodenways WWW.WOODENWAYS.COM My cabin is in the first picture in the snow

Hi Lorraine Yes it is still there twenty four years later and has survived storms and flooding without damage. It is the go to place by the lake when we have company especially if they bring kids Inside I cut the floor from a Copper Beech with a Lucas Sawmill After a huge rainfall last year! I was lucky in 2000 in that our UK government was giving a grant to help educate people into projects like this. I had gone on a full scribe log course in England run by Dan Franklin. This was because my dear father had planted several acres of Poplar for the match industry in 1960. He told me that with the projected amount of smokers in the year 2000 I would become very rich .However come the Millennium most people had packed up smoking and those that did used butane lighters! So I had all these trees looking for a home Poplar is not very good firewood . A chance remark from a friend in Oregon who told me that there was a Church there made from Poplar in the full scribe method that was 120 years old Anyway I started this course on our farm having felled forty trees and we had a ream of about ten people and built the basic cabin in about a fortnight What was worse was that we had to build it in a barn due to restrictions with Mad Cow Disease which prevented Dan from coming here in the summer My wife and I were able to put it together like Lego with no nails but a 360 15 ton digger did help a bit! So it cost me very little money but quite a bit of time, but worth every moment! I will post Dan’s Wooden Ways web in a bit

Best time to visit the gardens for Tulips in Bloom will be 27th & 28th April 2024 (weather dependent). Later in the season May to June (five weeks) we uplift over 130,000 spring bulbs to direct plant over 1,200 dahlia tubers to include over 100 varieties, creating stunning summer/autumn displays.

It was split by my Lockdown splitter three years ago into mainly 4 inch square x 16 inch. It is bone dry but still heavy, there is absolutely no smoke coming from the stainless steel chimney. It does not feel like pine, could it perhaps be a slower growth rate making it more dense? Or perhaps just a different variety of Leylandii.

Thanks David

Some Poplar managed to find its way into my Ash log box and having been stored in an open fronted shed for a couple of years developed this foam like fungus. The Ash is not affected. It is just as though someone has covered the wood with a thin layer of expanding foam, never seen it before, what is it?

Yeah, Leicester, Birmingham, Newcastle, big cities but Spalding Tulip bulb auction hall with tickets at £1.00!! In 1961 the population was only about 15,000 rising to 25,000 in 2001 to about 35,000 today. Compare that with the populations of those cities which were well over half a million a piece

Bet you’ve never been there!

At least most people have heard of Leicester and know where it is, I cannot say the same for Spalding, bet most. people would have to look it up on their phone!

Probably because it was drilled early and was established before the rains really came down and had its head above water especially over chalk hills. Cannot see any particular reason why it would make more money since there is so much of it Wheat and Barley however another matter and if this goes on the poor buggers trying to put their potatoes, Spring Beans and Barley, Beet and Veg in will be really suffering

With my farming hat on, I too have seen nothing like it in over fifty years of farming. Wheat fields decimated and hardly a Spring crop sown. My Miscanthus contractor has not cut even one acre anywhere and he covers a large area in the North. Pools of water, mud everywhere. Approaching Cuckoo barley territory now. Cannot go in the woods without making a filthy mess and even winching logs out from the roadways has the same result. At least managed to bring enough logs back to the yard to process under cover.