Elliott.F

2 hours ago, 5thelement said:

Bolt a piece of threaded bar through the round circular hole that you can punch out on the end of many guidebars ( or just drill one out) then adjust the length of the bar to the size you want, then lock it off. 
You can buy adjustable magnetic ones in Scandinavia.

YouTube it, there are loads of variations, I’ve seen them attached to saw dog and side cover studs. 👍

Great thank you. Exactly the sort of tip I was looking for. Cheers. 

1 hour ago, NJA said:

I cut to the width of the saw, including side handle, seems to get them about right.  Obviously easiest if you're cutting left to right if that makes sense?

That’s a good method. You can use zip ties fixed to the side handle and cut to length in the same way for longer log lengths. Again working left to right works best. 

1 hour ago, GarethM said:

Whilst not scientific, I aim for a bit of variety in sizes but everything gets rung to less than the length of my size 11, about the width of the MS261.

 

Plus if it's a large trunk anything larger is too heavy for lifting without halving.

 

I'm not in the firewood game to create living room features in designer homes.

I understand that log size uniformity may not be that important to many people, but I do find it useful for 3 primary reasons:

1. Speeds up splitting time significantly on my splitter as you can set the blade travel range to an inch or so longer than each log. 
2. I find it quicker, easier and more stable for stacking. 
3. It’s easier to calculate volume more accurately. Obviously helps if selling firewood, which I do for a few friends. 
 

So that’s why I try and be reasonably uniform, but haven’t necessarily worked out the best way to do it. 

What are the best ways to get a uniform log length when hand cutting logs for firewood?
One recommendation I had on here was cable ties on the saw handle cut to length. I’ve also seen people using a top handle saw and tape measure to mark the logs before cutting with a larger saw. 

Which method/s work best for you?

We have around 50 of these on our farm and use them for all kinds of storage. They’re super tough, heavy duty and practically indestructible, been using them for years and of all the crates we use, they are the most useful -
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B078XJRBLV?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

20 hours ago, lux said:

I’ve recently started my own charcoal commercially. Just 1 kiln at the moment. Will add another next year perhaps.

 

 

That’s great. Who do you plan to sell to, retail, wholesale, direct, etc?

Also, whats the size of your kiln?
If was to try this I’d probably just get a small kiln and test the water. 
Cheers. 

3 hours ago, lux said:

Thought about a charcoal kiln for the Alder coppice. ?  It’s one of the best and young coppice like that would be ideal.  

I have actually been thinking about that and have done a little research on the subject.

We have a decent amount of Alder, but right now I’m not sure I’d have the extra time to make, process and sell charcoal.

I might change my mind if thought it could be a profitable enterprise and worth the investment, but at the moment I don’t know too much about that. 

I might start a new thread and get some advice 🤔

1 hour ago, slack ma girdle said:

What is your optimum fire wood size, and how many years does it take to grow. That will dictate how many coppice coups you have.

The reason for thinning is to reduce competition for the retained trees, and allow better growth .

Branch loggers are good, but they produce logs too quickly. This is mine in action on manky dead Ash. Fills my 10x5 trailer In about 15-20 minutes

 

Good advice and great video, thanks.

When you say your branch logger produces logs too quickly, do you mean it fills the trailer so quickly that its hard to keep up?

54 minutes ago, Dan Maynard said:

It's mainly coppicing, so we clear to the ground. Because of limited labour we just do a strip 5-15m wide around the rides, this gives maximum diversity benefit for the labour input. Being SSSI there is a pattern of patches agreed between Wildlife Trust and Natural England for the next 20 years so we can't just fell anything.

Looks fantastic and a great way to help the trusts out and create biodiversity.

And you're a Husky man too.

Do you get to keep any of the wood?

2 hours ago, Stere said:

How many yrs growth is that?

 

How about leaving them a few  more yrs to get some chunkier logs then coppice the lot?

 

From the photo thinning looks alot of hassle  thus abit impratical in that thicket?

 

Some thinning might be easier done once the  area has being coppiced  as they  start to regen during the first fews yrs of the the next coppice cycle?

 

Branch logger seems like a good idea.

