Billhook

It was built so my wife could carry garden tools when the arb trolley was not hitched, but mainly to take the wheelie bin down our long drive to the road which was quite an effort uphill on the way back!

Quite happy with the original Arbtrolley, and although I have the workshop and welding skills, by the time I have faffed about finding the right size steel, measuring, cutting, finding correct centre of gravity, finding the right axles and puncture free tyres, bearings, wheels, drawbar , paint, it would come nearly to the price of a new Arbtrolley even with my labour at minimum wage! i found it necessary to make four simple slide on tubes with hoops for the big bags i did weld up a small detachable drawbar for the little Stiga mower which happens to be exactly the same width as the trolley. I bought it off eBay without a deck for £120 and it has worked well the trolley also has the little bar just visible under the bag in the photo, which means you can lift a fifty gallon drum quite easily

https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/skegness-why-oh-why.html

We have a 20 radiator system with 4 underfloor heating arrangements. This has increased over the years and is right on the limit for a 30kw gas boiler working in conjunction with a 26kw Aarrow Stratford wood boiler via a Dunsley Baker Neutraliser. To make any wood stove work you obviously need good quality dry, seasoned hardwood. My advice would be to work out the theoretical size of stove you need then double it. This is not only because in the real world it will not manage the advertised output but also the bigger the stove, the bigger the lumps of wood so it will last longer and hopefully through the night so you do not have to draw straws with the missus on who has to go and feed it at 4.00 am!

Nick Mason recording I believe. I fitted it to my burglar alarm system which triggered a CD player linked to a 400 watt PA system in my garage. Frightened the local vicar!

I am sure my first time went something like Her " Well you aren't much good as a lover" Me " How can you tell that in ten seconds?"

Very envious as you have all the old cars (and pretty ladies) at the Festival of Speed and Revival. Too far for me I am afraid but we are near Coningsby and see the BBMF and near East Kirkby which has a Lancaster "Just Jane" which does taxi runs. There is a museum there and they also have a "Pistons and Props" every year and the Mustangs are a regular feature. I think this was a father and son double take off and it blew my hat off then blew my chair away when I went to pick up my hat. Harvard first followed by the two Mustangs! Spine tingling!

Well done Maria! Takes a lot of courage to do that. I had a bit of Dutch courage before I was forced by some "friends" to go down the Cresta (from the beginners halfway point not the top!) Still came out on the Shuttlecock bend several times and ended up in the straw. Lt Colonel Digby Willoughby (sounds like a cartoon character!) then played the Beatles "I wanna hold your hand" over the tannoy. Eventually made it round to charge down the finishing straight. Never measured the speed just the time but I do remember that we were going so fast that you only needed to turn your head in the direction you wanted to go and the slipstream off your helmet pushed you over to that side. We wore metal knuckle plates to protect our hands from the ice wall but I see you wisely had your hands behind you.

Where do you hear that, Duxford? Here are a couple more from my excursion in Florida at Kissimmee in 1992 with Lee Lauderback up front (thank goodness!) Cockpit view of that take off then touch and go at Winterhaven. Was not quite expecting that vertical take-off and stomach somewhat left behind! Not too noisy in the cockpit, better sound to the folk on the ground I think.

I am also practising hard to play like Luca Sestak, I think it may take a little time!

Current ear worm Nils Lofgren

Never knew what a Nantucket Sleighride was until I watched the Great White Whale film recently! Love Leslie West, huge man with such a delicate touch, and such feeling.

Yes, and confirmed in this link, but I am surprised at why it is classified as a conifer. Anyone tell me why? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yew

It seems that the official definition of soft wood is any wood from a coniferous tree and hard wood is any wood from a deciduous tree. This does not mean that the wood itself is either hard or soft a quote from the web “There are two types of timber, called hardwood and softwood. These names do not refer to the properties of the wood: some softwoods can be hard and some hardwoods can be soft.” so really it is down to educating people on specific types of timber I would prefer a box full of leylandii to a box full of poplar As we all should know there are good soft woods and bad hard woods. Using the definition above I would classify yew as a hard wood since it is bloody hard and it does not produce cones so is not really a conifer although classified as one. This American list classifies trees into “hard hardwood, soft hardwood, hard softwood and soft softwood.” https://www.shodor.org/succeedhi/succeedhi/weightree/tableHardSoft.htm laurel seems to be classified as a shrub but i have just taken down some very old laurel trees which are very hard and excellent to burn So another factor is climate and soil and how quickly the wood has grown, perhaps the slower growth developing harder wood. As has been mentioned before, it is all about ejukashun! And I am in my sixty fifth year and should be retiring but am still learning, not just a small amount from Arbtalk I might add!

Perhaps you should start bidding in yuan/renminbi to make a point!

But the Zomax ones in my link were £324 for a 50cc!

Thanks for that, I see that they are not cheap when new unless this is also a scam http://dermotcasey.com/product/zomax-4610-chainsaw-16-bar-46cc/

So what model is it in fact?

