Winter Wonderland – but with a few less trees

Well it rained for what seemed just about forever. The wettest English year on record – not bad considering that is started with a dry spell which continued until the day that the government declared a drought. But the wind and rain eventually gave way to the cold and cue -  The winter wonderland – but with a few less trees than we started the week – aka the extreme chainsaw training course!

Just occasionally I teach basic chainsaw and tree felling for a local land management college. I did wonder why I was asked to run a chainsaw and tree felling course in January at relatively short notice. All became clear once I saw the weather forecast for the week. We started off with the basic quagmire, moved onwards to the big freeze and then finished off with extreme chainsaw training in heavy snowfall. (Thanks to Peter Underwood for the photo)

I started the week with a full complement of six students but by the heavy snow fall on Friday I’d managed to whittle it down to the hardcore of Ian, Peter and Jules who were game enough to come out with me for some final felling practice in the snow.

Working in the woods was fine – it can be quite surreal working during snowfall as you tend to be in your own little universe – the trees block the wind and everything looks and sounds quite peaceful. It’s something of a shock to emerge back into the world and to discover that as usual the traffic in Southern England can’t cope and has ground to a halt.  Luckily we’d prepared for that and with a couple of 4×4′a were soon back at the college – only to discover that whilst we’d been out in the woods felling trees those in the warm heated classrooms had been sent home! It’s a strange world out there isn’t it? Good luck with the assessments guys!

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Making charcoal on a small scale

It’s the time of year when I start making charcoal again on a small scale. As it’s only a sideline for me I use old 40gallon oil drums which means my investment is minimal and I don’t need a lot of wood to feed a kiln, instead I take advantage of the wood that comes my way. It’s an ideal way to make small amounts of charcoal or to start learning about charcoal making.

The big advantage for me of using oil drums (other than not costing me anything) is that it only takes a couple of hours from lighting the drum full of wood to being able to shut it down and let it cool so I can fit in a burn of 2 or 3 drums in the afternoon or evening and come back the next morning to collect the charcoal.

When the drum is first lit it produces a lot of white and brown smoke, mainly steam boiling off from the wood and mixed with the tars, resins and other volatile chemicals. The intent of the burn is to have enough air flowing through the bin to maintain a high temperature but not so much that too much of the wood is burnt too quickly which reduces the yield – though if you only want a bag of charcoal for your own bbq it doesn’t matter so much.

As the burn continues you will see the white smoke lessen and eventually cease as all of the water is driven off.  Be careful if you lift the lid and peer inside at this point – you can lose your eyebrows. The reduced level of oxygen in the bin means that volatile chemicals released will not mix with enough oxygen to burn until they leave the bin – though if you are used to it you can arrange quite an impressive display with a ring of fire around the rim of the bin.

Once the volatile chemicals have finished being released the bin is ready to be shut down and the remaining wood will finish cooking in the heat of the bin. Shutting down involves sealing the bin with soil so that no air can enter or exit the bin – otherwise you will return to find no more than a pile or wood ash when you open the bin. It takes a few hours for the charcoal to cool sufficiently so that when you open the bin you don’t start an instant barbecue.

I should now show the finished charcoal, but somehow I seem to have taken a gratuitous photo of a Landrover the next morning. Strange that!

Making charcoal in an oil drum is not really economically viable in comparison with the big kilns, it’s a lot of work for a bag or two of charcoal but if you are generating a small amount of waste wood from a small amount of woodland then it might be a way to  start making enough for your own needs and spend an enjoyable evening, whether it for the bbq or to use on your vegetable patch or to start making your own carbon sink.

Much of this wood would have been burned on site, chipped or left to rot away (not that leaving some wood to rot away is a bad thing and it is as always a balance) so making charcoal with it doesn’t affect the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere. If more trees are regrown in their place then it’s effectively zero carbon. As always with carbon issues it’s not quite that simple of course and the conversion of the wood does release other chemicals aside from carbon dioxide. The next stage is to convert my drums into ‘ovens’ or retorts as they are often known and burn the volatile chemicals to cook the wood, improving the yield and reducing the amount of woodfuel I have to prepare.