 

 

 

 

It's about 10 years growth and I think leaving them to get bigger is the way forward.

They're all self seeded and have never been cut before, so what I'm wondering is whether I should pick out the bigger stems with say a couple of metres between each one, cut everything else away and then in a few years go back and start coppicing those stems in blocks. 

By taking out all the smaller stuff, I'm assuming the trees I leave will grow much quicker and be ready in a few years?

Or I could just leave it all to sort itself out, which is already starting to happen.

5 hours ago, Dan Maynard said:

I think if you thin then the canopy will quickly close over, so not very helpful to wildlife. I do conservation work at the local woodland and best practice seems to be coppice areas in rotation so that you end up with a range of ages of plant, then scrub/bramble, then saplings push through and finally close over for a few years before being felled again.

 

You'd probably want something like 7 year rotation so divide the plot into 7 coupes and cut one each year, or 14 coupes and cut 2 etc.  Given the long term nature of the game you want to get this right though so probably worth trying to get advice through someone like small wood owners group.

 

Other thought looking at that you should maybe invest in a branch logger, super quick turning those poles into burnable wood.

Thanks Dan, some great tips.

I think you’re right about the canopy so I won’t worry about that, but dividing the area into blocks for annual cutting is sensible. 

However, because these are all young trees that have never been cut , I think maybe I need to establish some individual stems at a good spacing and allow them to grow on for a few more years, then begin cutting them on a Coppice rotation?

I will continue to explore the options. 

Also, great tip on the branch logger. I’d not actually heard of those, so went on YouTube to learn. 

Lastly, just out of interest what sort of conservation work do you do? 
Cheers E. 

We’ve got an area of about 3/4 acre of naturally regenerated Alder - both Italian and native varieties next to our woodland. It has good access so we want to manage it as SRC for firewood. 
 

The largest stems are around 4” at chest height, but it’s very dense with much smaller material as you can see in the pic. 
 

Should we start to thin it out this winter or just leave it, as it seems to be doing ok and save ourselves the work?

Aside from speeding up time to maturity, the biggest reason I can think of to thin is to improve the diversity so a bit more plant life can thrive under the canopy. 
At the moment it’s a bit of a monoculture. 
 

Any thoughts or advice greatly appreciated  

Cheers  

34 minutes ago, Steven P said:

 

If MadMAx is a person, they have a curious way of writing. Might be a translation thing but always about 3 line answers, nothing in detail, no insights that Google can't give you or chat that most people do - even things like asking questions for more information - all the posts are picking up a key word on the original post and writing about that. Struggles in posts where there are photos.... Hmm curious.

Yes maybe a person but English isn’t their first language or something. 
But it is interesting, this is probably the future now, never really knowing if the ‘person’ you’re interacting with is actually real or just an AI. 

2 hours ago, openspaceman said:

Of course it is sustainable as long as the wood you burn is replenished by other trees growing. I burn arb waste that comes from leafy mansion gardens, there is no shortage of trees growing in large gardens.

 

It makes no difference whether the wood is burned well or badly, producing smoke at sooty particles, they all end up being dealt with by the same mechanisms that have absorbed  smoke from wild fires for millennia.

 

Yes a poorly managed fire will produce more particulates than a good one but that has nothing to do with sustainability.

I see your point. Yes as long as the trees are being replaced then it’s sustainable. 
Perhaps the word sustainable was a poor choice on my behalf, when really it’s the environmental concerns (pollution or particulates) that I was addressing regarding the efficiency of the stoves, fuel quality etc and that many stove owners don’t understand that. 

26 minutes ago, richyrich said:

Small scale woodburning has existed since man struck a flint and sparked a fire. What hasn't existed for millennia is Drax power station burning pellets from North America produced from clearfelling- subsidised by the government. A BBC documentary showed this. It's a con. However I'm glad to see the back of coal burning. I live a few miles from Drax, and since coal burning stopped locally, we now have many more lichens, etc. growing on trees. It really is a nasty fuel- save it for steam trains.

Absolutely not surprised to hear that. 
It’s standard operating practices for government and large industry. 
 

