Mr. Ed

So I got the AGT. As you said, a very simple machine and a bit basic but it’s a real joy to drive compared with the Old Ford. I didn’t set this up on purpose but on its first day at work it had to pull the Ford out of some embarrassingly shallow mud. 

Was the three year seasoning done after it had been split? Seasoning in whole stems doesn’t (as I’m sure you know) really work (at least in a timely fashion. We burn a lot of it but definitely need proper drying once cut - produces a lot of tar otherwise. 

Sound man Frost!

er, whoops … the last line is an artefactual one. So sorry - I did a cut and paste.  The poem itself ends with “ravens nest”. 
 

oh dear

I’m all over John Clare at the moment. A great man for unfeigned and intimate love and knowledge of nature. Here, he writes on an oak tree and its resident ravens. It’s un-punctuated as he wrote it and you might have to go through it a couple of times to get the rhythm. His spelling was eccentric and it’s printed as he wrote it - “hugh” was how he spelt “hugh”. The last line is stonking. 
 

The Ravens Nest
John Clare (1832)

Upon the collar of an hugh old oak
Year after year boys mark a curious nest
Of twigs made up a faggot near in size
And boys to reach it try all sorts of schemes
But not a twig to reach with hand or foot
Sprouts from the pillared trunk and as to try
To swarm the massy bulk tis all in vain
They scarce one effort make to hitch them up
But down they sluther soon as ere they try
So long hath been their dwelling there--old men
When passing bye will laugh and tell the ways
They had when boys to climb that very tree
And as it so would seem that very nest
That ne'er was missing from that self same spot
A single year in all their memorys
And they will say that the two birds are now
The very birds that owned the dwelling then
Some think it starnge yet certaintys at loss
And cannot contradict it so they pass
As old birds living the woods patriarchs
Old as the oldest men so famed and known
That even men will thirst into the fame
Of boys at get at schemes that now and then
May captivate a young one from the tree
With iron claums and bands adventuring up
The mealy trunk or else by waggon ropes
Slung over the hugh grains and so drawn up
By those at bottom one assends secure
With foot rope stirruped--still a perrilous way
So perrilous that one and only one
In memorys of the oldest man was known
To wear his boldness to intentions end
And reach the ravens nest--and thence acchieved
A theme that wonder treasured for supprise
By every cottage hea[r]th the village through
Nor yet forgot though other darers come
With daring times that scale the steeples top
And tye their kerchiefs to the weather cock
As trophys that the dangerous deed was done
Yet even now in these adventureous days
Not one is bold enough to dare the way
Up the old monstrous oak where every spring
Finds the two ancient birds at their old task
Repairing the hugh nest--where still they live
Through changes winds and storms and are secure
And like a landmark in the chronicles
Of village memorys treasured up yet lives
The hugh old oak that wears the ravens nest

In the picture the Raven is real, and so am I.

And of course it’s the standard wood for engraving on. You work on the end grain and large blocks are made up from several small pieces tenoned [?] together.  

4 hours ago, GarethM said:

Think of it as a bigger scale, but national milk bottle scheme.

 

You reduce the variety of types, they get washed and reused upto around 20x usually with deposit scheme, maybe even have the same brown colour for everything including milk ?.

 

Most recycling, is just pointless virtue signalling segregation especially plastics, the more you realise it's window dressing and incineration seems the best solution at source than export.

 

Maybe get Drax to take it after every recycling centre shreds it and makes it into pellets, I'd rather it was burnt here than some landfill in china or wherever.

Thanks Gareth. Could you point me at a source that says that most green glass doesn’t get recycled as glass? I’ve not found one. Only curious, not questioning. 

On 13/02/2024 at 22:13, GarethM said:

I've always loved the hypocrisy of glass bottle recycling, everything except clear gets crushed and used for stuff like road ballast as it's unusable.

 

Think there was a thing about Holland, all beer bottles are the same or something so they get reused. Like a modern irnbru bottle, that I'd vote for.

I don’t know if this thread is still live, so ignore me if it isn’t: I’ve never heard this about green glass.  Can you expand on it? 

