Summer 2000 Newsletter

In the last edition...

... I promised news of a Sycamore bonanza. This has already provoked interest from Turners who particularly like this wood. It began with a telephone call from a farmer near Middle Wallop in December 1998 who said that he had felled quite a few trees which he didn’t know what to do with but knew they were too good for firewood. At the time OAG had just died and it was not high on the list of things to do. I tried to talk Gordon Barnes the JCB driver and occasional helper who lived near to the farm to check it out. He never got round to it and the months passed. Around six months later I rang Mark the farmer and it was all still stacked against one of his barns. Brian and I eventually got over there and liked what we saw. Mark wanted to make a kitchen out of some of it and was prepared to listen to offers for the rest. More time elapsed until he had finished his drilling and in December with the help of his father he delivered three big farm trailer loads, including a walnut tree that Brian had spotted, around 12 trees in all.

Plan A was to plank it bit by bit through the year but after thinking about it for a while I decided that such a large amount coupled with the other Beech, Oak and Ash awaiting planking would probably finish off Harold and take Brian so long there would be no time for anything else. Painful though it was we decided to fork out yet more cash to get a mobile woodmizer in for a few days. Brian located a chap who lived fairly close to the woods and arrangements were made for the end of March. As so often happens the week the mobile was due was too wet so we have begun slabbing it ourselves and will review progress later.

The Walnut is first class. I hope the summer dries it sufficiently for us to start selling it later in the year.

Our sawing plan is to have planks no longer than six foot, apart from special orders and to slab a lot of the Beech and Sycamore as Turners are always interested in good quality 4 inch plus hard wood and more so if it is spalted. We have something in the region of 120 cu ft. The Beech was felled autumn 1999 so won’t be very dry for a year or more. More about some interesting and saleable Beech later.

I arrived in Stoke one winter day...

...to be greeted by Chris Seeber who wanted to know if I had heard about Brian’s accident in the Kiln. I worriedly enquired how many fingers he had left and of the quantity of blood only to be told it was far more exciting than that. Apparently coming down the stairs a lump of wood slipped from his grasp hitting an old powder fire extinguisher that I had thoughtfully hung on the steps. This not only set it off but also Brian soon realized meant that it wouldn’t stop until empty. Eventually the poor old chap had to give up and throw it outside. So if you are buying wood with a strange powder all over it, you know what happened.

Big brother is watching...

...which in my case doesn’t mean the Russians but the chap who controls the money and ensures we operate legally. I have had cautionary words about writing about anyone who might take offence or even legal action. This seems a shame, as I know a lot of customers enjoyed OAG describing characters like Adrian and his ailments. It has been good meeting a few of the longstanding clients some of whom have been visiting for years. Most of them know more about Harold’s waterworks than the sort of stock we have.

I have mentioned in the past...

...the need to acquire new stock as cheap as possible and that we would be prepared to travel. The first big tree, which was free if we felled and collected it, was at a posh little village near Cobham in Surrey. The owner of the tree was a colleague at work in Fulham who was buying the house and had been informed in the survey that the tree was ruining the drains and dangerously close to the house. “It’s an Oak”, he said. Interesting, I thought. “No it isn’t”, he said a week later; “I think it’s a Sycamore”. Less interesting, I thought, with our surplus of sycamore, but worth a look.

Whilst the venue wasn’t far from where I live, it was a good 70 miles from Hampshire and the woods. I was going to need Dick the 77-year-old professional tree feller - ‘Dick the Tree’. I videoed the tree which on examination turned into an Ash and dropped the tape off with Dick. It was a tricky job. The tree was 80 years old, right on the road and with several big branches overhanging a single storey engineering firm. I decided to enlist the services of a young lad from work who was an expert climber, but had never used a chain saw and my farmer brother-in-law who had chopped a few trees in his time.

The cunning plan was for me to take the Old Harold trailer with a lift on and meet Brian and Dick at the job. Brian was taking the Land Rover and the Blacksmith’s big four-wheel flat bed trailer. As it happens the date chosen was a perfect winters day, clear blue skies and no wind. What’s more the Land Rover made it up the motorway and we met at the appointed time. In fact Dick the Tree and Brian were there first and were drinking coffee looking at the tree. We also got coffee and I was in excellent humour as the plans had worked and it was a beautiful day. Ian the house owner was also very happy that the tree was going to be removed cheaply. John the climber put all his gear on and disappeared up the tree with all his ropes dangling. It was at this point that I realized that the people who did not look happy were Dick and my brother-in-law.