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Wood for Burning

 

During our recent cold snap the temperature reached -16C overnight, a very cold snap indeed for us in the south of England, and in the shed in the morning it was still -10C so a bit too cold for turning on the polelathe. Time to build up the fires inside and the quality of the firewood makes quite a difference to the ability to keep the house warm when its that cold.

I’ve found that the choice of  firewood for the coldest part of the year is well worth putting some thought into.  In recent years I’ve taken to putting aside some of my driest best firewood for the cold snaps when they come.

My mother was a talented caligrapher and some years ago she sent me a version of the old poem ‘Wood for Burning’  – and there is no smoke without a fire as they say – it’s as a good a guide to choosing your firewood as you can get, so here is her version again in case you missed it last time around.

(Caligraphy – Olive Allery 1928-2011)

All wood will burn and per Kg they all give about the same heat, but everyone has their favourite firewood.  Oak, Beech and Hawthorn are common favourites but why is Ash said to be the best?

I think the answer lies in the density and moisture content of the wood. The denser the wood the more heat it can release when it burns but in my experience the densest timbers can take years to season. When you try to burn them the high density of the wood slows the burning process down and if they still have too high a moisture content they burn even more slowly and don’t provide enough heat.

The obvious solution is to split and dry your firewood in the sun then store undercover for some years until you need it. That’s fine, but not everyone has enough Oak woodland or a barn for a log store to enable firewood to be stored for years in advance to season and dry. Knowing which woods will need less seasoning and can even be burnt green can be key to keeping warmer in the winter.

Winter felled Ash is relatively low in moisture content in comparison with other woods and it’s medium density open grain means it will dry faster than the denser woods – hence the references in the poem to burning ash wet or green.  Also it tends to grow straight grained, is easy to chop and split and it doesn’t smell bad on the fire so it comes out as a good all round compromise.

Mind you, I don’t get a lot of spare Ash – it’s too good for turning on the polelathe, so my favourite logs to burn are a combination of Birch with Oak or Beech. The Birch starts the fire and burns very hot and fast, when mixed with Oak or Beech the fire burns both long and hot. Oh and Birch does smell good on the fire as well!

 

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Finding Fungi on a Walk in the Woods

I am certainly not a fungi expert but I can’t resist taking a good look and at this time of year there are loads of fungi to choose from. So if anyone has any identifications to offer please feel free to comment.  But yes,  you are right this is just an excuse to post some colourful pictures of the Lynchmere Commons.

Here a Fly Agaric has just appeared from it’s bed of moss. At least I think it’s a Fly Agaric as they are common in the birch woods, but there is no sign of a veil on this one, so I may be leading you astray already. Just shows how difficult it is to follow the identification books.

Very few of the woodland fungi are edible and you really do need to know what you are doing to pick them as a mistake can be highly dangerous. The Fly Agaric is well known for it’s toxic and hallucinogenic properties. It’s one of the Amanita family which include our most toxic fungi so one to beware of.

With a heavy dew the cobwebs glisten in the low angle sun light which seems to give everything deeper colour at this time of year.

These fungi were nestled on the old stump of a birch tree. They look quite similar to Honey Fungus, but then again…maybe not quite.

This one is suspiciously white and clean. I have to say that I don’t know what it is, but as the most toxic fungi in the UK, the Destroying Angel, is also white and clean I tend to leave anything similar well alone even though it’s very likely an innocent pretender (it’s deadly cousin the Death Cap is also similar in appearance though with a greenish tinge to the cap).

The Birch trees are now in their winter plummage and it’s already time to be thinking about harvesting the next crop of bean poles, pea sticks and broom heads.

No idea what these are and even after a quick look through a book I am non the wiser.