On 09/02/2024 at 12:40, Mick Dempsey said:

On my recent trip back to Sussex I was struck (as I am on every visit) by how shabby and unkempt the verges and hedges are along the roads in comparison to here in France.

Litter and shit everywhere, trees growing right up the the edge of the road, only the lorries striking them seems to keep them back.

I think more cutting and trimming is needed not less.

I commute between SW Ireland and SE England and the squalor of English verges is very marked.  

I stumbled across this just now. The strangest video I'm likely to post anywhere. I think it was the first Christmas we were in the house, and we were moving out some overgrown Christmas trees. Had no tractor or motor winch and I was pulling this tree out of the undergrowth with a Tirfor and the junior arch. Needs sound - it's very boring and just a little bit beautiful. 

Bella Regazza.MOV

Hi Peds. Underside is just a couple of short battens on the inside of the bath just enough for the board not to slide off the edge. I was pleased to use the curved wany edge as a bit of a wrap around. 
 

The angle of the book blocks was resolved by trial and error. 

On 27/01/2024 at 09:22, nepia said:

Very pretty but needs better protection for the food from the rain.

Sorry to be negative but I speak from experience of trying various pieces of log etc; rain ingress is always an issue.  The food even spoils in mesh feeders sometimes where the birdies have 360deg access

our nuts never last long enough to go off. Good point though - you’d want to have some drainage holes in the bottom. 

Here’s a nice simple Christmas present for Mrs Ed who loves her bath. 

1 hour ago, nepia said:

What a rewarding project; well done!

Thanks!

the balcony is a joy - breakfast at the height of the birds in the trees. 
The job’s still not finished - stairs to be dressed in oak and lots of Ash skirtings and architraves to be moulded still. Made some bookshelves. Glad I didn’t pay for them - they’re not very well done really. 
 

7 minutes ago, nepia said:

Beautiful; love it.  I attach our version.

 

Trust me, you are nothing like Mr Ed.  But that was a long time ago; he was an Arbtalk pioneer who, um, knew his own mind 😊

Excellent! Looks wonderful. Ours is slightly unfinished in that photo, but it is proper board on board. We chose that to help it hide in the woods. The trees came from right in front of it, an overgrown hedge all leaning on itself like drunken soldiers.

6 hours ago, nepia said:

I'm with the long gone Mr Ed: crap firewood.  It spits, it cracks (though some people like the sound), burns in moments and I find gives out very little heat in that time.

Any wood's good kindling if dry and small enough.

 

I thought I was going to have to burn my way through a couple of dumpy bags of offcuts, along with longer pieces, left over from having the house re-clad but Men In Sheds are getting it 👍

May I just add that this Mr. Ed is not that Mr. Ed. I hadn't known I was a usurper. And this one loves Leylandii, so much that he wrapped his house in it. Does this make me a Man in a Shed? But Leylandii does need a lot of seasoning if you want to burn it - tons of tar. 

It does sound like a challenging project. Good luck with your decision making process! 
 

Here’s something I didn’t know:  from the paper that Amarus referenced, with reference to your location.  
 

<<. In terms of environmental conditions, wetter sites have been observed to have higher mortality, although in the UK ash growing on chalk (very dry) has also shown high mortality. >>

In our own mixed woodland (SW Ireland so not notably dry but most of our land is quite well drained) our management plan for the oldest area (in terms of established trees) is to do absolutely nothing beyond keeping the main track open. It’s an area of gullies and there are beautiful tall elegant mature Ashes growing from the bottoms of the gullies (one of the most beautiful things I know is the sight of these trees dancing in the wind in a summer gale, with their neighbouring big old oaks looking on in benign amusement like elderly relatives at a ball). After the heartbreak of realising this magical place was going to change we are resigned and will watch and see. They are lasting longer than younger trees (we felled several thousand 12 year old Ash) but after each of this winter’s gales the floor is more littered with branches and quite big boughs. We hope the trees will “monolith” themselves naturally and remain standing as vertical habitat piles but if they fall we’ll leave them there. We’ve had to get tree surgeons in to remove the big ashes beside the main access road to our house and I’m glad we did it before they were completely dead for it made the work far easier - they were still nice and Ashy and make fine timber and firewood.  
 

