Mr. Ed

Oh and Dad didn’t build me a Mirror but did lovingly build me a pretty nasty little boat called a Puffin. Designed by the “DIY king” Barry Bucknell as I remember. How I envied the boys with a mirror - but it was done with love.

My parents’ first boat with a lid on was a Silhouette Mark III. The first time I took it out on my own the mast fell off - that was a test of a 12 year old I can tell you. Then we nearly sank it under St John’s Wood (in the Regents Canal Tunnel). Both events would have been in the early 1970s. Here’s a couple of nice wee woodies we have now

Mostly Leyland from four big trees that had been leaning on each other like drunken sailors - just at the site. They’ve travelled 100 metres down to my shed then 100 metres back again. And some Douglas but not so much of that. Also ours.

There was a T24 by Guy Thompson as well, but yours is very Tucker.

Lovely boat Andrew. No boat builder I - I can barely make a sandwich, but I have owned various wooden boats. Yours looks like a big Silhouette - do you remember who designed her?

Dyou still have the boat Andrew?

that heliotrope does look very happy there. We have something like a himalayan balsam, but that's not quite it. Not too difficult to deal with - crushing it or digging it up dissuades it no end. And a wee bit of rhododenron.

Look at me! Look at me! We’re on the last leg of milling and cladding our rebuilt extension (cover boards not installed on the long side yet. I’ve always wanted to live in a packing case. We are putting a post and beam balcony on the gable end. Being a complete newbie I’m as excited as Liz Truss was when she became PM - is that a good sign?

We’re trying to do it without spraying. We’re not militantly organic but if we’re arranging the woodland for diversity and nature it would be a bit perverse to start it with a load of herbicide. And no, I don’t have the appetite for a fundamental row about it - we get enough of that in the real world. We have a small problem of invasive species in the older part of the woods so there’d be no end of work for Wwoofers.

Yes I have a mulching head for the brush cutter - a great thing indeed. I need to make a big inspection next week and work out how much we have to do it’s gonna be to make it work. Probably a combination of brush cutting and hand and foot care. As to manpower we were thinking of a Workaway sort of thing. We’re in a popular holiday area and are hospitable people.

No guards - we're behind deer fences and there's no bunnies to speak of. It's hard to imagine even a wee tractor running a flail being happy in there to be honest - the rows (which do look a bit irregular) are basically in between the old having-been-knocked ash planting, so we have lots of stumpy bits as well as drainage ditches everywhere. Coppice Cutter - that's the sort of advice we were looking for - thanks. We have no illusions of getting rid of it all (time will do that as they grown. It's just the first few years we're concerned with, to let these poor runtish fellows have a chance of growing.

I’m not sure if I’d trust myself with a brush cutter in there - the rows are a bit irregular and the wee fellows are really hard to identify. they did a bit of glyphosate last year and they got several trees as well - amazingly effective at killing stuff isn’t it?

Hi all We had a few acres of 12 year old ash which was very sick and we’ve knocked and replanted with a mixture of Oak, Birch, Syc, Scots Pine (using government money to do). The planting was not a happy story - a cluster**************** if truth be told - but most of them survived the first summer. The brambles/briars/blackberries are about to go gangbusters and we’re nervous about the fate of the trees (especially the very weedy looking oak whips (is that the right word?) that went in). Our “expert” wants to go in with a load of glyphosate to do the briars. We don’t fancy that at all (in as much as we’re managing it at all, we’re doing so for “The Nature” rather than the timber) and are thinking about trying to organise the manpower to do a couple of trampling, hand-cutting exercises this spring and summer. Does anyone here have much experience of such a situation? We’re going to be cursed as idealistic townies in any case! cheers ed

And how odd that Glasgow (or nearby) seems to be a nexus of the Greenheart trade: Constructional Timbers | Gilmour & Aitken GILMOURAITKEN.COM We are one the UK's leading supplier of high-quality hardwoods. Find here our range of constructional timbers and...