Likewise these very small, almost blue ones were just by a beech tree. Even though I couldn’t identify them I did find a Bay Boletus which we took home for tea, but forgot to photograph! Very similar to the Cep or Penny Bun which are also in the Boletus family the Bay Boletus has yellow pores instead of gills which stain blue when touched

Must be about time for a gratuitous Landrover photograph. Surely that’s far too shiny to be one of my Landrovers? Yes we took Puff out for a leisurely Sunday afternoon run as a part of the running in the new engine. The aim is to treat the engine very gently until all of the moving parts have had time to wear in.

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A Walk with Trees in the Wye Valley

This has to be the best time of year for walking in the woods. The display of colours from the Beech trees is magnificent this year and nowhere better than the Forest of Dean where we’ve been for a few days up on the edge of the Wye Valley, but I’m afraid my photos don’t really do the colours justice. Mind you the weather didn’t really cooperate, though warm it’s been dull and dank if not pouring with rain most of the time.

As well as walking through the Forest we explored a few paths up and around the River Wye, through the Gloucestershire countryside and came quite unexpectedly upon an old orchard where management has clearly been on the sparse side for many years. Several of the trees were quite overgrown with Mistletoe – though maybe it’s actually a Mistletoe orchard?

Away from the Forest the footpaths seemed quite thin on the ground and never quite linked up but we did find some great old hedges with lovely ancient oak trees.

This one has grown a monster burr, you can see from the gate in the photo that the burr is a few feet in diameter and it actually reaches most of the way around behind the trunk.

Back in the forest I was (as usual) astounded to see so much lop and top left lying around felling sites, and not just softwood but hardwood as well. On this site several beech trees had just been cut up and left where they were felled. I know I’ll be told that it’s all in aid of biodiversity and the bugs like it, but I mean!  In today’s times of austerity we’re all having to tighten our belts and how many bedrooms does a bug really need?  This is a renewable energy source just wasted and I’m sure that the biodiversity of the site would actually benefit from the removal of some of the excess brash and still leave plenty of spare bedrooms for the bugs!

I suspect it’s all caused by the relentless intensification of forestry during the latter half of the 20th century, very much the same as with agriculture. The more wood you produce the lower the price goes and the more wood you need to produce to keep making money. So you get a bigger loan, buy bigger machines with more computers and GPS that work all day and night to keep paying off the loan and it’s no longer cost effective to remove the brash or even some of the trees.

But it doesn’t have to be like that especially with the price of firewood on the rise. Woodsmen like me keep operating costs down by working for themselves, avoiding loans and using a minimum of equipment. There are plenty of volunteer groups, charcoal burners or firewood operators in Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire who’d be more than happy to clear up sites like this after the contractors leave and reduce our fossil fuel imports and carbon footprint at the same time. I think we ought to be putting pressure on the FC to reintroduce licences for collecting brash and firewood.

Back on the river the sun crept through for just a few minutes. Bizarrely, in view of my previous rant, a small team of tree surgeons were carefully deadwooding some of the river bank willows (lest they fall on the tweed hat of a fly fisherman perhaps?) and then removing all of the wood from the site with a 4×4 and a trailer – from the sublime to the ridiculous?  No bugs welcome on this river bank then?

On the way back I couldn’t resist stopping at a hedgerow full of fat juicy sloes! Normally we only get to pick a few small ones, hard as bullets but these were big soft juicy gobstopper size sloes just demanding to be soaked in Vodkin.

Just a few minutes picking yielded enough for a few litres of Sloe Vodkin and as I write they are in the jars already after a quick session in the freezer just to finish off the softening up process. The jars are Labelled ‘Hole in the Wall’ as we found them on the walk back from a tiny hamlet labelled ‘Hole in the Wall’ on the map, just above Ross-on-Wye.

As we neared the end the sun rushed rapidly down below the horizon, another classic Walk with Trees in the Wye Valley and the Forest of Dean.

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A wood fire warms the spirit as well as the room

Finally the unseasonable warm spell seems to be on its way out, the temperatures are falling towards normal levels and we need to light the fires in the mornig and evenings. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed the warm weather and it’s my favourite time of year but it can’t last and as our clocks have changed, the evenings are dark, dank and gloomy, lighting a fire shifts the damp mood and warms the spirit as well as the body.

