Billhook

Reminds me of the original Brit Girls thread. "Yer don't look at the mantlepiece when thar's stoking the fire!"

This is the part that I am unclear about. Firstly you state that sense of self is an illusion, and all thoughts are coming from elsewhere, and yet you clearly give us your (individual?) thoughtful opinion on Trump.

Everyone on this thread "seems" to me to be a different individual, with a series of insights and thoughts that I do not think that I could have conceived. So because you all "seem" to be different selves. why should I not be one too?

In that case it is a fine Christmas present!

I enjoyed the Vatican rag The Chemical elements and the New Math were two more favourites

I think that it is a Christmas present as I am sure I have given her ten times the value of the saw in free firewood over the years! It seems to be a heavy barsteward though and quite a lot of compression to start. I assume there is no decompression device but I am big and strong and she is small and weak so it is no wonder it has not been used! I see it has a 59cc engine but I do not know the hp.

Next door neighbour has offered me a Stihl 340. She bought it to deal with a large elm some years ago (over ten?) but found it too much of a handful so it has hardly been used. Still has the original chain unsharpened. 16 inch bar How is the 340 rated?

So what is your biggest fear Se7enthdevil?

May as well use an Oregon Suresharp as I have for the last 20 years. Nothing quicker or easier using the truck cigar lighter

I have vertigo just watching any of these videos Or a helicopter linesman, if the fall don't git ya the electricity will!

This is was surprising video when I put butts and kickbacks on the youtube search engine!

Wot, no safety two handed operation?

But you do have a big lever to raise or lower the blade manually? My Mk 1 you have to undo a bolt which locks the blade and then grab the blade and pull it up or down. I did weld a handle on the nut to at least make that part easier. A hydraulic device would be great but another thing to go wrong. I find that I am now splitting far less timber as the stove burns more evenly and lasts longer with lengths of round unsplit, so the blade spends most of its time off the machine.

Would a bit of copper grease help or increase the danger of working loose? Anti seize sounds good as does the double nut, but I was amazed how easily the bolt undid with not too heavy pressure on the socket bar and not too heavy on the hammer blow.

12 inches for putting through the circular saw and slightly larger if you have a length cut with the chainsaw that you just want to put through the splitter, you have to drop that one straight on the splitter bed. Totally agree with Timbernut concerning blades versus chainsaws. A good blade with sharp tungsten tips goes through 95% of timber like a knife through butter and does not need sharpening as often as a chain. Timbernut has your Mk2 an easy adjuster for the static axe, and if so is it just as easy to remove and replace the static axe?

I don' t know about Andy Cobb and Timbernut, but the reason I have never felt the need for an upgrade from the Mk 1is that I like to feel the force of the saw blade entering the wood, which can be very different on different timber and I do not like the idea of automatic feeds and automatic chainsaw/blade operation. The manual feed is quite easy and keeps me warm enough whereas sitting operating levers or switches does not on these cold frosty days. Also I can put through very bent lengths of timber and because I now operate the splitter ram on a foot pedal rather than the auto lever, I can cut half a dozen say 3 -6 inch diameter logs without the splitting knife and just use the ram to occasionally push them onto the conveyor. In this way the machine is much quicker than the auto ones which need to go through a cycle every time. The additional benefit is that when a log falls sideways into the splitting chamber, which it inevitably does on occasion, then it is easy to straighten. On auto it would be driven sideways into the splitter which stopped the machine and caused a lot of hassle.

It was interesting to watch that series on astronaut training and selection. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b092ng4q There was a very mixed bunch of candidates, ranging from two women pilots to athletes to a gangly looking geek who had a degree in physics I think. you looked at the candidates and you thought that he was the least likely to make it, but he hovered the heliicopter better than the pilots and docked the simulated shuttle perfectly., and he was in the final three and only not chosen because of his close relationship with his family and his young age. But the main thing that came out of it for me was that it was vital according to the man in charge Chris Hadfield, who had been on the space station himself, that the candidate must be able to interact with the other crew and be a positive, uplifting character that you wanted to be around. When they sent the first crew up to the space station they were inevitably alpha males, all brilliant at their tasks but they very nearly or probably actually had fist fights on board because of the intensity of working together as alpha males in such a dangerous environment. Not too dissimilar to arb work where there are a lot of alpha males working in a dangerous environment. My main point here is that if you can make a good impression on your potential new boss and workforce, that you are someone who people want to be around, then you are half way there. I always liked this comment on " I have a lot of experience" "Some people have 1000 different experiences, while others have the same experience a 1000 times!"

Mk 1 has one piece conveyor which has rubber belt, very tall for transport and storage Mk 2 has folding conveyor, revised splitter, and maybe easier adjustment if static knife. Looks like a sorted Mk 1 from the niggles point of view It will all come down to price in the end as the Mk 1 has done everything I needed with no problems since 1996 when I bought it off Jas Wilson for £2500

Kevin has been making more videos!

I was thinking of that as well as I have the old 15 ton JCB swing shovel, just trying to find the easiest option and certainly if it works, a stout static knife with the dozer seems the least amount of welding and cost. Need something to do on boxing day to avoid eating anymore left overs!

That was my original plan, and I bought a JCB ram and some H section and welded another bit of dozer blade, I even have the Matbro brackets ready to weld on but I just thought that it is not big enough for the trunks I want to split. Perhaps it would be a better Idea to experiment with the 17 ton Caterpillar D7 " Daisy Etta" as not much stops that machine from going forwards and I doubt if anything will bend the two ton blade! It would be better to have the Matbro at the side ready to pick up the pieces and set them in place for another go if it works. I will need to make the static vertical knife fairly strong and well supported!

I was thinking of post hole followed by the sharpened dozer blade welded inside a length of box section. Put the box section into the ground and concrete around leaving the sharpened blade sticking up vertically At the base of the blade at ground level I would weld another short stout bit of steel to hold a heavy duty chain in position, Take two lengths of chain back to the teleporter either side of the log and fasten them to the chassis with shackles. The advantage of the chain is that you can try and split any length of log by just shortening the chain. I only need to do this occasionally to split it down to a 12 inch size that will go through the Palax processor. Something should give way, it is a question of what! It may help to weld a short sharp leading triangle on the knife just to start opening up the log. By the way I was trying to work out the tonnage force of the teleporter ram extending in the same way that log splitters are categorised. Is there a formula? The Matbro 270 TS certainly seems to be very powerful pushing itself out of deep wet holes when stuck.

We have TPOs on whole roadside copses by the house, which are in the garden. Full of overgrown Laurel and Elder in between a few nice Holly and Yew. I do not know who put these orders on or what the procedure is. They were placed in the 1980s. Is asking for a review sensible or does it open another can of worms? Is it different in different areas? Can anyone apply to put a TPO on any tree anonymously?

With the benefit of hindsight and looking forward to the new house, is there anything you think you could have done to protect it from wild fires in the way of fire breaks or sprinkler systems or are the fires so intense to make such ideas hopeless. It is not just the work but the love you put into it that makes it such a tragedy. I suppose that it is time to count your blessings in that no one was hurt. Tools and house are replaceable.