From the wise old interweb: << Greenheart logs are reported to occasionally violently split apart upon sawing—sending pieces of the wood flying. As a result of this unusual characteristic, sawyers wrap chain around the sections of the log that have already been sawn. >>

And as I’m sure you all know lots of tempting eBay ads for wee tractors like Alpines and are also scams - borrowed photos and locations in places like Derry or Aberdeen.

Oh that’s interesting about prices coming down, despite the inflaytion. Scorchio. Sounds like a good time to be buying.

I had a friend once. Didn’t last. That was probably a bit of a bargain: it didn’t look like a spammer.

Looks like he’s about to get it! Good luck. I’d rather not buy one in UK because of the red tape but maybe I’m over sensitive.

Hi all We're in SW Ireland, trying to work out how to get timber out of our wee woodland. We've got a very mixed 40 acres with some semi-ancient woodland and various plantations ranging from 30 years old and more or less brand new. Much of the terrain is very corrugated, and there's a moderately good network of fairly narrow tracks, none of it at too steep a gradient. Because of the different grants we inherited here, we're locked into working with a local forestry professional to do the paperwork, and we've just got the licence to do a fairly big thinning - sycamore, spruce, oak, ash and more. I've told our forester that we're not going to be having anyone come in with harvesters and forwarders and driving big access tracks through the land - we're principally managing the land as an informal nature reserve but I'm going to be very happy to sell a few tens of tons of firewood. I've got two questions for the collective wisdom here 1. Trailers. I want a wee trailer with a crane - I have noted criticism of some of the more highly advertised brands as to quality. What are the best dinky ones? 2. Tractor. I want an equally wee Alpine. Has anyone any experience with an old Pasquali, like a 993? It seems you can get clean ones for less than five grand - it's not going to be used very heavily, only on our own land, and only pulling a dinky trailer, so i assume 25 horse power or so is adequate. Another thousand quid to get it to Ireland? Cheers guys! Ed It would be lovely to get a new AGT or Carraro, but it's not going to happen.

I use it quite a lot in boats. Lovely stuff. Not magic of course but very nice and easy to use. Five to eight coats needed for a “yott” finish but you don’t need to let each coat cure. If you want a magic product try and hunt down “Awlwood”. Horrible name and not easy to buy but genuinely different and super long lasting

A nice spalty surprise for my missus to go in her turning pile

In the world of sailing boats (where capstans are the standard winches) you always leave the cover on the core where it will go on a winch. Too slippy otherwise and a bugger to handle. Strip the cover off elsewhere for lightness and ease of splicing.

Here’s my entry in the “longest death” thread resuscitation competition. I just sort-of read a paper about fiddleback figure in sycamore which concluded that there’s a very large genetic element which can be selected for in the nursery. Growth performance and wood structure of wavy grain sycamore maple (Acer pseudoplatanus L.) in a progeny trial | Annals of Forest Science | Full Text ANNFORSCI.BIOMEDCENTRAL.COM • Key message Wavy grain, a rare figure type of wood, leads to highly priced timber in Acer pseudoplatanus L. The influence... They acknowledge that this will depress the values. As to legends of value there is some truth to them: “Although this figure deviates from normal straight grain, it often greatly enhances the value of the wood making wavy grained A. pseudoplatanus one of the most highly priced timbers on the market. Maple logs with a regular, well-developed wavy grain structure are usually sold at auction sales, so-called submissions, often for more than the tenfold price of similar logs with straight grain. In Germany, wavy grained sycamore maple regularly achieve prices over 10,000 Euro per log, e.g., 12,100 Euro at the submission Waging in 2017 (Bäucker and Liesebach 2018) and 19,602 Euro (equivalent to 7748 Euro per m3wood) in Jesberg in 2017 (HessenForst 2017).”

I had a friend lend me a hand for a bit and bought the battens but I milled the timber and am doing the rest myself yes. Othe visitors are also going to be invited to put in a few screws and hold tape measures!