Billhook

So what songs do you like to play with that set up?

Well that does surprise me as you are normally well ahead.

Our hawthorn hedges seem to be very late to come into leaf this year here in Lincolnshire. Hardly any leaves showing

On a more positive note, there were three of these leather chairs dumped in one of our fields and rather than pay the £200 I took them down to the log cabin where they are fine. They are tidy and comfortable enough to relax in but not so good that I am bothered about mice chewing them, or people sitting in them with their muddy boots on.They actually go quite well with the poplar logs and copper beech floor.

Watford seem to have found a good solution!

My only real success was a few years ago. There is a layby on another quiet lane which had a continuous dumping problem. The council put up a sign saying "Strictly No Dumping, Maximum Fine £20,000" One day I discovered a heap of porno mags placed right under the sign. Of course I needed to examine them for evidence! However in this case the evidence was there in the form of a local man's name and address, printed on an envelope subscribing to the mag. Called the local council officer who came out and agreed with me how important it was to look through the mags in case of other evidence! Went away and said he would deal with it and I expected to hear nothing more. However a local man was named and fined £200 for littering and it was in the local paper a couple of months later. My only regret was that the paper never mentioned the nature of the material in the litter!

I agree Peasgood, I just meant that it would have been slightly less inconvenient to have it in a gateway because cars are now becoming stuck in the very wet verge. I have had sofas. armchairs, brick rubble and general waste dumped in the fields as well as a great number of cars over the years, some burnt out. They seem to have almost solved the car problem by presumably making it worthwhile to trade in, or the owners more traceable. In the same way I hope the proposed deposit system on plastic works as well as it did on the old Coke bottles. Can someone not come up with a scheme to reward recycling of garden waste and trimmings? It must be cheaper than sending people out to clear up stuff in the middle of the road.

Previous sin. Had the whole of the wide verge to dump it, but still puts it in the middle of the road.

Rudyard Kipling at his best. My first Airedale pup in 1982 lived for sixteen years. The only dog I have never had to train by repetition. Just to show her something once was enough. Devastated after having to make the final dreadful decision ( why do they never die quietly in their sleep?) I went out straight away and bought the two Airedale sisters as pups, the two on my avatar in front of the dozer. It seemed like a good decision as the old dog seemed to come back to life again in the two pups. The last one of those two died a couple of years ago, again aged sixteen and I am still so upset that I cannot bring myself to buy another and go through it all again.

This is becoming a regular occurrence around here. If they have to do it because they are charged at waste disposal centres could they not just back into a field gateway, why tip in the middle of the lane? The last time it was a load of hedge trimmings, this time turf complete with fence posts.

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.