Having seen the tree in the flesh, Dick realized that this was no job for enthusiastic amateurs. The only way to remove the big branches was to cut them off one by one from up the tree and swing them on ropes to a safe place to lower. Whilst Dick had the expertise he was not allowed (by his wife) to climb 25 feet in the air on the grounds that he doesn’t bounce as well as he used to. John would not be safe with a chain saw. The likelihood was that the tree would a) hit the house b) hit the building next door or c) John would fall out of the tree. If those that knew what they were doing didn’t fancy it on a day with perfect weather then the sensible person would abandon the attempt and get a professional in. So that is what we did. Three weeks later Ian paid a tree surgeon £110 to remove all the cord wood leaving a 12 foot stump and we returned a month later and felled and took that. It was a valuable learning experience. In future we will go for felled trees ideally unless the felling is very easy and half an hour’s drive from base in Hampshire is far enough. Still everyone is in one piece and we have some nice Ash Slabs.

We are still on the look out...

...for interesting trees, fruit trees and something different. Brian got hold of a small Elm tree but someone came and bought it as it was. It goes to show that if you have what people want it will sell. I suppose that if it doesn’t the answer is to drop the price. We cleared out a load of Sycamore with a ‘Make us an offer for the lot’ tactic and we now have some four or five year old Ash that we will do the same. Hurry up though, Chris Seeber keeps nicking it for his staircase.

Chris Seeber, the new owner of Quarry House and his wife Jane and ten kids are settling in. Chris has made us a natty little ‘The Kiln’ sign to hang outside the Kiln and has been collecting off cuts to do a few more signs for his friends. We usually have plenty of suitable bits for this sort of thing so if any visitors to the woods want one I am sure they can have them free. Not quite the same as club card points but better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick. Far more usefully Jane Seeber has been making me lunch.

I’ve always quite liked...

...my wife’s brother Martin who is a farmer near Reading. Last year as I was becoming increasingly interested in the woods I started liking the trees on his farm, particularly the sick looking ones that would be far better employed as a stack of planks in my drying shed. Unfortunately despite being a decent chap he is not a mug so he told me to keep my thieving hands off his trees and that if anyone was going to have the wood, it was him. He did give me a couple of apple trees to plant in the woods on my birthday and I had to be happy with that. One day in April whilst visiting the farm he took me to a fallen Beech tree in a wood that belonged to a Multi National company and bordered one of his fields. Happily the chap who manages the woods for the company works three days a week for the company and the other two days for my brother-in-law, so we were able to strike a deal, where the expense was mostly our labour in getting it out. The tree was a big bugger. There is loads of good wood in it. The top has been spalting nicely. In the next issue I will tell you how we got it out of the wood it was in and transferred in sections back to base. The reason for this is that at the time of writing we haven’t managed to do it yet!

New customers...

...are continuing to come to us via The Website. Since publishing on The Net (impressive jargon huh?) I have not changed it much. This is almost solely because the friend who did the thing for nothing in the first place is always too busy and I am too thick to master the program. I intend to have a page with answers to most commonly asked questions and also a page illustrating what you clever people do with the lumps of wood I manage to flog to you. I haven’t had any requests for links to other sites, which apparently is something that is quite easy. If any one reads this who first came by us through the web let us know the sort of information you would have preferred. I have deliberately not publicized exact details of how to get to the woods for security reasons. I am grateful to Dave McKenzie who writes for The Woodworker for doing a piece on the website in the May issue, excellent and free advertising – Good Woodworking said that if I advertise for a set of three issues they will mention it on their website page and if I do six it will be ‘Website of the Month’, so much for telling the readers what’s good on the web, more like who’s mug enough to pay them.

I am pleased to announce...

...that Brian has become a grandfather at last when his daughter gave birth to a little girl. Personally I think the old bugger could be a great-grandfather. Fortunately for Brian things were quiet on the wood front as he had a stinking cold and had been up night and day with his lambing. Now that they are all safely delivered I hope he is going to plank and sell some wood for us.

I have decided to do another newsletter in the autumn as some individuals, who obviously don’t get out much, say they like them. Those that have had them all will have noticed that there are less and less frills with them. I have come to the conclusion that is it only a newsletter rather than anything more sophisticated so there is little point in trying to pretty it up. I would like stamped addressed envelopes for the next edition. This is not so much for economy, although they are appreciated but also to check that those on the list are not only willing but also able to receive them.

In the next edition...

...as well as a more in depth description of the stock that I am willing to do a deal on there will be news on the dynamic duo Brian and Harold who both celebrate birthdays in May pushing them towards 150 years old (No not each). Harold has been making an optimistic purchase and Brian has been demonstrating yet another talent redesigning steering columns.

Paul GOULDEN

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