Billhook

The Power of the Dog THERE is sorrow enough in the natural way From men and women to fill our day; And when we are certain of sorrow in store, Why do we always arrange for more? Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware Of giving your heart to a dog to tear. Buy a pup and your money will buy Love unflinching that cannot lie Perfect passion and worship fed By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head. Nevertheless it is hardly fair To risk your heart for a dog to tear. When the fourteen years which Nature permits Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits, And the vet's unspoken prescription runs To lethal chambers or loaded guns, Then you will find - it's your own affair, - But ... you've given your heart to a dog to tear. When the body that lived at your single will, With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!), When the spirit that answered your every mood Is gone - wherever it goes - for good, You will discover how much you care, And will give your heart to a dog to tear! We've sorrow enough in the natural way, When it comes to burying Christian clay. Our loves are not given, but only lent, At compound interest of cent per cent, Though it is not always the case, I believe, That the longer we've kept 'em, the more do we grieve; For, when debts are payable, right or wrong, A short-time loan is as bad as a long - So why in - Heaven (before we are there) Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

At the time there were schemes with funding to train local people in various rural activities and I had to do the paperwork and assemble a team which proved to be quite easy. The poplar I owned anyway and it needed thinning so apart from my own time it cost very little in monetary terms. I was looking for a use for the timber since nobody smokes any more, butane lighters came in and the match industry collapsed. A friend had been living in Oregon and told me of log cabins out there being built of white poplar and that there was a log built church out there over 100 years old I was well aware of poplar's tendency to rot when in contact with the ground so there about two and a half feet of air beneath the floor and there are no signs of rot after 17 years The decking was made of Turkey oak, another wood that benefits from being off the ground and the floor of the cabin was not ash as I said but copper beech which has also lasted well. Give Dan Franklin @ woodenways a call and I am sure he will give you an idea of the cost.

I built the cabin pictured in photos one and three on Dan's website. He came up with a team in 2001 and we built it with the full scribe method in about ten days out of some large poplar planted in 1960 We are in an AONB, so I called out an officer from the local council to have a look. Because it was in a remote place on the farm and not visible from anyone's dwelling, not to be used as a dwelling, because it was sitting on six huge lumps of sandstone (I did insulate the poplar from the stone with a bit of damp proofing which has proved to be effective) with no services water/electric and because no nails were used in the construction so in theory it could be taken apart like a bit of Lego it was deemed to be a temporary structure and I asked him to confirm this in writing. There has never been an issue with it in the last 17 years. I made the floor from ash from the farm cut into planks by the Lucas Mill. http://www.woodenways.com/log-cabins

Androcles and the lion comes to mind. You never know one day you may be threatened by muggers and this happens! https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/butler-county/oxford/deer-scares-off-womans-attacker

More like "Barber's Folding Hit the Deckchair!"

That is a good idea. I was interested that he seemed to need to turn the logs a certain way. Perhaps the pine is easier to split than my hardwoods but it would be cheap for me to have a go. The JCB has a lot of force when the dipper is pulled in and I have a heavy duty trenching bucket which I do not use so I could cut the back out of it and sharpen both leading edges and have a double blade! I could just try that first to see if there is enough power and then put an extra hydraulic service and build the log grab if it looked promising.

It is a combination of balance in that the dozer blade, which must weigh a couple of tons on its own, is well forward and the hitch point is well down so that there is no lift at the front when the pulling starts. Also it is a very long stroke engine and each of the four cylinders is three and a half litres which means a massive amount of torque can be fed in gently at low revs. The two tractors wheels were spinning not only because of lack of weight and lack of traction, but also because their maximum torque came in at higher rpm.

Brilliant! I have a 360 and could easily do this. I was thinking of using the Matbro teleporter to do the same by retracting the ram but it is not strong enough. Was this a home made device or are they commercially available?

The great advantage of this if it works is that I could position the log and the two halves to be split into quarters with the Matbro and then take these quarters to the log deck and Palax. No human lifting! i am not sure how ram hydraulic tonnage equates with bulldozer tonnage. All I know is that a New Holland TF46 combine had dropped a front wheel into a spring hole one harvest. The land around the spring was bone dry. The contractor had two 150 hp Masseys four wheel drive on two chains trying to pull him out backwards All eight wheels of the tractors were spinning plus the two combine wheels and there was no progress. The contractor asked if Daisy Etta could help. I said that there was only one way to find out Received quite a bit of good humoured verbal abuse from the tractor drivers. "If three hundred horsepower and eight wheels cannot do it you are wasting your time with that old heap of scrap" etc etc Put the chain on, engaged first gear slowly pulled back the clutch lever. There was a low growl from the 14litre Cat engine and not a hint of track slipping and the combine popped out like a champagne cork! One of the tractor drivers nearly lost his pipe as his mouth opened with astonishment. A mountain of torque at very low revs. Max revs on the engine is about 800.

