CDMR

Personally, I like the shavings idea though Lord knows I have enough of them already to dispose of. That said I think your customers will find it a PITA. I find that as much as my punters want everything to be sustainable they still want their life to be easy more. If your main objective is to stop the mill moving about in the box, how about packing paper i.e. the thick brown type that bulks up. At least it is recyclable and is probably mainly recycled.

A neighbour has had a pretty decent sized Photinia felled which he has kindly donated. Has anyone worked with it before? There's very little info on the interweb.

According to the translator, also comes with a "Knott casserole". Always handy.

If you are still thinking about the Commander, worth noting that you can get them with a 5.7 Hemi. I had that engine in a Chrysler 300 estate. Absolutely fantastic engine and good for about 20mpg. They are generally cheaper than the diesels as people are scared of the fuel consumption but the economics depends what mileage you are going to do.

Try them on Etsy.com they may get a better price. Ebay is effectively a boot sale and everyone wants a bargain. Etsy is more like a craft fair where originality is more highly valued. (Could also try Folksy but it gets less audience, particularly as you could post internationally)

If the Grand Cherokee doesn't work height wise have a go at the Commander. They are getting quite cheap now. Used to tow a big race trailer with one and you'd forget it was there. Same engine range but bigger inside and lower floor. On a side note re cruise control, you could perhaps get a hand throttle fitted instead? Relatively cheap if the vehicle is otherwise right for you.

Thanks John. I did think about lining it but as it isn't a sauno style kiln I am not sure how much abuse the timber will get. I'll keep a watching eye and report back. I thought quite a bit about air circulation. My conclusion eventually was that 3000 cubic meters per hour is quite a storm in a small box. Even if you don't duct it perfectly through and round the wood pile it is going to get pretty much everywhere. The percentage being extracted by the heat recovery unit is very small so you don't have a perfect system from point a to point b so much as a constant tumble of air some of which is syphoned off. I have test load in at the moment and have marked each piece at three points with its current MC. If I find I have a trend of dead spots, I shall add a duct in the ceiling to push the hot air down the back wall and from the the sliding door down to the bottom front to pick up cooler wetter air from there. The stickers are perpendicular to the timber and yes, the sliding vent goes into the plenum with the heater from which the fan takes its input. Two things learnt so far: Insulate the mounting on the fan or it booms like hell. Make sure your heater controller doesn't open and close too frequently as it buggers the element on the heater. Currently it sitting at 32 degrees and is heating with a 2kw heater about half the time so the equivalent of 1kw on heat.

From what I understand there are limitations on size for that approach and an increase in the length of time taken to dry larger 'wetter' bits of timber. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will be able to cite specifics. In terms of sealing, I have siliconed up the gaps and may well paint the interior with egg shell at some point but OSB is pretty vapour impermeable as is.

A coupe of pics of the controls. The radial knob controls the fan speed. The thing below is the thermostat for the heater, the light switches control the heat exchange and the big read out is the weather station reporting on what is going on inside. The plant looks a bit better boxed in. The top hole is the fan outlet. The slidey letter box takes in air to the heater, the white grill takes air to the heat exchanger the output of which is fed to the underside of the heater. The dangly wire is the thermistor to control the thermostat.

Thanks for posting this Big J. Just finished building mine based upon these principles. Slight variation in so much as it is in a garage so I effectively built a stud wall box to insulate it with a compartment at one end containing the fan, a cheapo convection heater and the heat recovery unit with the controls on the outside. The three door panels lift out to allow the timber to be stacked. It's completed its sea trials so the first batch of timber will go in this afternoon.

Ah. Good point. Not much insulation on a Morgan!

Blimey. It's quite a dramatic process isn't it? The only smoke and flames I saw was when Mrs C realised I'd dropped some molten pewter on the kitchen work tops. Great results though.

Morgan and Marcos used Ash in their frames. Could go for that for a strong frame and then a more lightweight and weather resistant cladding? Like fibreglass or aluminium

I use TNT to send big stuff but book via parcels 2 go as it works out cheaper.

