Mr. Ed

IMG_1854.MOV

It’s strange they’re always described as shy, because ours are pretty brazen. They’re used to being apex predators I suppose. They’ve done for the bunnies but the hares are thriving. We have leveretts in the wood yard - the first one I saw I thought “funny looking rat”.

Not just rich folk - when we bought our little bit of woodland we were introduced to one of our neighbours with the unspoken comment “this is xxxx. He’ll be poaching your deer.” The first time we accepted some venison from him made us co-conspirators.

Our pine marten really does work. Not a grey been seen and reds not common but present. Has anyone tried introducing them?

What’s that from please? And as a numpty to the world of cutting wood, is there a “bible” on it? I’ve seen people biggjng up a chainsaw book but is there one for more conventional milling?

“Roughty rot”. Lovely. Will steal that phrase, living as we do on the banks of the Roughty River!

Exactly so - lots of conifer crud ul there so the guides is the first thing to look at.

Bonane then I guess. That's a place name for those not in the locality ,reading this wondering what I'm ctapping on about Not quite - halfway up the Roughty valley. Healy-Rae country.

Hi SKC101fc (or may I call you SKC?) I do have a whole load of shite that I’m sawing so that’s a good idea, as is the dodgy blade. However the problem developed suddenly and I’ve changed the blade and done some different woods with the same problem. I’ve been using the fine weather this weekend to knock down some of our thousands of dead and dying ash trees so haven’t done any fiddling yet. I have some raised flowerbeds to make from Leylandii and may get round to it tomorrow and will have a tweak of my bearings beforehand. We’re just over the Kerry side of the border - a few miles east of Kenmare, a nice place and we’re safe in the event of a cashmere crisis or a shortage of organic chocolate.

It’s fine for what it is - I have to go and wiggle my bearings a bit this morning to try and tilt the blade down, but overall I’m quite impressed.

Agreed - if we do that It’s going to be painted - we don’t want to live in a fecking sauna after all - it’s an old farm style - matchboarding they used to call it I think. Just using wood instead of plasterboard.

And I'm planning on making a scale model of Venice on miniature alder piles, while wearing clogs . . .

sorry didn't check my own sources - 20 - 30 cm. Second thinnings.

what diamter Paul?

apparently one of the reasons woodworkers like it is that it stains very well - so that floor is faked up a bit to look likesomething more expensive, but hey!

Interestingly, though it's soft, it's a little less soft than pine, which of course is used for floorboards all the time - here's a picture of a very sexy alder floor

Thank you Khriss - I think I've got to go back in fiddle with my wheels, for the blade seems to have developed an upward slop - as it comes out of the wood I can no longer just wheel it back, but have to raise the head - that only mean that the blade is cutting at an angle I think. I've got one more similar to do, which will probably give me just not quite enough for the staircase. Ha!

No plans, but I'm very interested because oddly we have a very healthy 1 acre plantation of it - only ten years old but going like a train. It was planted quite widely here in Ireland recently (as well as thriving on river banks and hedgerows and so on). It seems that its principal virtue is that it's easy to work and fairly light in weight. It's neither strong nor durable, which is why it typically has such a bad reputation. I'd love to find a use for it in our house restoration we're having a go at - it seems like joinery is the best hope - it's too soft to use as floorboards. Come to think of it our architect has just specified vertical tongue and groove (very tight so you can hardly see the lines) for the interior walls instead of plasterboard, and it might work very well for that if we could get enough of it together. Because there's quite a lot of it in a similar stage as ours, there is some work going on to try and find markets for it here - Exploitation of small diameter alder - Teagasc | Agriculture and Food Development Authority WWW.TEAGASC.IE

Baby's first hardwood: a 2 metre length of hedgerow oak. I tried to clean the bark as much as I could, but obviously not enough. Stair treads for our rebuild, here we come. (I hope).

What use do you have in mind for the alder, if you don't mind my asking? I have a couple of fair-sized ones in my inbox.

Understood. Very overstood. And I assume they would indeed be very wonky, sticking out like daffodils in a bunch. Lots of first rate firewood though I assume. I won't complain about my weekend work, which is trying to get as much firewood out of our 10 year old ash plantation before it all gets mulched and replanted. Being done under Ireland's Reconstitution Scheme. Six inches at best.

How big is big?

Lovely photos Idiot! Nice to see you made it through the winter.

Fred is still smoking but he’s a good worker.

Herself has just come in from a therapeutic session in the shed turning a bit of spalted birch, and has had the joy of seeing these wonderful unfaded colours. Like a fresh mackerel (well not much like a fresh mackerel in fact but you may get my drift).