Billhook

It is adjustable for height in inch increments, but I have it set at four inches. The arrow shape is so that I have maximum pressure on difficult Elm. The downside is as you can see on some pieces it leaves a U shape bottom to the log. Not quite sure why it only happens on some logs, but it may be that the knife angle is too sharp and I need to do some more grinding

Here at last is the video of taking a tall wind blown Ash tree from the woods to the stove via the new Lockdown Splitter without me lifting any logs apart from the last part of lifting a log from the box to the stove. My wrists are knackered with osteo arthritis so during Lockdown I decided to build a splitter around the Matbro Teleporter making full use of its lifting and hydraulic power. The Matbro cost me £7000 in 2010 and had done 11000 hours but the clock was broken so goodness knowshow many hours it has done since then, but together with the Sanderson muck grab it has been a great tool in the woods Because I was confined to the yard during Lockdown I had to make use of what scrap was lying around I did ask a local engineer to cut me a knife out of some 30mm plate which he was able to deliver and was very thankful for his help and advice. I came up with the idea of using the remote control designed for a winch to plug into the Danfoss electric controls on the Matbro Electric Wireless Winch Remote Control Handset 12V Heavy Duty For Truck Atv Suv WWW.EBAY.CO.UK Specification: Color(remote control): blue Color( controller): black Voltage: 12V Remote Range: about 100'' / 30m Remote... Some how it cost nearer £30 back in March but still good value as it saved all the expensive pipework and valves as well as being much safer The teleboom could crowd only to a certain angle so I had to tilt the logs against another log which was not too difficult. When it was tilted back the log was at a comfortable height for sawing. Then three or four rounds could be lifted over the box for the split wood to drop in An improvement would be a processor chainsaw but this will have to do for the time being

Would you need to be dried to below 20%?

I heard a lot of those stories too, and worse.........

Indeed you have hit the nail on the head. A difficult one. Certainly I would have a lot of reservations about doing a dig in a foreign land, say India or Australia with ancient aboriginal sites. So that is one aspect,not to upset the local population. The other aspect is respect and would I mind having my body exhumed in 1500 years if it was treated with respect and was done to discover something about the way I lived and perhaps might give some useful knowledge. So the answer to that is that I would not mind. In the same way leaving your body to medical science is fine as long as it does not become part of some drunken medical student party with my body parts being thrown around for a laugh The archaeologists took these graves very seriously and the students were not allowed to give the skeletons nicknames and respect had to be shown at all times. The bones were carefully labelled and packaged and have undergone analysis at Sheffield. They discovered much from some of these new methods such a strontium isotope testing where it was found that one of the women was brought up in Kent. The conclusion was that there was a lot of coastal shipping traffic from the Baltic, (one woman had over 500 amber beads in a necklace, the beads coming from the Baltic) they probably hugged the coastline down to Calais and came across and then up the East coast of England. In the first dig I was asked if I minded if they brought some American Veterans from the wars in Afghanistan who were traumatised. I thought that it was a very odd request as troops that may have witnessed their best friend blown to pieces by a roadside mine you would think the last thing they would want to do is deal with skeletons. They came to the dig with their heads down, I think they had retreated into themselves and tried to shut out their memories with a bit of help from the bottle and stronger. However working with the team on a perfect site was very calm and their was a lot of good socialising in the evening at the pub and after two weeks they were very different people. The skeletons are certainly my own grandparents (times about 50 greats!) and probably those of my Danish wife and they will be returned to the beech trees with a ceremony when the research if finished. I have not had any bad feelings at all, in fact very good feelings that their lives have been respected and that they can show us a thing or two. Firstly the equality of the sexes seems to have been very different even to today. The women were more like the queen bee and in charge. The men were the drones, the foragers the protectors. I would think that the women maintained control by controlling who married who. To make a 12 year old girl pregnant in those days was a death sentence so I think arranged marriages were the result Indeed there was a young woman cradling her child in one grave which brought a lot of tears to the eyes There is a lot of comfort for me too. I have been to America, Australia, New Zealand , South Africa and Zimbabwe and in each country on the radio there were indigenous people demanding their lands back. It meant that the settlers, even after five or six generations on the same land were left feeling very vulnerable Here I know I am living where my ancestors lived going back a long way. The footprints at Happisburgh, just on the other side of the Wash not far from here were 850,000 years old. Happisburgh footprints - Wikipedia EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