I’m not looking forward to it but I have done more preparation this year just in case it’s another long cold winter. I got badly caught out last year without enough dry firewood to last through the cold spell and it was very noticeable just how the output from our stove and open fire reduced with increasing moisture content. Just when we needed the heat most! I don’t remember the actual figures but some like an increase of 10% in the moisture content of the firewood reduced the heat output by more like 20% and if your fires are struggling it’s not a warm cozy experience.

This year I’ll be keeping the best of the firewood for the coldest part of the season and most of the firewood I’ll be needing is cut, split and stacked to help it dry just that few percent more. Last year I ended up using too much of the wood for my charcoal bins and I’ll try to avoid that temptation this year though I do need to do one last burn.

It’s a great time of year for walking in the woods so we are off to the Forest of Dean to walk about the Wye Valley for a midweek break, then its back to the shed for more wood and landrover exploits.

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Making more rakes

The traditional hay making season is almost over  but it’s brought with it a peak in demand for hay rakes this year and I’ve had a few orders to fulfill.

I’ve recently taken to using a giant pencil sharpener (otherwise known as a veritas tapered dowel cutter) to put a consistent taper on the end of the tines and it does make the rake look neater.

I’ve mainly been making the split handle style – which I call the ‘Sussex Rake’

But I do sometimes make the rake with the bow support which I call the ‘Dorset Style’.I was taught to nail the bow onto the handle, but I know that some people pass the bow through a hole drilled in the handle. I suspect that there are as many variations in style as there are rake makers!

Even though its very fresh cut the hazel hoop will rarely adopt the sharp radius needed for the hoop without breaking so some gentle persuasion is necessary, gradually working the bend into the wood bit by bit until after a few minutes it will take the curve without breaking. Of course you could steam it to achieve the same result as I do over my knee.

I enjoy making and using rakes. Over the coming year I’ll be experimenting with some adjusted designs more appropriate for garden use and also for bracken raking. There are few rake making workshops left in the country which might give the impression that wooden rake making is a dying craft. But I don’t believe so, around Sussex, Hampshire and Dorset there are plenty of rakes being made in a wide range of styles by woodsmen, coppice workers, greenwood workers and estate workers who hand make their rakes alongside other products and supply locally as they always have done. In my view the future of wooden rakes lies more with these woodland workers than in workshops. But then as a woodsman and a self confessed  jack-of-all-trades I am biased and banging my own drum here!

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A Wander through the Trees

Sometime I am going to learn to publish shorter posts. But not yet, though at least this one will be long on images rather than text so you can always just scroll through the pictures. I’ve spent most of the last week at the New Forest Show which takes place in the heart of the New Forest between Brockenhurst and Lyndhurst. Having taken my bicycle and gone down early to sort out my pitch I was rewarded with some time and good weather to get some exercise in the forest.

The New Forest is a forest in the true sense of the word, in that it’s not all dense woodland, with lots of areas of  grazing, rough pasture, woodland pasture and open heathland in addition to the ancient woodlands, mixed woodlands and inevitable plantations. The mosaic of landscapes is part of what makes the area such a special place.

Mind you there are some big trees there. I had to put a car into this photo just to give a sense of the size of some of the big firs and pines along the Rhinefield ornamental drive.

Alongside the drive is a small arboretum. I was disappointed that it seemed full of such ‘exotic’ species as Norway Spruce and Douglas Fir. I even spotted a small Western Hemlock that seemed to have seeded itself from an adjoining plantation, but in between were some interesting trees. Any ideas about this one?

Passing through one woodland I couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong for a while until I realised that the whole oak wood had been defoliated, probably by a similar caterpillar attack to the ones we’ve had on the Lynchmere Commons for the last couple of years. At first the trees look completley bare, but a much closer inspection reveals the start of some lammas growth, that is a new flush of leaves. The lammas growth is certainly late but perhaps thats an intentional reaction by the tree to ensure that the caterpillars have all left the scene and avoid losing the regrowth as well?

