Billhook

A friend asked me to cut some dunnage blocks into sleepers for a small gauge railway he is building. Not sure what the wood was, it was treated and quite heavy, being dunnage it could have come from anywhere in the World Everything going fine until I lost a couple of teeth out of the five on the Lucas blade. I have only lost a couple of teeth before in the thirty years of owning the Mill and that was due to a hidden nail. We looked around to try and see the cause but could find nothing so put a new blade on. This lost all five teeth in the first millisecond of the vertical run We assume that one or two of the teeth from the previous blade had been left in the cut. Moral of the tale is not to attempt another cut into the groove until you have either cut out the piece or abandoned it for another piece. IMG_7638.mov

I heard that it was the case with the sinking of the Bismarck in WW2, the Swordfish torpedo bombers were so slow, WW1 speed that the German guns could not find the range

I have just managed to remove all five tips on the Lucas |Mill blade, a first since I bought it in 1996! I think that it lost a tip with the previous blade that remained lodged in the groove so when the new blade went it it took all of one millisecond to ruin it! Hence I need to visit Skellingthorpe Saw Point and I will be passing Lincoln and will call in. They had a big display board describing the table which I did not read on the evening I was there so I may find out more. They may even be selling smaller pieces

Don't worry, they have to invite the riff raff like us to balance against the high and mighty!

I expect this may have been seen before on this site. I was invited with my wife to a grand dinner at Lincoln Cathedral, Lincolnshire UK to celebrate the new High Sheriff. Found ourselves sitting in the main aisle in front of this lovely table. So hard that place mats were not required as no water, heat or wine stains would show , here is its story https://www.thefenlandblackoakproject.co.uk/

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.

Just found this advertisement. Spalding is only 40 miles away but in those days that was a big deal . At the age of 13 parents were still very much in charge and the idea of letting your adolescent kid go to a hippy festival with many things to lead him astray was out of the question. Too far to bike with my knackered single speed cycle. I would be surprised if any of you lot made it. Stubby perhaps?? Just look at the line up, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and Pink Floyd were way down the order!

Thanks for the replies The wood came from some large trees and had been seasoned for about three years so there was less resin but it was still quite heavy. Little bark and quite stringy on the outside of each log. I felt that this stringy layer burnt fiercely and may have coated the remaining log with a black ash which subdued the fire The air vents were fully open, normally half shut down for Ash and Sycamore once the fire is going I think it is good advice to mix it with the Ash and Sycamore

I know this topic has been on the forum several times but just wanted to share my experience and wondered if any of you had the same We took down some very large old trees with 20-30 inch diameter logs that we split into firewood before Covid (New date term. “BC” so 2018 BC!). So very dry and very stringy after splitting and a mountain of bits which are useful kindling. Been burning them on our Aarrow Stratford boiler. Normally we use Ash and Sycamore which both produce plenty of ash in the ash tray and both burn hot However we were surprised to find the Leylandii only produced about 3/4 of the heat of the others in spite of seeming to burn well initially. However after a period of time they became very blackened and I suspect that this coating slowed the burn. Amazingly there was no ash at all left after a whole day and night, with the Ash and Sycamore we usually fill a bucket I thought there would be enough resin in the wood to make it burn hotter but perhaps this had disappeared over time Anyone had a similar experience?

Too right (left). Cobber!

The main point as Peds will agree, and not about measles is that left handers are dominant in the right hemisphere of the brain , so left handers are the only ones in their right mind!