Billhook

44 minutes ago, KateH said:

I don’t understand about the gravel. A mouse with a sense of humour? The waders is proper karma though 😂

Not only the gravel in the bag, but all that gravel in the tray.  Did he mistake them for nuts?  Perhaps he was just nuts!  (Must have been a He , a She would never have done it!)

Just thought I would add some photos 

I can understand a mouse putting a supply of nuts in a place for Winter but I cannot understand why it would take the gravel into the bag.   There must have been ten pieces a of gravel all taken through a tiny hole which seems to be an unnecessary struggle.

At our log cabin down by the lake , I had hung up a pair of chest waders on a nail, ready for use the following year.  When I came back to use them, my foot would not go into the left hand boot.  I took them off and shook them and a whole load of peanuts came out, stolen from the bird feeder.  This I can understand.  
But the little barsteward had the last laugh as I waded out through the thick mud, which was very slow going.

I suddenly felt a chill around my important parts and realised the waders were slowly filling with very cold water.

Because oh f the sludge it took me some time to reach the bank and found that the little fella had made a hole right in that vulnerable place out of sight. It was probably having a laugh from the comfort of the cabin saying “that’ll teach ya for nicking my emergency supply!”

1 hour ago, Haironyourchest said:

Good story. Fascinating about the gas symptoms returning every year. Was it around the anniversary of the injury then? 

Not sure, he died some time ago and it was only from something my father said and I just assumed it was a symptom of mustard gas but I have just looked it up on google which says

I was at a neighbour’s wood yard yesterday and a couple of spaniels came out barking.  I calmed them down by offering them a Baker’s Allsort from a packet I keep in the glove box in my car.

I opened the small glovebox and could not understand why it was half full of pea gravel.  I opened the Allsort package and it too was half full of pea gravel and there was a small hole at the bottom where presumably a mouse or vole had been swapping a delicious Allsort for a bit of gravel

 I then reminded myself of a time when I was about six years old and I was in a lot of trouble.  We had a dear old gardener called Ernie who was a staff car driver in WW1.  He was gassed poor chap and not many people know that the symptoms came back every year, bit like malaria, and his faced turned black and he was bedridden for a couple of weeks.  He was never much good as a gardener, but father took him in as his own father, my grandfather, had been wounded at Arras and had to have his leg amputated, so generally there was a lot of sympathy for victims of that War.

Of course aged six I knew nothing of that, but what I did know was that Ernie hung his old brown coat up in the tool shed.  One day I spied a packet of sweets sticking out of a pocket and on further investigation they turned out to be my favourite pear drops!  Not content with stealing his pear drops, after taking one I replaced it with a worm!  I do not know what possessed me to do this as I liked Ernie.  He used to tell me stories about the trenches and one time he went to sleep in a bunker and woke up to find that a rat had crawled up inside his trousers and was nice and warm on top of his thigh!  He than graphically described how he eased it down his trousers but why he never just gave it a Karate chop I’ll never know!

But I digress.  There was only one possible culprit and when confronted by Ernie and father I had to confess.  Father gave me a choice of being beaten or going without sweets for a month and I chose to be beaten, but he never did beat me in the end.

So I think Ernie’s spirit has entered the mouse and exacted revenge!

Any which way but lose (my hinge and it fell on the house)

Gone with the Wind (in the wrong direction!)

What causes this, fungus? stress?

11 hours ago, Bolt said:

For some reason, there’s something about that that reminds me of my great aunt Edith.

Was she a bit of a beech?

Perhaps one day there will be some lovely slabs for someone from this apparently healthy beech growing in a small meadow

Just going to jump start the original question from Conor

My mother would not let father use his airgun in the house to shoot mice for the damage it might cause, so he started having some success with matchsticks instead of lead pellets.  You might have some success with small hard seeds coated with heavy grease

3 minutes ago, william127 said:

Did see this on Facebook earlier, looks promising👍

mmmm I need to think about that one!

4 minutes ago, william127 said:

For the amount I do, no, its not worth it at the moment. Always open to ideas though👍

The best I could come up with are the spring tines on the front of my splitter which take quite a bit out before filling a box

1 hour ago, william127 said:

I made a useful brash/bonfire rake bucket out of a similar bucket, didn't work at all until I cut the front spikes  back.

Works out for logs, but doesn't really clean anything off them like I hoped, so I still use the bigger, easier to fill normal bucket 😒

Have you come up with an idea for a cleaner?

2 hours ago, GarethM said:

Why not just cut the ends off the spikes and plate it. Turns an old bucket into something useful as new buckets of that size aren't cheap

Not a bad idea, perhaps I could just make a removable shoe to cover them

Well it seemed such a good idea, but it was a failure.  The tines grabbed a split log and prevented any more flowing over to fill the bucket.  An identical sized grain bucket filled up to the top with no trouble.  To make matters worse, even with a half bucket, vigorous shaking with the hydraulics caused precisely no bits and pieces to fall out!  Back to the drawing board!

Better examine these machines

Thanks for all the maths though, I am sure it will be useful to someone at some time in the future!

Just had another measure and it seems to come to 1.977. Cubic metres which seems a bit too big compared to the one in the photo

Hope some of you can read my diagram which was written in the rain in the yard with a builder’s pencil on a scrappy bit of paper!

So Stubby, bearing in mind that I have my lie detector switched on.  When you stop for a break in the middle of some arb work, and you scratch your bum, do you sniff your finger afterwards?!

Still not worth picking it up after you have dropped it in a communal shower!

I was watching the cross examinations of FBI leaders in the Senate and their obvious lies by saying they were not told or aware of things they were asked about;  I then saw this fun interview with Stuart Hogg, Scottish rugby player all done in fun but serious all the same and thought how much time and money would be saved if we wired all politicians up, in fact all witnesses.

Trying to overcome the lifting/picking up problem I find the Portek has its place especially when cutting smaller pieces for the Aduro stove.  This Mk 1 version was really good but was stolen and the Mk 2 that replaced it with insurance money is not as good and does vibrate occasionally so I wear thick gloves.  Rapalaman seems to have had the same issue