There is a circle of beech trees about 100 yards from my front door in the middle of an arable field on a South facing slope on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds. The old man who lived nearby and who died in the 1950s, told my father that a man and his horse were buried under the trees. I always thought that it was one of those tall stories but if true may have been some survivor of Waterloo or similar. A metal detectorist came by and asked if he could look around so I suggested the trees and the field where I could keep and eye on him He found some brooches and there was a skeleton underneath. The University of Sheffield were conducting a dig about fifteen miles away and I asked them to investigate. Here is the video. If you are not interested in archaeology then Dr Alice Roberts is worth watching without the archaeology, especially as she likes wild swimming! I bought myself a Deus XP and found the little boar's head with the red garnet eyes. My heart jumped when Alice said that it was her favourite object of the series. The mind boggling thing is that red garnets were only found in one place in the world at that time-- Sri Lanka. So how did sections of African elephant tusk (they found five altogether and dated to the same 6th century period) and red garnets from Sri Lanka arrive 100 yards from my front door 1500 years ago? The silver bracelet and Roman bronze bowl, nearly 2000 years old are also fantastic finds

When I was at school we had to do rifle training as part of the CCF and the officer in charge of the range insisted that I used the bolt action rifle right handed. Having been brought up on a farm I had been rifle shooting from a very young age and was not a bad shot, But Left handed. I challenged him to a duel, lying side by side resting the fore-end (no dirty jokes here Stubby!)on a sand bag. I told him to imagine that we were at Rorke's Drift and there were thousands of Zulus coming at us. So let's see who can fire the most rounds / minute Of course my left hand never was taken away from the trigger and my right hand operated the bolt, whereas his right hand had to leave the trigger to operate the bolt so I was nearly twice as fast as him! It is still against regulations he insisted, which about sums up the army for me.

Left-handed people are the only ones in their right mind!

But we know that really we are better than them!

I've been looking for one of those for years! She even tightens the nuts up anticlockwise which is better for a leftie like me. Perhaps there are some special glasses which invert everything like a youtube camera. might make driving difficult though! To further my cause as a victim in this current victim culture, why is so little done to help lefties when authorities bend over backwards to accommodate other disadvantaged groups. For years I have had to put up with bloody right hand nib fountain pens (marked down in exams because my writing is so appalling) , right hand scissors, right hand serrated knives (cannot cut bread straight), right hand cash machines, cameras both viewfinder and trigger, chequebooks rulers the list is endless I am a victim and demand compensation!!!!!! 16 little ways that the world is designed for right-handed people WWW.INSIDER.COM Lefties have to endure lots of little struggles in a world designed for the right-handed, from swiping credit cards to...

Type has an e on the end, or is your vision impaired???

I have always treated my bishop with great respect, I praise him continually and confess my sins!

Its all right, I am not drinking pints of it! Xray of wrists indicates Osteo rather than Rheumatoid so I do not think it would help much anyway as the damage has been done via a misspent youth!

Macpherson is trying to encourage me to use Borax to cure my arthritis! Page 6 on "Our Damaged Bodies" and this link https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ea6d/200ae6b8c8213823d1fb5c84cf035ae14493.pdf

I think our Aduro 9 looks much the same. If it is , then the way it is started and run is completely different to normal wood stoves. We do not use branch loggings in it. You have to load it in a counter intuitive way with the bigger sticks at the bottom building up like noughts and crosses to the smaller bits at the top. It smokes readily if the wood is not perfectly dry and stacked properly but when done correctly it is amazing how efficient it is and how a small amount of wood will last a long time.

I can assure you that if you stand behind someone the morning after a night out on Batemans Triple X, the gases will penetrate even the most sophisticated mask, and I would suggest that most of the particles are bigger than a virus!