It’s one of the reasons I personally heat with wood, so that I am not dependent on these kinds of global systems. 
 

My firewood comes from woodland I manage.
And like growing your own food, I find producing my own energy deeply rewarding. 

1 hour ago, openspaceman said:

It remains sustainable even if those things are not right.

 

The issue about domestic wood burning is one of people's heath. With particulates being identified as a problem to lungs, and 70% of them in the implicated PM2.5 class coming from some form of combustion, those from woodburning were bound to come to the fore as coal burning dwindled, stubble burning was banned, garden bonfires deprecated and engines fitted with DPFs, addblue and catalysts.

So a wood stove running at say 50% efficiency because of unseasoned wood, poor airflow, etc is still sustainable?
 

As for particulates, are they not also worse if the stove system is poorly

managed and the wood unseasoned?

It’s not the stoves and fuel that are the problem, it’s the users that don’t understand the fuel, stove system or proper fire management that is, hence the need for the government to step in and basically force everyone to buy kiln dried wood, for example. 
Wood is a renewable fuel that captures carbon, but the combination of inefficient stoves, dirty chimneys, unseasoned wood and people not understanding how to keep a good fire going with plenty of oxygen is where the problems happen. 
Get those 4 things right and you’ve got yourself a sustainable heat source. 

1 hour ago, difflock said:

I have mentioned before, how I can only deduce that Krpan paid some clever bloke to design their mandatory  two handed safety system  so that it is easily converted to single handed operation with a single spanner.

I think it’s a smart move. I would certainly consider that to be a primary ‘feature’.
Will check out Krpan splitters. 

Thanks for that. 

33 minutes ago, Stubby said:

No body in their right mind would want it reversed surely ? They might even pay extra for the mod !

That’s exactly my thoughts. I’d pay more for a splitter if someone had moded it for one handed operation. 

41 minutes ago, GarethM said:

Thanks for shouting, erm it's an EU directive.

 

They are all able to be bypassed, but you obviously leave yourself open to problems if someone else uses it and has an accident.

Didn’t mean to shout. I must have accidentally selected something. 
 

Glad to hear thy can be bypassed. No one else will be using my splitter, but it’s a good point. 

I thought it was only the domestic level splitters that required 2 handed operation, but been doing some research and it appears to be the case for pro splitters too. 

Watching manufacturers videos and they’re embarrassingly slow and inefficient, log’s falling on the floor, silly levers and arms. 

Is there a brand that’s easy to disable this farcical ‘safety’ feature?

9 hours ago, sandspider said:

You can see some of my experiments here:

 

That’s a great thread sandpiper, thanks for sharing it. The growth comparison with the alder is insane. Nice one 👍

3 hours ago, Ashes_Firewood said:

 

Width of my saw including the side handle is about the length of log I want at 9-10" so just use the width of the saw as a guide.

 

If you want longer logs you can put cable ties on to the side handle and cut them to the length you want the log to be and that's your guide. Wrap duct tape above and below the cable ties on the handle to stop them sliding up and down.

Great idea. Thanks for the tip. 

12 hours ago, sandspider said:

True. I lost a few small eucs to frost (seller told me they were frost hardy, but didn't clarify only once they were 2 or so years old). Also, they're supposed to spread and be hard to get rid of - but mine haven't. Not much value to wildlife is right- but soon we'll have koalas here!

In the meantime I've planted lots of native trees too, so I don't feel too bad. Eucs don't seem to coppice well (possibly i planted the wrong species) but they do outgrow the natives by a good margin. 

There’s an estate near me that has a lot of mature native broadleaf, but there’s a block where they’ve mixed in a bit of euc and it works nicely. Haven’t seen any koalas yet though. 
I think there are varieties that will coppice, but how well they do may depend on many other factors. I’m definitely going to seriously consider it. Perhaps for this winter. 

19 hours ago, Brushcutter said:

 

 

If I was to pick one id just have a 50cc.saw with bars from 13 15 and 18 inch  bars. If I could take two I'd have a 70cc with and 18 and 24 inch bars.

That sounds ideal. A 50cc and a 70cc

power head and a range of bars for different jobs.