Billhook

You forgot ex wives

I used to love having a bonfire of the brash in the woods on a cold Winter;s day, but since we are a farm and a commercial unit, it is not allowed without an environmental exemption I used to really enjoy stubble burning, not just for the benefit of needing less cultivations and sprays, but I appreciate it needed stopping as it was antisocial. Surely fireworks cause more pollution than wood burning stoves I appreciate that kids love them, but it is mainly kids who are leading the extinction rebellion and perhaps banning fireworks would be a good way to demonstrate how serious they are.

It certainly would make the people who slap the TPO on, think a little more carefully about the consequences

I see that the German environmentalists are going for a ban. German environmentalists urge fireworks ban in urban areas WWW.DW.COM The ban on fireworks would affect cities like Berlin, Munich and Cologne, and would be implemented to protect... They have calculated that 5000 tons of particulate dust were released within a few hours around midnight, equivalent to 16% of the emissions from vehicles for the whole year Last year my wife and I endured New Years Eve in Denmark and it was as if World War three had broken out. A pall of smoke hung over the small town near Copenhagen and people were throwing fireworks under cars in the street. If you add up all the particulates worldwide...........???? Look at Sydney, a very insensitive display in front of all those people who have lost loved ones, their homes with the fires. Fairly irresponsible in such a dry time. Surely we need to ban fireworks before we start banning gas and wood stoves? Bit of joined up handwriting needed methinks. Personally I am fed up with them, I might have been awed by the first site of a full display twenty years ago, but it is now a bit like going to see your favourite movie for the twentieth time. Even Crocodile Dundee becomes tiresome! A lot of terrified animals, a lot of people taken to hospital, a lot of people trying to sleep disturbed. I won't miss them.

I had the same idea to split a tree down to a size that will go through the Palax, about 10 inches diameter. Impressive as the old Cat D7 is in splitting this sycamore, I found that there is little control over the split and the tree will follow the grain leaving bigger diameter bits which need quite a bit of faffing about to bring down to size. A nice straight bit of Ash may be better and I will post a video of that when we come to a piece which is buried beneath a heap of logs at present. If unsuccessful I may revert to the Lucas Mill to cut up a big tree into long lengths of 8"x 8"

Been sawing wood all day and singing "It's all about the blade , bout the blade, no trouble" whilst thinking of a night out on the town with those three. Also just re-read Orwell's 1984 and realised that it would be a thought crime, then realised how close we are to that story with our own "Newspeak" "Thought police" "Hate Speech" and cameras watching our facial expressions on every corner.

More than one it seems

Are you sure? You haven't heard me sing!

Only happens once a year at Christmas

Looking forward to your video Stubby!

Well I have seen it happen several times and I bet many others on this forum have, One moment a song thrush is listening for worms in the middle of the lawn and the next second all that is left is a cloud of feathers. They attack the tits on my bird feeder as well. Sparrow hawks are only a small part of the picture. Birds and their young have to avoid carrion crows, magpies, jackdaws, jays, kestrels owls and now buzzards and red kites as well as cats, foxes, squirrels, weasels, stoats and rats. The old "due to modern intensive farming methods" is becoming a bit tired now. I was fully organic for ten years, which I admit would have been a loss but for the subsidy. I saw no increase in wildlife on the farm, in fact the reverse due to the increase of the aforementioned. We are much less intensive now even after returning to conventional farming , much more selective and accurate with chemicals which are themselves more thoroughly tested and have not used an insecticide for years.

Tis a strange world we live in, especially one which demonises chemicals. Both salt (NaCl) and Acetic Acid (CH3COOH) are chemicals. Salt is a good example of one that without it we would die and too much of it we will die. CO2 is the latest one yet without it all life would cease. Glyphosphate is one of the least harmful to the environment if used correctly which is why it can be used in waterways, or at least could be for many years. We allow housewives to pour neat chlorine down their sinks and loos in un metered quantities, use all kinds of harsh oven cleaners and general worktop cleaners. We drink water with fluorides and chlorine in them and we swim in highly chlorinated public pools. We pour petrol and oil into our vehicles, we use gas and oil for heating and cooking, and coal of course. All chemicals.. It is a fine balance between the harm and the good. One of the best examples was DDT, now everyone knows how bad that insecticide was because it went into the food chain and eventually killed the raptors, the crows, the hawks etc. But that meant when I was a child in the 1960s that our garden was full of small birds, thrushes were out in the middle of the lawn. Now the sparrow hawks have cleaned most of them up but the loss of small birds is blamed on farmers using chemicals bizarrely. More serious was the use of DDT in places like Egypt where people starved due to locust plagues. DDT was administered at the flightless stage by thousands of people armed only with buckets of DDT and a small leafy branch. This saved thousands of lives. Worse than that was the banning of DDT just before it had nearly wiped out the malaria carrying mosquitoes which have now killed millions. Roundup was actually put in a glass and the head of Monsanto drank it neat to demonstrate how benign it was. It is all a delicate balance as I said but I do not think people quite understand the consequences of banning it in farming. It may make it impossible to grow Winter Wheat due to blackgrass infestation. Not only would this increase the use of more harmful chemicals or increased use of tractors and cultivation and more burning of fossil fuels, but this would also mean very much reduced yields in a world where the population is increasing.