I think I have nearly every weapon at my disposal! I have two Stihl log picks and I use the small one for picking split pieces out of the one ton box to take to the stove, for that it is excellent. The larger pick with the long handle I have hardly used and you are right and I probably should have tried it on this occasion. One implement I use a lot is the Woodchuck peavey which is not only good for rolling large logs but also for standing them up off the ground for chainsawing rings. However there are three things that I wish to build out of interest, if I can find the time. First the log splitter mounted on the Matbro back plate like the skid steer one on the previous page. I already have the length of H section with a couple of sharpened dozer blades welded and a large JCB ram Secondly I need to have another go with the cone splitter and a different hydraulic motor Thirdly for the hell of it I want to drop another dozer blade vertically in some box section that has been well concreted in the ground, put a large diameter 30 foot long log up to the blade perhaps a couple of guides to keep the log straight. Next attack from the rear with Daisy Etta, 17 tons of Caterpillar D7 C 17A Dozer. Somethings gotta give, I'm not sure quite what at the moment!

No I never heard that word whilst growing up, I meant more like "Don't be hard on granpa cos you'll be grumpy like him one day when all your joints hurt and you cannot do the things you used to do"

Yep, we are now the people our parents used to warn us about!

I think that you could use the axe to stop the lights being irritating and the saw might help with making the shower work, not sure about the usb charger though!

I think I can work that one out! The trouble is firstly how do you know which control turns the water on and off, and secondly which direction it will go, and thirdly what does the little button on top of the left control do? All these decisions to make when all I want is a simple bath at the end of a hard day's work. I do not want to think about problems, just relax! It is things like this that convert me from be just a grumpy old git, into a megagrumpanoid!

I did cut the rings into the teleporter bucket and slid them sideways onto the table with a bit of tilt, but even the one shown needed two of us to manoeuvre it into position as it was so heavy. I would not be wanting to do that all day long! With your mid height table you have still a lot of bending to pick up the split pieces unless you have a very large table. I also think that the ram on this splitter was so strong that the table needed to be on the floor to stop it bending with the strain of a difficult log.

Here is the splitter having a go at a large awkward round. Is this slow for this sort of work compared to others?

I am sixty five years old and it sounds as though you are nearer thirty five! " Just knock them down to size with a chainsaw" means bending down tilting them on edge, wedging them somehow so they do not move followed by more chainsawing whilst bending followed by humping the pieces into the Palax hopper. It is the bending and lifting all day long that is so hard as you age. I have the lifting and sawing machinery with the Teleporter and the Lucas Mill, neither requires any lifting. I have a few awkward logs in the yard which are not worth putting through the Lucas and I just borrowed this blacksmith built splitter to see how it performed. It was harder work than I thought and I will not be building on like it However I will have a go at building a horizontal splitter to fit on the Teleporter backplate like this one Of course he needs to split it over a box or crate!

Hook up a cattle electric fencer to the vehicle.

Look, you lot may be into Miss Whiplash and Arbdungeon pain, but I have enough of that in a day's work! All I ask for at the end of the day is a lovely relaxing soak in a Radox bath with another chapter of a book to read. I do not need more pain!

That was not the problem as it stopped turning when it was on the ground. The cone went in to the log and then there was not enough power to drive it in further, or it started to bore a hole rather than go in further to split it. I lifted it up to spin it to try and and release the log by reversing the cone. Hoping to make the log hit another log to let it lose its grip! Either a more powerful hydraulic motor, a different cone, or I need to attack the log from one end or in a different way but I had other things to do at the time and I will experiment more when the weather improves. It did split a more even, knot free log about 10 inches diameter but I can easily put that through the Palax in no time at all. I need one to split large tree trunks

There she is, armed and dangerous! Thought I would start her off on the small stuff!

Yep, that's me! So grumpy that I took this photo Go figure! No on/off, no red symbol and other markings so small that I could not read them without my glasses which of course I was not wearing

Stayed in a hotel last night and had a bath. The control identification for hot and cold were non existent and the direction for shower or bath the same. So I managed to have scalding hot water on my scalp instead of nice warm water in the bath. Venturing to the basin to clean my teeth there are no symbols on the single lever tap to identify hot and cold. You are meant to assume I suppose that all hot water is on the right side or right tap, but I stayed in Italy where it was the other way round. I see this everywhere now and in some places they have a red and blue dot. So you my turn the tap to the right in the direction of the red dot but now right in front of you is the blue dot and the red one out of vision to the side. You might think it is obvious to feel the water but in some hotels it takes ages for the hot to come through. It really is not too difficult surely to put a static line on the tap stem and a red or blue dot that lines up with the line when you move the lever. I have such a tap on my shower here at home. You would have thought with 'Elf an Safety everywhere this might be a priority. Rant over (I think!)

I'm still hurting!

I tried fitting a cone splitter on my posthole digger on the front of the Matbro but it was not successful. (I blame the driver¬) In reality I used an old track motor from another swing shovel and it may have seen better days Either the hydraulic motor was tired or the cone was not good enough. I do have a 15 ton 360 so it would still be an option as I was impressed with some youtube videos.