At this stage I wouldn’t be particularly anxious about a danger from falling trees (though we don’t go out in the woods in big gales, not least because the noise is terrifying). I’d be more frightened by the big old willows who randomly drop big boughs on the ground. 

51 minutes ago, Dan Maynard said:

I've got a Posch vertical splitter, which has a plug-in table each side you can pop pieces on when splitting down a ring. This means you essentially never need to bend down once you've got a ring on the table, which I really like.

 

The other thing is there's no trap when it goes up, so return stroke can safely happen while you let go of the handles to move logs.

Mine’s not at all posh but it doesn’t have a return trap either. Which is good now you point it out. 

4 hours ago, sandspider said:

How do you find the vertical splitter? I use a Forest Master horizontal job, and it works well. But it needs a fair bit of bending down. Having said that, I use it close to the ground (not on the stand) as I don't have a table / racking to raise my logs up anyway, so a vertical splitter would probably need more bending and lifting to get to the splitting table!

I’ve got nothing to compare the splitter with beyond an axe. It’s easier on your back than an axe. There? I’ve said it. I play a bit of keepy-uppy where the goal is to keep the wood off the floor - from saw horse to barrow, from barrow to table to splitter, back to barrow again then on the pile. I’d like to say my back is fine but the barrow and the splitter are just a few inches too low for comfort. And I’m aware that the process involves handling the wood many times before it even gets on the pile. I’m sure there’s a better way: maybe I’ll invent a machine with chainsaws and conveyor belts and maybe even a splitter as well, ah it would

never catch on….

Talk about a difference in scale! 
 

this was a days production for me! 

my processor and my conveyor. 

Finally getting round to Ash dieback casualties. Lots of work for modest return! My break through was to use the ratchet strap to hold the bundle together - it stops them chasing me around and means I can saw it like it’s one big piece. 
 

The nice thing about a grate is the ability to turn it up to turbo mode for a moment by opening the ash door. Makes it easy to relight from embers for instance. 

5 hours ago, Steven P said:

If I can take it out of the fire box it is a consumable. Some more frequent (fire bricks) than others (grate). Mine are warping nicely just now too but not burnt through yet (they did before - pet coke did them in I think) (10 years later, 4th set of fire bricks this year, 2nd baffle plate, 2nd grate, 2nd glass). Grate will get too hot if it can't get air through it I reckon.

 

Might be that you can fasten it to the flu, let it get hot take it off and quickly read what it says - then put in on the stove where you can read it, let it stabilise, note both temperatures - so perhaps at 200 degree flu, front of stove says 180, repeat you should find a reasonable link between the 2. I think on my thermometer I could loosen and turn the dial, if you can then spin the dial round so it shows approximate flue temperature from stove top temperature. Should be close.

 

Or... as I do...when Mrs P takes her hoody off, I am burning the grate.

My warning is when Mrs Ed takes her shirt off. Time to damp down the fire then I suppose, but you know, what else so you have a bearskin rug in front of the fire for?

I've got one of those little logrite arches, and they're lovely things. So neatly designed and well-made. They lift the log just with the geometry of pulling down the bar, and a heavy log takes quite a force to get the centre of gravity up and over the wheel, so that's a bit of a limitation. The other limitation is length - walking with them is a bit like taking a dog for a walk (that's why it's called "junior" I suppose) and if you have a long one it's always nipping at your ankles, threatening your achilles tendon and back of the knee like a malicious cowdog. There's a handle you can extend with, but you still can't use it with really long logs. I use it in the yard mostly for pulling little bits about, or for lifting one end of a bigger log so you can saw it. The basic concept is so delightful that I use it whenever I can. 

I’ve used this a bit,including on back roads (shhhh). Not in the woods yet till we get our nimbler tractor. The winch is a bit feeble. I have fantasies about using a tractor winch to pull big logs up close and then swapping out lines and using it to lift them up. A very good idea to strap the sticks in! 

True. The 835 ranges from 22 to 26 based on tires.