Very Christmas spirited of you to give Jeremy Corbyn a lift!

I was going to gusset it with some angled, sharpened triangles but in the end I could not be bothered thinking it may be mild steel but it is four pieces of half inch mild steel.. I tend to learn by my mistakes!

Another demonstration of the massive forces involved with the D7 and the knife There are four pieces of half inch by three inch bar that were bent when the log went sideways

Some of us have less hair than we used to have!

Glad to hear your warm comments Simon,I thought I was alone in my classic machine madness. The D7C is not fitted with the turbo of the D7D, but that is fine with me as I can do without dealing with a sixty year old turbo engine. I had a catastrophe when the Beast from the East hit us. Daisy Etta was in an open fronted shed surrounded by one ton boxes of wood and sheltered from the prevailing wind and the sky. I forgot to drain the water and the freezing temperatures cracked the block, the water pump and the starting engine cylinder head. My Fiat Panda was sitting outside on top of the hill fully exposed with no antifreeze and was unaffected. I had to send the old girl back to Robert Wilson for an expensive engine swap, ouch! But it is running a lot better than the old one and it is the only expense I have had in 20 years

We have several specimen trees in the old parkland which was ploughed up during the war for the much needed food for the nation My father kept all the major trees, oaks, ash, hornbeam, beech, chestnut and walnut which I had the pleasure of ploughing, cultivating, drilling and spraying and harvesting around for about forty years, but it all seemed worth it for the wonderful view. In this video an old rotten chestnut stump had sent up some suckers and a willow and thorn had grown together next to it. So Daisy Etta took them out and there is a beautiful hornbeam growing there now. F3B92C46-0A02-4EB5-B158-4F120924887F.MP4

Dangerous territory Sawchip! Have you not heard about the father who took his little daughter to the zoo where she became fascinated with the penguins . So for Christmas he bought her a book on penguins and after she had read it asked her if she had enjoyed it ” it was ok dad, but it told me more about penguins than I wanted to know!” of course there is my Avatar with the two wonderful Airedale’s helping me level the chalk roads on the farm. So a long Christmas shaggy Caterpillar story for you It all started back in the 1960s when my father bought me a book of science fiction short stories . One was called Killdozer by Theodore Sturgeon about a D7 which became overcome by an alien force which entered the very atoms of the machine and then proceeded to try and kill all the civil engineering crew on this island in the Pacific where the Americans were making a runway It was made into a film of the same name which was rather poor and featured a D9 not a D7 When the boss of the civil engineering team was asking the team who drove what, he came to a Mexican who said he drove Daisy Etta. The boss said that was cool because if a man called a machine a pet name then he was likely to care for it. “No, no “said the Mexican, “I drive de siete” which is of course Spanish for D7, but the original name stuck in the book, though of course they could not use it for the film. I bought it in 2000, it had been sitting on an airfield for many years and the story was that the head was cracked as it spewed out water. After buying it I discovered that the reason it was losing water was because someone had blocked up the pressure relief valve with silicone There was no starting engine, just a not very well engineered electric starter which was useless. I asked father and son team Robert and Allan Wilson to find one and they put me right from the start I had already bought some high quality bolts to fix the new donkey on the block but they refused to use them as they were not Caterpillar bolts They then showed me the difference. The Caterpillar heads were about one and a half times deeper but more than that every bit of steel on the D7 has to meet the Caterpillar standard which is why these machines last so long It is a 1956 D7 C. 17A with hydraulics as opposed to cable. The blade had three positions which are easily adjusted by hand as the blade of perfectly balanced There is a two speed gearbox with the donkey/ pony starting engine which is a twin cylinder petrol of about 1400 cc which shares its water with the main 13.5 litre four cylinder diesel. This engine produces maximum power at about 1000 rpm and it has a decompression lever above the high/ low gearbox lever on the donkey The idea is that in Artic conditions, when the oil is cold and thick, you can run the donkey with the main engine decompressed until the oil pressure is normal and then temperature is up. The exhaust of the donkey heats the inlet manifold which is clever. The donkey is strong enough to lift the blade and move the crawler on level ground The Hyster winch has about a thirty to pull In the picture with the levers, the far right is the blade up and down, then the forward reverse, the the five gears. Two hydraulic assisted steering clutches with brake pedals below for turning on a sixpence The main throttle in the centre back to increase forward to idle. The main hand clutch lever then the two winch levers, the nearest is the brake and the other the forward/ neutral/ reverse. Here is a video of spooling a new winch cable on the drum using the Matbro as a dead weight to keep it tight. Warned you it might be more than you wanted to know! 3FC41ABC-BD3B-4A64-82D2-5423F6E56644.MP4

Winch limits both visibility and fitting a plate, also the whole machine is designed for pushing and I rather think reverse gear ratio is higher than forward ratio.

Very interesting reading and thanks for the link We will be probably burnt at the stake for questioning this new religion when the inquisition comes along. If David Attenborough is forced to lie about walrus deaths then we know it is political

Like I said, stop the ones breeding that eat manufactured sugar.