Pedalling along the back road I was amazed by the size of this burr on a large birch tree. Almost the same size as my bicycle. Oooooh, Errrrr!

Ok the tree in the arboretum was unfair, though if anyone honestly said to themselves Cherry Birch, then they are welcome to a bottle of my Bodgers Gold when we next meet up. But whats this one ?

Here, just to make it nice and easy. First one to reply gets a bottle of my Bodgers Gold to be handed over at some convenient place.

I stopped off for a look at the Knightwood Oak, at least 600 years old and the largest oak tree in the Forest, despite having had a few limbs chopped off in recent years. Hard to get a perspective of the tree, but it’s about 25feet in girth.

It has its own special enclosure these days, but it’s still not easy to get a feel for the size of the tree and unlike many parkland oaks (Dave Elliott posted on a cracker recently – The Queen Elizabeth Oak – on his excellent Speckled Wood blog) it has grown upwards in the woodland so it has less of a spreading habit.

On the way back I stopped for a while to enjoy the atmosphere of the woodland. I couldn’t help thinking I was being watched……..

And just possibly I was….. I suspect that the tree spirit in this tree might be related to one of Robin Fawcett’s tribe from the Epping Forest?

Some interesting slabwood bench designs around. But unfortunately more on the looks than the comfort, I can’t really understand why the back is set so low and upright, a little more height and slant and it would have been a fine bench, but perhaps we’re not supposed to linger?

It’s hard to get such a large expanse of forest perfectly managed and there is always something that will be not to my taste. The amount of cordwood stacked and left to rot by the side of the rides was astounding and very annoying to a woodsman like myself.

I’m not against leaving wood – here is a great example – but failing to extract cordwood because it’s not a full lorry or forwarder load is wasteful and needs to better managed. The FC used to issue licences to extract the ‘brash’ as firewood but stopped the practice citing ‘insurance issues’ ie Health and Safety, as far as I remember. I think if we are to become more involved with our woodlands then this is a practice that should be reintroduced.

Anyway I had a really refreshing and enjoyable time cycling through the New Forest and a change is as good as a rest they say!

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Bluebells and Charcoal Burn – the ring of fire

The bluebells are coming on strongly in our restored Hazel Coppice (better than the Hazel unfortunately) and I stopped to take some photos on my way to make charcoal yesterday. It’s hard to capture the delicate colours and the sun was a little too weak to do justice but you get the idea, I hope.

The burn in my oil drums went well, no great surprise as the weather is perfect for it. With the long dry and warm spell having reduced the moisture in the wood significantly the burn is shorter and the yield is higher.

One drum burnt a lot slower than the others and getting bored with waiting I turned the heat up (opened up the vents around the bottom) and with the top shut down it produced an almost perfect ring of fire as the volatile woodgases were burnt off.

Very pretty to see – don’t try this at home. No really – to get the ring effect I shut the top of the drum down for a short time which suppresses the fire and the gases are collecting unburnt. Then on opening the top the gases mix with more oxygen and leap from the drum. Worthwhile wearing a helmet and gloves unless you like the singed eyebrow effect.  But it’s all wasted heat which would be better used in the burn – I need to move to a simple retort system in which the wood is baked in an oven and the gases are used to help improve the burn. But that’s another project!

Alright I admit it. This post is just an excuse to mix the photos of the bluebells with the flames – and I like the effect of the two very different textures and colours.

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Posts, planks and boards – the Logosol mills again

 

I don’t very often use my Logosol chainsaw mill in its full configuration which can cope with logs upto 17feet in length – if you can shift them onto the mill! I normally convert it to a cut down version (known as the woodworkers mill) which has a 4 foot log bed and copes with logs upto 8ft in length. But for this job I wanted some 10ft fence posts as well as 8ft planks and boards.