Another vote for Titebond III. Excellent stuff. I finish mine with olive oil as it is deffo food safe, should not have any issues with nut allergies and there is always more in the kitchen if it needs refinishing. Beech routs well but watch the speed as I find it can scorch quite easily.

I would suggest the chain or at least a good regular chain is a wise buy. Most of the cheapo electric saws come with appalling chains that leave the wood like corrugated cardboard. As for oilers, I would suggest a fairy bottle, tube and a small clamp just to establish what effect it has.

Just as a post script. I have also now invested in a 660 and an Alaskan for anything bigger or tougher.

I started off milling in exactly the same boat as you. I have a workshop between residential properties and cannot make too much noise. The wood I wanted to mill was relatively small (up to 12") and mainly softwood. Though I have also done some hardwoods including oak and hornbeam using the same rig. It just takes a while I bought a cheapo 2000W electric saw and took off the dogs to get a bit more cutting length. I also managed to get hold of a cheap, steel Alaskan style rig. The two set me back less than £100 on ebay. I kitted the saw out with an Oregon bar with a good wide tip so that you can mount the clamp on the Alaskan as near to the end as possible without squeezing the chain (grind down the clamps to give a little more space), and a ripping chain. I then mounted the whole rig upside down on a table made from scaffold tube and kee-klamp with a kitchen worktop. I wrote it up in a blog post here. https://www.colwillandco.co.uk/2016/04/22/planking/ I reckon you could perhaps get another couple of inches out of it if you put on an auxiliary oiler or perhaps went to a skip chain but you are basically at the limit of the motor you can run off a plug. I put the project together for a job to make a side table from a cedar atlantica that had been felled effectively as fire wood so no decent lengths had been preserved. It worked out quite nicely I think.

You could try going to a skip chain if bar length is getting a bit toward the limit. The finish will suffer but it could be a good compromise.

Blimey, he even does veneers.

I wonder whether the issue is around what happens if a saw on full throttle hits PPE. Presumably when a petrol engine saw jams up the clutch drops out and drive is disconnected, whereas with a mains saw if you keep on holding the trigger (through panic, fault or whatever) you could have a very torquey, stall proof motor still trying to turn the chain. Am I right in thinking that mains saws are primarily direct drive without a clutch as the brake is generally electro-mechanical?

Thanks all. Cryptomeria seems to be the outright favourite. It has gone into the store to start drying. Hopefully something interesting to be made from it in the fullness of time.

Having a couple of pints last night and one of the local tree surgeons donated this 'Cos I know you like odd wood and it would be good to see something made out of it'. He reckoned it was Cherry but it doesn't look anything like it to me. It is fairly light weight and seems pretty open grained. I would have guessed at Yew from the bark and general shape but there's no hint of the usual pink colour. Any ideas?

As hairy says, for long term stability you really need to mill the wood flat once it has dried. Ideally you would plank it over size by an inch or more, dry it to an MC lower than it will eventually be and then let it come up to the MC you need and then mill it. There are some good videos on youtube on flattening slabs with a router. I recently made a kitchen work top that was planked at two inch thick from a dead tree five years ago and dried indoors ever since. I then flattened it and bonded it to 18mm thick marine ply, used alternating grains to balance each other and the bloody thing has still warped when back in a non centrally heated house. If you are planning on book matching the grain you also need to think about how you joint the slabs as the warp of one board will be the mirror image of the other and naturally want to pull the joint apart. You may even want to think about some butterfly joints across the join. When you consider the labour involved it does lead you to think about using the least likely to warp bit of timber you can find. That's not to say there is no use for what you have, just that it may have better applications where stability is less critical.

Surprised nobody got back on this. I was hoping they might. I run the lo-pro set up on a 661 with a 36"bar and it is much better than running on the regular chain but feel that much longer would benefit from a few more cc. particularly in hardwood but the 880 doesn't seem to be compatible with the lo-pro GB bars? Was you concern more around the chain being manly enough if the bar and sprocket were compatible?