Billhook

I think you are right and the whole branches would take ages to dry anyway. I see that hand held bag stitchers are between £150 and£250 on ebay. so must have a good market to make it worthwhile How big do you think the bags should be and how much to ask for them. I suppose the bags themselves will cost about 25p so you would need to sell a pounds worth at least.

Ok to take this further in another bit of Billhook lateral thinking. There are three things that are certain. Death, Taxes and Change. I propose a system that would have to rely on smart cards to automatically send say 1% to the government on every transaction and take cash out of the equation. Every transaction would be taxed but at this very low rate Hopefully people would find this so small that they would not try to avoid paying it and because of the large amounts of one per cent transactions taking place and the total collection without the need for checks and accounts people would be happier to pay and maybe more tax would be raised. If one per cent turned out not to be enough it could easily be pushed up but hopefully still kept at such a low level that people would not mind. A little and often drip drip effect. So the producer pays 1% on all his raw materials and then when he sells his product on up through the chain to the super market and final customer each pays 1% on each transaction. There would be no claiming back of tax to take out a raft of current bureaucracy which makes the current system so inefficient. Any perceived inequalities on poorer people would be rectified by the benefits system. Big flaw in my system is what to do with all the out of work VAT officers, tax collectors and accountants!

As a farmer I have never liked the subsidies we receive as they are just bribes to keep us under their thumb. They make us unpopular with the public and do not reflect the real cost of food production. An alien looking down at this country and many others would be appalled at the obesity epidemic which is followed by a massive bill from the NHS for diabetes, new hips , new knees, stress and much else. Food is so cheap that nobody values it in the way they should.. A chicken should not cost £2.25 http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/lidl-price-comparison/Fresh_Poultry/Sainsburys_British_Whole_Chicken_135Kg.html so just the breast meat is cut off and the rest thrown away. Bread should not be 35 pence a loaf as seen in our local Sainsbury, in fact they bake bread just to give the aroma to make people feel hungry so they buy more and then throw it away at the end of the day. Best before dates need to be stopped. All food needs the decimal point shifting one to the right, farmers would not need a subsidy, people would be more healthy and there would be less pressure on the NHS and food would be valued, Win win situation Except for the politicians who would be sacked if they dared increase the emotive issue of food price.

Well you can mould statistics to back up whatever policy you want to pursue, and there are so many different pollutants here from particulates to NO2 to CO to CO2 all with different properties. My own scientific research comes from my parents sitting in front of uncontrolled open wood fires for about 90 years, not to mention my father's lifetime of stubble burning, farm bonfires and filthy black diesel engine smoke. Both parents died at nearly ninety years of age and it was not from lung problems. I am not saying that these matters do not need to be addressed, just a sense of proportion. Every time you they send a bombing mission to some far off land, how much pollution does that create compared to all the traffic pollution. How much pollution is created by all the military manoeuvres as a percentage of all pollution? They have done a good job so far with traffic in London in particular. Back in the 1970s the air there used to sting your eyes and pea soup fogs were common all over the country. I do not think I have seen such fogs for over twenty years, the kind where you have to ask a passenger to walk in front to find the kerb!

There are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics! Conclusion PM10 and NOx emission analysis for London shows that the majority of emissions originate from road transport and other forms of transport. In urban centres like London, only 3-4% of air quality emissions stem from “other fuels”, and it is unclear how much of the “other fuels” related emissions can be attributed to wood heating. Measurement programmes show that the emissions related to wood burning mainly originate from garden waste burning, patio wood burners, and “decorative or secondary heating source”; and government data show that most of the decorative/secondary heating sources in London are open fires.

Perfect, thanks for that. So transport 50% wood heat 3% about what I suspected

Can someone find a chart which shows the percentage of each different particulate pollution in the uk. I just have this feeling that although it is a good direction to go, to try and filter diesel fumes and wood smoke, or burn the correct material at the correct temperature, there may be more pollution every time half a dozen Euro fighters take off from our local RAF airbase, with full afterburner, than all the wood stoves in this county put together

They seem to make a big fuss about wood smoke and yet fireworks, especially at New Year which create a toxic cloud over most of Europe seem to be ignored. Politicians can virtue signal their green credentials by criminalising wood stoves and wood producers, but they have not enough courage to ban fireworks. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38495564

Synchronicity more likely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity

Me Too! Father Christmas bought me a pair of Fiskars left handed (proper) scissors. Processed a whole load of junk mail for the wood stove. Just need a left handed chainsaw and a left handed X27. I am not joking about the axe, well not the axe but the axe holster which is designed for a right hander and you would not understand if you are right handed. Looks as though the Fiskars knife is right handed as well with the serrations down the wrong side for me.

