cornish wood burner

The ground looks fairly solid in your pictures. Difficult to say for certain but I would think a wood lorry would travel on far worse than that, certainly as we are coming into the summer. Ridged and drag might be an option but as others have said you will need some width at the road entrance. Why not have a word with the haulier and get his opinion. Lot of work to make a stoned track for 150 tonnes. It will make your wood expensive. Even if you have to select a dry period no stone has to be your best and cheapest option. Additionally would you have to tidy up after you?

Our benefit system has a lot to answer for in that respect. When someone on benefit doesn't possess or want a cooker because he can afford to eat out all the time then there is something wrong IMO . Certainly some of the English workers only turn up because they are in danger of losing some of their handouts if they don't. Difficulty recruiting staff was why we originally employed foreign workers. They come over here to earn money so work as many hours as possible. Most work fairly hard but for us the standard is going down. Perhaps they are getting used to the English way.

Company I work for have been employing eastern Europeans for 10 to 15 years as it was difficult to find enough English staff. Early on they were very good but the standard has declined. Without doubt my best two workers by a very long way are English (Cornish). Some Poles etc have learnt to look busy when bosses are around but at the end of the day the two Cornish lads have done a lot more and to a higher standard. Maybe its a Cornish thing.

I dig and pot few seedlings but put most of them on the north side of my house so they just get the full morning and evening sun. My reasoning is less stress if you have disturbed the roots or if you forget to water them. Once established then they go anywhere but acclimatised slowly

Youngster I would say. However there is a story with these pigeons. A couple of years ago one of our regular pigeon visitors could not pitch on her leg, she still limps so easy to track. Last year her mate was caught and eaten by the hawk. So I make limpalot about 4 years old which I think is good age for a pigeon. (I thought average age is 2 years but I could be wrong) So this bird table feed scratching pigeon must be limpalot's toy boy/gofer pigeon. Just like us sending the youngsters up the tree she waits underneath for him to scratch some food down. No point getting older if you don't get wiser even if you are a pigeon.

Thanks Jon. No urgency but we might be looking in the next couple of years.

Hi Steve Do you ever get involved in bigger static plant say 300 Kva?

It is common practice in my maintenance team. If no common sense they do not work for me for long. Life is too short to be working with someone who does not think. For example on a glasshouse roof gutter 110mm wide with a piece of glass 1679x1000 you need a person opposite you can trust. In common with tree work maintenance produces the unexpected.

Totally agree with the last two posts. Common sense probably makes all the difference as to how we view the safety people we deal with. Most I have dealt with are reasonable with good common sense however, the ones that are lacking in that department probably make things worse as everyone reacts against them. Nothing more unsafe than someone thinking about the stupid thing the HS officer has made him do, rather than having his mind on the job.

I've been in engineering for40+ years and worked for companies including the MOD, their suppliers and now currently horticultural maintenance. I have found generally that most in the HS industry are reasonable people. They do need a working knowledge of what is going on to understand the risks but at the end of the day they are there for us. I wonder if Steve is deliberately winding us up with his ''they shall not pass'' approach to get his point across.

If your 80mm cylinder o/d is right I presume you realise you will only have around 8 tonnes force even with 3000psi. Enough?

Only had a small quantity of small diameter silver birch outside but mine seemed to grow fungus quite readily. As others have said best kept dry.

Being on the end of a poor line I sympathize with the house holder but I also agree with Mark B about BT. They have charged me for looking but not finding an intermittent fault. Engineers have heard it when they have phoned up to say nothing wrong but no refund or fix. If water gets in then almost certainly the householder will have a poor line and probably have the same expenses and hassle with BT. If you are going to do a repair make a good one. No bodges, absolutely waterproof and ideally soldered joints.

Hi Jon Dogs sleep in the kitchen but 15 and 16 so they feel the cold. If I know its going to be cold I light the rayburn late in the evening so it stays warm for them. Just brought the wood in for tonight. Probably colder where you are though.

The £10 / ton was the chipping cost of one ton of dry chip(18% Mc) as opposed to wet 60% mc chip, which if you then dried it would become about 600kg.

The sun and wind. Fairly cheap down here especially the wind. No RHI on it though. We stack the slab and cord for a couple of years then chip.

A word of warning that margin is not quite so juicy as first appears. I appreciate areas vary but from my experience that wood cost is very slightly low and the chip cost high. Advertised chipping cost does not normally include travelling and you would have some handling and chip delivery costs. We chip 500 tons at a time and I would like to think we are quite efficient. It costs us about £10/ton for dry chip. The other big hit is loss of weight. Bought in wood will be up to 60% moisture but the end product chip around 18%, so you will lose 42% of the weight of your original investment. There will still be a margin but these are a few things for you to take into account

TA/ army did arrange it. No info on which company I'm afraid. Why not ask at the TA when you go next. You could very well get a discount for being a member of the armed forces.

Agreed. Must be collectors out there that exhibit at vintage rallies. Why not go to a rally and ask around. No idea what they are worth but they look in very good nick and I expect someone would be interested.

Thats a fairly cheap bit, a genuine one won't be expensive. Good luck with it.

The problem with that is it will slowly sink into the earth. Weight, action of worms etc. Much better to cover with a membrane such as mypex. Water will go through but weed roots from the top will pull out easily. Will save you topping up every few years and save spray originally and in the future.

Got my bits locally from Callington garden machinery. Any garden machinery dealer should be able to work out what bits you need. Sounds like you need both washers to sandwich the blade.

As a matter of interest where did it all come from and how did you end up with it.

You will need the heavy washer after the blade. The big domed one is too thin. It just act as a skid as far as I know. My bump head went in the bin but I am strimming 1/2inch blackthorn and stones so slightly different to you. No idea if the new Stihl heads fit I'm afraid.

I had to buy the blade, mounting washers, nut and domed nut skid. Expensive but worth it. Drive washer fits under the tin guard. You probably have that. It has 4 holes for the locking pin to enable you to tighten the nut. Blade fits next then the thick slightly domed retaining washer which has a hole with two flats that fit the drive. Then skid and lastly nut. I don't think I would buy a bump head unless you are only strimming light grass. Jet fit or portek for precut lines are better IMO. Have a look at the best strimmer line thread a page back in the landscaping section. If you get one of these heads make sure it cannot move on the shaft though. I have a portek head which I was running on another strimmer until it moved a little and became unbalanced. Shook the carb bolts loose. That has made me a bit nervous of them now. I have very stoney ground so I use a line for what most would use a blade for. As an experiment I have bought some extra eyelets for my manual feed head. I have opened the holes out to 5 mm so I can use 4 mm diamond edge line. This is virtually indestructible so should last longer than the high strength lines I have been using in it. If it is successful then there will be absolutely no danger of out of balance as it will be mounted directly on the drive shaft. If sucessful it will be cheaper than a special head as well. Hope to test it in a few days time.