Billhook

B17s, B29s, Heinkels , Wellingtons, Mosquitos and many others, they all bombed cities they all killed civilians. The Spitfires and Mustangs were killing machines but to see them all now out of war being flown at air shows to remind us of the futility of war but also to marvel at the engineering and design of everything brought together in such a short time, aeronautics, engine performance, radar. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but the Lanc brings a tear to my eye each time it comes over.

I think that you can become too focussed on tonnage when there maybe other factors such as the design of the knife, or even making a box wedge, .also the length and diameter of the pipework and operating valves. I have two splitters, one vertical built by a local blacksmith with a 5 inch diameter ram from a digger which is powered by the JCB Fastrac 2170 which pump is rated at over 90 litres.minute. He used a tine from a loading shovel as the splitter but mounted on the end of the ram. This is slow and steady but will split anything. My box wedge on the Matbro TS270 again has over 90 litres/minute and has an arrow shaped blade to put a lot of pressure on the initial opening split which is particularly good for recalcitrant Elm. But it is still quite slow and steady so in both cases horsepower seems irrelevant with the JCB at 170 hp and the Matbro at 120 hp both at 3000psi. I think also that pump output is not the main factor here but the length and diameter of the pipework and the size of the various valves and controls.

One more, I wonder how many logs you could split with a Merlin powered propeller splitter! (Trying to return to topic!) 9

Here is a better video

Much more interesting than log splitters! My father trained in Canada in the War,, starting at New Brunswick and then on to Calgary before going down to Pensacola where he flew Catalinas and then back to England where he flew Wellingtons and Warwicks on Coastal Command out of Davidstowe in Cornwall The English Lancaster is based near here at Coningsby, about quarter of an hour away and the beautiful plane is often around. You hear it long before you see it Here is your plane together with the flying Lancaster at East Kirkby Heritage centre where, they have a taxi only non flying Lancaster "Just Jane" I have been for a taxi ride in Just Jane. Sorry about the shaky video but the sound of 12 Merlins must have affected me!

I am confused by the scheduling system. Back in the 1970s, possibly in the hot summer of 1976, photos from the air showed a possible but debatable Long Barrow. We were told as farmers all the things we were not allowed to do to it, and the fines for not complying. I asked them to come and mark it out on the ground as there is nothing to see. It is a 60 acre arable field and the barrow is meant to be quite a long way out into the field which has been cultivated certainly since before the war and has grown deeper crops like seed potatoes for many years. It is on chalk so we would never need to subsoil cultivate. Nobody has been near the place. We also have two very important sites which have both been professionally excavated, an eleventh century Chapel and a sixth century Anglo Saxon cemetery. The latter had some very significant finds and has shed a lot of light on the so called Dark Ages but neither the Chapel or the Cemetery have been scheduled. We have voluntarily protected both the Chapel and the Cemetery with layers of "Terram" and grassed them over but until we hear otherwise or someone bothers to come out and mark it, we will continue farming the supposed barrow it in the same way we have been doing for over half a century. As for what you can do ,it is similar to listed building, if you have a reasonable officer from the council, you may reach a reasonable conclusion, but if you have an unreasonable one you are in trouble!.

“Molegrips” I have left undone those things that I ought to have done And I have done those things I ought not to have done And there is no hope for me!

My wife collects the last logs from the bottom, she is more flexible! Actually a Stihl Pickaroon is the answer. The Mole grips were for the camera I see the sound is hugely non synched with the picture, how do you cure this? It certainly was ok when I put it up but has become progressively worse.

You still have a lot of bending and picking up to do I came up with this solution some time ago before I built a processor.

You can't leave us yet, we haven't discussed householder's insurance!

So on the minus side you have an old garden tree which has had generations of family activity with children swings, nailed and chained, maybe remains of an old iron fence inside, fence nails , wire. A few of these items coming into contact with saws can soon become expensive. I would have expected a much bigger root ball if the tree was fully alive, but it looks as though it has rotted The black water mark coming from the hole seems to indicate that the main trunk is rotten inside There are no nice straight lengths that I can see for milling You will have a big expense repairing the neighbours damage and making good her lawn and tidying all the brash without wheel marks and footprint trails You may have problems with people concerned about bats, replacing with another tree, or having to leave a certain amount of dead wood around for the birds and the bees and other life that benefits from fallen timber It looks as though you will have to employ a tree surgeon anyway to assess the situation if the tree is protected. Damage to trees protected by a TPO or Conservation Area WWW.SOUTHAMPTON.GOV.UK Easy access to key online services, news and information from Southampton City Council Access looks as though it will be a problem Meanwhile on the plus side..................

Thanks for that good advice

I was strongly advised by the NFU to put up signs saying "Private Land, No Public Right of Way" and warned that failure to do so may lead to someone bringing a case for a public footpath if they could show that people have had unchallenged access for a period of years. I allow polite people in the village to walk through the woods if they, a, pick up litter, b, have dogs on a lead, c, report back to me any suspicious activity, d, report any interesting wildlife. So far it has worked well and people seem to appreciate the lack of "Git orf my Land" approach. But we do have a low population here, away from major town and mainly elderly retired and more responsible folk.

Being in the East Midlands too, I know how very wet it has been these last two years. Very hard to dry anything and the yard here is like the Somme. I had some green mould on some Oak logs I posted some time ago which I thought were Elm and queried whether it was the DED fungus coming out until someone corrected me.

Sorry that was a bit boring! I was interested to see what the line was going down one side of the tree. I thought that it was rotten on the inside and had split, but it turned out to be sound i was wondering if it had been struck by lightning as the root was blackened where it had broken off

There is no picture on the forum but when I press the start arrow the video appears with sound. Perhaps I failed to press the right button uploading but I have done it successfully before

Poor old trees, as if they did not have enough to suffer with dieback, the ground is so sodden now that it does not take much of a breeze to tip them over i was expecting this one to be rotten in the middle but it was fine The frost coming out and the snow melting has left the yard and tracks in the worst condition that I can remember IMG_0805.MOV

IMG_0802.MP4

Not round here it hasn't

We always used to measure grain by grinding it in a coffee grinder then compressing it in a small chamber on top of the actual meter. I think that modern combines can do it fairly accurately without having to do all that but I am not sure of the process

Just bought what I thought was the usual litre of milk from the CO-OP and was pleasantly surprised to find it was two pints. Or 1.136 litres Pounds shillings and pence next then!

I think you are right, on second thoughts. being a day after Valentines, they came out smelling of roses!

Possibly, but on a more serious note, are these NO2 canisters nearly a kind of date rape drug as somebody told me it has the effect of completely knocking out some girls.

Finest honey!