I thought that considering the amount of metal, hydraulics and automation that the result was disappointingly slow. I could certainly process faster with my "manual" Palax Combi with timber up to 12 inches and keep a bit warmer! A lot of the end product seemed to be far too big to sell to the normal firewood market. I thought that it was ridiculous to have two men employed moving logs by hand rather dangerously into the splitter with so much automation all around in the first machine. They did not seem to be actuating the splitter themselves which seemed very dangerous The second machine's operator looked as though he might be fairly cold after an hour or two and the third machine was painfully slow

Just came in from the cold to do some boring office book work. Using the last of the wretched plastic net bags which have the additional problem that rats seem to love them! Lit the Clearview 500 and in no time the room was warm as toast. Only trouble was I fell asleep before I finished the accounts!

They are too quick at 540 rpm, they need to be run at near idle speed so it stalls the tractor on a knotty branch. (Very rare)

Yes I think that the paper of the paper bag would act as a fire lighter as I do not like the idea and expense of dropping fire lighters into each bag. I must do some experiments.

We have been using the loggings from our Remec RP150 mainly Ash and Sycamore. Like Woodworks I found the plastic net bagging very unsatisfactory on my old SM70 Urban which was stolen. I tried to flog the bags around the village but the main complaint was the mess they made and the fiddle of making the loggings come out of the bag. They were also too heavy for women to lift. And they were a faff to fill and tie and stack at my end. The RP 150 was a lot cheaper being pto driven and works well with the little Grey Fergie which seems to have enough torque at just over idle will stall at that speed rather than break the shear pin. We use the loggings from a bulk container hauled out with a tubular scuttle rather than a tapering scuttle. They are brilliant for starting the stoves and running the one in the office. But I would like to make people buy them off me and I was thinking of putting them in a small paper sack, like a potato sack weighing nearer 10 to 15 pounds which I could seal with a hand stitching machine. The customer could just chuck the whole bag on the stove and light the paper and so have a firelighter and kindling all in one.. There is no doubt in my mind that the loggings burn very well and are a great way to start and gee up a fire. They also seem to last longer than you expect and produce a carpet of red hot coals. The problem is that the wood would need to be dry before it was paper bagged but that should not be too much of a problem with a bit of planning. Anybody have any better ideas? I think we need to sort this out together and create a market. Go and have a few beers and make that grey matter do some work!

If you can watch this without feeling sick you should be ok.!

By 'eck! This is a bit different to my system! I do think there is something special about actually handling all the logs and boards, and feeling the saws cut the wood and much more satisfaction with the end product each time you sit on it, eat off it or walk on it. This system has cost a few jobs no doubt but we had better become used to it for when the robots take over!

So we have had wind and water and now steam!

New Brunswick, Canada

They remind me of sex as you grow older, it goes slower and slower as you run out of wind!

I thought that it was strange not to have an automatic speed control on the sails. The guy seemed to have to stop the drive and run up a ladder to adjust something. On the windmills around here they have a pair of arms with large cast iron balls on the end which fly open with centrifugal force as the wind speed increases. These are linked to the shutters in the sails which open and slow the sails down. Very odd not to have a fan tail to turn the sails into the wind. In the days before fantails the miller had to turn the post mills by hand, so he had to be there most of the time. Perhaps the prevailing wind was SW and the site was such that there was not enough windpower from other directions so it was pointless to turn it.? Interesting piece about the wet wood

I was wondering the same thing. Any expert opinions out there?

Sorry if it has been posted before, still worth watching twice!

We have an ancient TPO on some large Holly trees in our garden. Some 18 inches at chest height. Also in our herb garden, which is very warm and sheltered, I planted a Lemon Verbena herb. This should never have grown more than a couple of feet but against the wall of the house it has turned into a tree higher than the garage roof and at least three inches at chest high! Apparently it does grow into small trees in South America. I have always protected it against frost when smaller.