There are all different kinds of open fires, just as there are different woodburning stoves. When I built my house I built a Rumford open fireplace. I also put two four inch drain pipes under the concrete floor either side to feed air into the room and eliminating draughts. The design not only has a smoke shelf with an air damper flap going across the whole width of the three foot wide fireplace, but also a pair of built in mesh doors to prevent sparks when unattended. In the old farm house my parents had a similar sized open fire but it was totally inefficient and used twice as much wood as the Rumford. My father used to sit by the fire with a rug on one side to shield him from the radiant heat of the fire, and a rug on the other side to protect him from the draught coming in from under the door! I t was like stoking the Bismark and I became grumpy and told him that he would have to fit a wood stove or I would not bring any more wood in. I bought him a Clearview 650 and we stood it on the hearth with a pipe coming out the back into a metal plate which covered the old fireplace. I lit the fire at about six o'clock and went out to play tennis. Left him looking very unhappy and feared the worst on my return. I cautiously poked my head round the door at about eleven and burst out laughing. He was sitting in his vest and underpants. He said that he had gone to sleep and when he woke up he thought that he was in Hell! The stove was very popular after that as it reversed the air flow in the old house and pushed heat into most areas. I would say that the Rumford is about 80% as effective as the wood stove as it heats a large area of the central chimney brickwork. The old Hall fireplace was about 25% as effective as a stove. What is a Rumford Fireplace, Anyway? by Jim Buckley Rumford fireplaces are tall and shallow to reflect more heat, and they have streamlined throats to eliminate turbulence and carry away the smoke with little loss of heated room air. Rumford fireplaces were common from 1796, when Count Rumford first wrote about them, until about 1850. Jefferson had them built at Monticello, and Thoreau listed them among the modern conveniences that everyone took for granted. There are still many original Rumford fireplaces - often buried behind newer renovations-throughout the country. Count Rumford, for whom the fireplace is named, was born Benjamin Thompson in Woburn, Massachusetts in 1753 and, because he was a loyalist, he left (abruptly) with the British in 1776. He spent much of his life as an employee of the Bavarian government where he received his title, "Count of the Holy Roman Empire." Rumford is known primarily for the work he did on the nature of heat. Back in England, Rumford applied his knowledge of heat to the improvement of fireplaces. He made them smaller and shallower with widely angled covings so they would radiate better. And he streamlined the throat, or in his words "rounded off the breast" so as to "remove those local hindrances which forcibly prevent the smoke from following its natural tendency to go up the chimney..." Rumford wrote two papers detailing his improvements on fireplaces in 1796 and in1798.* He was well known and widely read in his lifetime and almost immediately in the 1790s his "Rumford fireplace" became state-of-the-art worldwide. Today, with the extensive restoration of old and historic houses and the renewed popularity of early American and classical architecture in new construction, Rumford fireplaces are enjoying a comeback. Rumford fireplaces are generally appreciated for their tall classic elegance and their heating efficiency. ____________ *Most recently Rumford's two essays on fireplaces have been published in The Collected Works of Count Rumford; Vol. 2; Sanborn Brown, ed.; Harvard Univ. Press; 1969; available in most libraries or through Inter-Library Loan or On Line Version [More Detailed Article] [Other Articles] [More About Count Rumford] Buckley Rumford Fireplaces Copyright 1995 - 2010 Jim Buckley All rights reserved. webmaster

On some ski resorts you can log into a website which tells you all sorts of facts and figures about your skiing holiday and one of those figures is how many vertical metres you had done in the week. I was wondering how many vertical metres you think that you have climbed in twenty one years!

Now you both have made me sad and nostalgic! I went to see Rory Gallagher at the Corn Exchange in King's Lynn in about 1970 and it was amazing how he filled that great room with the sound of his AC30. East of Eden were the support band. So I bought an old AC30 some time in the late 1970s and had some fun with it and the Strat. Unfortunately it was one of the many casualties of my massive 1991 burglary along with the 1968 left hand maple neck sunburst strat. I put my postcode in several hidden places on that guitar hoping that perhaps some guitar repair shop might just inform me. Alas no such identification on the Vox. Aaaaah the warmth of valves and the fullness of analogue!

Local garden centre selling these Now let me see. one twenty foot log, 16 inch diameter cut into three inch deep "steps" 20 x 12 = 240 inches divide by 3 = 80 x £2. = £160 for the log Weyhey, I'm gonna be rich!

Electric single phase (very quiet!)

I bought a 5 ton Portek and was very happy with it. It was really for my wife to use splitting 16 inch long logs of various diameters up to about 2 foot but mostly half that. They needed to be smaller than the ones that come off the Palax processor for the efficient Aduro stove. I took this rather poor video after I welded a frame to fix it to the teleporter bucket so there was little bending It proved to be very quick and effective. I know now to hold the phone camera horizontally ! The Portek was stolen in November so I bought another from Jonesie for about £450 plus VAT This is the seven ton version. Modified control handles are better. Same chassis probably slightly heavier flywheel. It does exactly what I want, again fast and effective. I am a big strong chap, although not as strong as I used to be!. I can wield an X27 axe and split some difficult stuff that have beaten others but this 7 ton Portek can split knotty hardwood that I have given up on with the X27 I would say it is as strong if not stronger than the hydraulic ram on the Palax. I can see I need to make another video to convince doubters!