I was about 100% out as usual ! just measured the smaller white bag at 55x55x80=240 litres and the big blue bag which I have built extensions for at 80x80x80=512 litres I put a pin in the extensions so that if the bag is heavy I can pull the pins making it easy to take the loops off, then pull out the posts on one side and pull the bag over to tip it I made a detachable ball hitch for towing behind the car or the Stiga mower for garden work. It is quite hard to pull by hand with a full load!

Just had a look at particle sizes and it seems that a virus at 0.005 is much smaller than a particle of wood smoke at 0.2 and I can definitely smell wood smoke through my high grade mask! imperial units 1 inch = 25400 microns 1 micron = 1 / 25400 inch The eye can in general see particles larger than 40 microns. Typical size of contaminants and particles are indicated below. Note that the values varies widely depending on how the products are processed. By example milling corn starch in 30 minutes can reduce the average diameter of starch particles from 10 to 0.3 microns (μm, 10-6 m). Further milling may produce particles even smaller than 0.1 microns. Particle Particle Size (microns) Anthrax 1 - 5 Antiperspirant 6 - 10 Asbestos 0.7 - 90 Atmospheric Dust 0.001 - 40 Auto and Car Emission 1 - 150 Bacteria 0.3 - 60 Beach Sand 100 - 10000 Bone Dust 3 - 300 Bromine 0.1 - 0.7 Burning Wood 0.2 - 3 Calcium Zinc Dust 0.7 - 20 Carbon Black Dust 0.2 - 10 Carbon Dioxide 0.00065 Cayenne Pepper 15 - 1000 Cement Dust 3 - 100 Clay, coarse 2 - 4 Clay, medium 1 - 2 Clay, fine 0.5 - 1 Coal Dust 1 - 100 Coal Flue Gas 0.08 - 0.2 Coffee 5 - 400 Combustion 0.01 - 0.1 Combustion-related - motor vehicles, wood burning, open burning, industrial processes up to 2.5 Copier Toner 0.5 - 15 Corn Starch 0.1 - 10 Dot (.) 615 Dust Mites 100 - 300 Eye of a Needle 1230 Face Powder 0.1 - 30 Fertilizer 10 - 1000 Fiberglass Insulation 1 - 1000 Fly Ash 1 - 1000 Gelatin 5 - 90 Ginger 25 - 40 Glass Wool 1000 Grain Dusts 5 - 1000 Gravel, very fine (0.08 inch) 2000 Gravel, fine (0.16 inch) 4000 Gravel, medium (0.3 inch) 8000 Gravel, coarse (0.6 - 1.3 inches) 15000 - 30000 Gravel, very coarse (1.3 - 2.5 inches) 30000 - 65000 Ground Limestone 10 - 1000 Hair 5 - 200 Household dust 0.05 - 100 Human Hair 40 - 300 Human Sneeze 10 - 100 Humidifier 0.9 - 3 Insecticide Dusts 0.5 - 10 Iron Dust 4 - 20 Lead, solder radiator manufacturing - mean value 1.3 Lead, battery and lead powder manufacturing 12 - 22 Lead Dust 0.1 - 0.7 Liquid Droplets 0.5 - 5 Metallurgical Dust 0.1 - 1000 Metallurgical Fumes 0.1 - 1000 Milled Flour, Milled Corn 1 - 100 Mist 70 - 350 Mold 3 - 12 Mold Spores 10 - 30 Mustard 6 - 10 Oil Smoke 0.03 - 1 One inch 25400 Oxygen 0.0005 Paint Pigments 0.1 - 5 Pesticides & Herbicides 0.001 Pet Dander 0.5 - 100 Pollen 10 - 1000 Radioactive Fallout 0.1 - 10 Red Blood Cells 5 - 10 Rosin Smoke 0.01 - 1 Sand, very fine (0.0025 inch) 62 Sand, fine (0.005 inch) 125 Sand, medium (0.01 inch) 250 Sand, coarse (0.02 inch) 500 Sand, very coarse (0.02 inch) 500 Saw Dust 30 - 600 Sea Salt 0.035 - 0.5 Silt, coarse (0.0015) 37 Silt, medium (0.0006 - 0.0012 inche) 16 - 30 Silt, fine 8 - 13 Silt, very fine 4 - 8 Skin flakes 0.5 - 10 Smoke from Natural Materials 0.01 - 0.1 Smoke from Synthetic Materials 1 - 50 Smoldering or Flaming Cooking Oil 0.03 - 0.9 Spanish Moss Pollen 150 - 750 Spider web 2 - 3 Spores from plants 3 - 100 Starches 3 - 100 Sugars 0.0008 - 0.005 Talcum Dust 0.5 - 50 Tea Dust 8 - 300 Textile Dust 6 - 20 Textile Fibers 10 - 1000 Tobacco Smoke 0.01 - 4 Typical Atmospheric Dust 0.001 to 30 Viruses 0.005 - 0.3 Yeast Cells 1 - 50 one micron is one-millionth of a metre 1 micron = 10-6 m 1 micron = 1000 nano metre Airborne particles Airborne particles are solids suspended in the air. Larger particles - larger then 100 μm terminal velocities > 0.5 m/s fall out quickly includes hail, snow, insect debris, room dust, soot aggregates, coarse sand, gravel, and sea spray Medium-size particles - in the range 1 to 100 μm sedimentation velocities greater than 0.2 m/s settles out slowly includes fine ice crystals, pollen, hair, large bacteria, windblown dust, fly ash, coal dust, silt, fine sand, and small dust Small particles - less than 1 μm falls slowly, take days to years to settle out of a quiet atmosphere. In a turbulent atmosphere they may never settle out

