Clearing up storm damage while avoiding a hornets' nest!

Meet the European Hornet...

We had to work around a nest of them today, as they were in the storm-damaged oak tree I mentioned in yesterday's blog post. You can just see a couple of them going into the crack in the tree that was probably what weakened it and resulted in the storm damage.

Fortunately they look much more scary (being an inch long and noisy!) then they are, and are actually quite timid and if they do sting it's no worse than a normal wasp sting (see Wikipedia).

Here's how the oak tree looked after the storm:

It took us a while, but after some chainsawing and winch work, we got the broken section down on the ground:

To get it down we looped a 4-tonne sling round the branch near where it attached to the tree - this effectively doubles its strength to 8 tonnes, see the table on this page. We attached a 10-tonne pulley to the sling using an 8-tonne bow shackle - using a pulley doubles the power of the winch:

Through the pulley was a 20 metre 15-tonne steel rope, with one end anchored to a tree with another sling and bow shackle:

The other end was attached to the steel rope that went through our Tirfor T516 winch - this can pull 1.6 tonnes, so all the other components in use are stronger, eliminating the chance of unexpected failures.

That's an awful lot of gear to push through the woods on a wheelbarrow, but it got the job done with us stood at a safe distance from the tree! We even managed to avoid damaging the hornets' nest, so they can carry on living in the trunk of the tree and the cracked bit of the branch which is now on the ground.

We cleared up some coppice stools that had been blown over too, and there are still a few more of these to do before we've finished clearing up from the St Jude's Day storm which hit the UK on 28 Oct 2013.

Mike

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Clearing up after the storm, October 2013

As you might expect, we had a bit of storm damage in the woods after the 'St Jude's Day Storm', which hit the UK in the early hours of Monday 28 October. Nothing too major fortunately, some coppice stools and one oak that kind of broke in half...

Quite a few coppice stools are leaning, and will be dealt with in the next few days:

Some have come right down:

while others had a 'domino' effect:

Note - this is why you have to be TWO tree-lengths away from a person felling a tree...

Some of the stools I cleared up yesterday, after the wind had died down:

There was also a branch in the path by Sweep Wood:

it had come from this oak tree:

Here's a quick video of me using a chainsaw to clear the fallen branch and also a coppice stem that was leaning over a path, taken using a chest-mounted GoPro camera:

The oak tree that split up the middle was up the top of the hill in Chestnut Coppice:

It's made a bit of a mess and I need to go back up there to sort it out with a winch...

Still, could have been much worse, we're thankful this is all that fell!

Mike

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Family visit to the woods

About half of my family were visiting Rye last week, and fortunately there were a couple of days where the weather permitted us to head into the woods...

It wasn't all play though, everyone had a go at helping fell and log some trees:

Some needed more of a team effort!

Josh was delighted that we found this little toad near where we'd been felling trees:

There was still time to sit and relax though, with a fire to keep us warm...

Some of us even stayed on until it was dark!

Of course, the next big thing in the woods is likely to be the Sunday night / Monday morning storm... We'll report on the damage as soon as possible...

Mike

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Wild Boar Week in Rye

Wild Boar Week is coming soon in Rye! Come and try some of the delicious food on offer...

In preparation for the week, I took a few journalists and bloggers on a tour of the woods to see where the boar live, the morning after we'd all had a great wild boar dinner at The Gallivant.

Here's one of their write-ups with a few pics from the wood, and here's another. And here's the fleeting glimpse I got of boar last December...

Mike

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Spider webs, a broken chain and a coppicing milestone

Last week I reached a milestone! I've now cut enough wood for winter 2015/16! I'll still cut some more, so there's a bit spare in case of hard winters or friends wanting to buy an occasional load in a couple of years' time, but it's good to know the minimum is now done.

But perhaps more interesting is how the spider webs look now that there's dew in the mornings!

These trees were full of them! Now I see why there are so many running around after I've felled a tree - I guess they are all suddenly looking for a new home...

I had a little mishap as well - a chainsaw chain snapped, the first time I've seen this happen. It wasn't dangerous - there's a couple of bits on the saw to deal with this happening and I use a short bar when coppicing so there's not much chain anyway. It just made a metallic noise and ended up on the floor in front of me...

Anyway, here's a couple of views of the area I've been coppicing:

And here's our 2015/16 home heating:

Mike

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Truncator chainsaw logging bench (as seen on Dragon's Den)

A couple of weeks ago at the Weald Wood Fair I saw a logging system being demonstrated, and pretty quickly realised I had to have one! It's the 'Truncator', which has apparently been on the BBC programme Dragon's Den.

I've made a video review which you can watch here, followed by some still images below.

I've got the Pro version with five 'cups', as shown below. I chose to mount the cups on a separate piece of wood, which in this photo is sat on top of the trestle that comes as part of the kit:

The piece of wood with the cups on it is held down using a couple of ratchet straps:

Once you've loaded logs into the Truncator, you use the bungee cord attached to one of the cups to hold the logs in place:

It's locked in using this beautifully simple little clip - the grooves in it not only grip the bungee cord but also use its tension to force the cord into the clip:

I spaced the cups to cut a 2 meter log into six pieces, with the final piece dropping off into a wheelbarrow:

The other five logs stay sat in the cups after using the chainsaw to cut them:

Then you push the wheelbarrow along and tip the cups so the logs fall into it:

Conveniently, one load of logs nicely fills a large wheelbarrow:

The other option is to use the ratchet straps to hold the Truncator on the side of the trailer:

I've attached some small blocks of wood on the underside of the Truncator to locate it accurately on the trailer:

I still use the ratchet straps to secure it though:

As on the trestle, you load it up with long logs - and you can see here why I chose to have five cups rather than six - the sixth would miss the trailer anyway, so may as well be absent, allowing the logs fall into a wheelbarrow:

The logs in the cups can be rapidly tipped straight into the trailer:

Overall it's an excellent invention, and I'm looking forward to using it more in the spring to prepare logs for the following winter. In my view, the key advantages of the Truncator are:

• No metal parts, so if you hit one of the cups with the chainsaw the chain will be undamaged.
• Cups mounted on an easily available wooden beam, so if it gets worn down over time by occasional touches from the chainsaw it can be replaced easily and cheaply.
• Cups can be separated by any distance, so you can produce logs at a length ideal for your woodburner or stove.
• Integrated bungee cord to hold the logs in place, which can be secured in seconds.
• Very fast to use.
• Avoids the need to pick up logs from the ground, saving strain on your back.

If you want one, you can buy them from truncator.co.uk.

Mike

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