 

The mill doesn’t come with it’s own tractor, you have to buy that separately. For large logs like these it does make things a lot simpler (and safer) than winching and rolling the logs up ramps onto the log bed.

The tree is a windblown scots pine.  Not being valued for firewood all to often softwood trees like this are left to rot on the woodland floor. We prefer to ship our softwood halfway around the world instead. That’s a total waste of resource, and there really are only so many rotten trees needed as wildlife habitats, to leave more to rot while we import our timber is just a flagrant waste of resources.

To hire in a mobile sawmill  is going to cost a lot of cash, maybe 300 or 400 pounds for the day depending upon who you know. It still makes sense if you are milling up oak for a greenwood frame but softwood is inherently less valuable and you’d need to make a lot of planks to justify hiring in a mobile mill?

 

That’s where the chainsaw mill does come into it’s own. It costs a lot less than a bandsaw mill and can be easily disassembled and stored in a corner when its not in use, so it’s less of a security and parking issue as well. It’s never going to be as quick and efficient as a bandsaw but it doesn’t need to be as it can be used for lots of small jobs in difficult to access areas with timber that otherwise will be wasted. The logosol mill is much more than a simple adaptor for a chain saw with an fully height adjustable log bed capable of taking logs upto 500kg. The quarter inch kerf on the chainsaw ripping chain produces a third less waste (and effort) than a normal saw making the conversion of a large log into posts, boards and planks a pleasure. Are you getting the message that I am converted yet?

On my earlier visit to lop off the top and prepare it for planking I seriously underestimated the size of the tree, thinking it around 2ft at the base, but in fact it’s closer to 30 inches in diameter at the butt.

At a rough estimate with a diameter of 25inches at breast height (dBH is the normal measure of timber) the tree has a volume of about 3.5 Cu M and will yield about 3 tonnes of wet timber, about 1.5tonnes when dried – all based upon assumptions of the volume, density and moisture content of the tree. I’m probably being conservative with these figures, but however you put it – that’s a lot of timber.

 

I estimate this 10ft log weighs in at around 400kg on its own and is destined to be turned into fence posts. I start by taking slices off the top of the log. These ‘waney edged’ boards are not waste and all get used used for cladding and weatherboarding. The rustic nature of the edges makes them more popular than squared off boards – and fewer cuts means less effort!

I’ve missed out a couple of photos in the sequence (I got a bit carried away) and to get to this stage, once the log has a straight top I rotate it through 90 degrees and repeat the process for another side until 3 or all 4 sides are squared up and the log becomes a beam. Taking care with measurements at this stage means that less of the timber will be wasted in offcuts. The beam is then sawn down in 4inch lumps (heavy!) of stock which sit on the rails awaiting resawing.

 

The final stage is to resaw the 4 inch stock again to produce the final 4×4 timbers. The same process if followed for 3inch, 2inch or 1inch stock, whatever dimensions of wood you need. Though it doesn’t make much sense to make smaller timber this way – it’s much easier to make 2inch stock and then resaw on a circular saw or bandsaw in the workshop.

This log made 9 4×4 timbers and several waney edged planks.  Having been windblown for some months I was nervous that the timber might have started to rot 0r that I might meet my longhorn beetle friends again, but in the event the quality of the wood was superb.

The pile of waste from the day’s work is small, as much a testament to the quality of the tree that was going to waste as the competence of the sawyer.

Moving the Logosol mill to the wood is the easy bit. Moving the sawn timber is easier than moving enormous logs but the product from the day still weighs in at well over a tonne so you won’t be able to put it on the roof of your mini. It will weigh a lot less once it’s seasoned, but this timber is going to be used externally so seasoning isn’t part of the plan.

I have to admit that in the one day only just over half the tree was milled up. So hopefully I will be back for the rest before it becomes useless, but finding time is always a problem. Mind you it’s a full trailer load so the next batch will have to wait.  There is one more job to do with the mill before I disassemble it again so it gets a ride to the next site, but that will be another day.

 

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