not ideal but ok and much quicker Seems to dry ok in the boxes but make sure they are the ones with gaps between the slats and mine are stored in an open front shed with plenty of wind but sheltered from rain. Yes the whole branch approach is quicker and very satisfying to watch but I found that if I have the whole thing set up with the Little Grey Fergie running at idle so it stalls rather than breaks the shear bolt on a harder bit of wood and runs the unit in a peaceful way both in chopping and sound. Then have a box load of branches stacked ready and pointing the right way, two of us, me left handed and the other right handed can fill a box in no time which saves a bit of petrol and wear on the tractor and logger. You also can put more loggings in the box or the sacks if you have no light weight springy twiggy bits taking up the space which also might annoy customers if you were trying to sell them. If you try the plastic mesh sacks you will find these twiggy bits become caught in the net which is really annoying

Need to find good lengths of Ash/beech/ sycamore and take out the twiggy bits and grade them 4 inches down to 2 inches or near. I gave up with the bags and now put them in a one ton wooden potato box and scoop them out with a coal scuttle. Great for starting the fire or revitalising if it has died down. I thought people might go for them if they were put in paper bags and stitched like the charcoal bags, 5 or 10 kg which would keep the wives happy as they could lift them and no debris would fall out on the way to the stove and they could just be shoved straight on and the bag would act as a firelighter. Needless to say I have been too idle to try and market this idea at the local garages but I need someone to do the trial for me!

This letter was in the Telegraph last week from two surgeons who said they had not worn masks for twenty years as in trials it had shown no benefit and may have caused harm in some patients post op

I welded up some little hooks that slide over the Stein uprights and I hook a builders bag on which is 1000 litres. from the look of the Stein bag in the photo I would suggest it is more like 750 litres, maybe 500 litres but certainly more than 60 litres which is the same size as our garden sprayer!

Used to be able to exchange a joint for a kiss and a cuddle and maybe more in the good old days PM (pre marriage!) Not sure what an eighth of a consummation means in practice though

You are soooo old fashioned Stubby!

Another brilliant example of no joined up handwriting is our Japanese import Volvo RHD which has a speedo in KPH but fuel consumption is measured in a slightly more logical Km/litre rather than the stupid litres/100km in Europe. The former system becomes much easier to read as economy improves whereas the latter starts to go into small fractions.