Felling trees

This week: Felling trees; Flat tyres; Seat work;

It is the end of the first week of March. So the year is moving forwards very quickly.

Spring has well and truly arrived here in Dol. We have had a wonderful week of warm sunny weather, which has enabled a lot of outside jobs to be worked on.

The week started cool, with advection fog coming in off the sea and a maximum of just 12°C on Monday.

By Saturday, the temperature at 12:30 was 19°C, the warmest day of the year so far.

This has meant that for the first time this year it has been tee-shirt weather. And the good news is that this stable, spring weather will continue for the next ten days.

All the plants and shrubs are bursting into life again after their winter dormancy. New leaves are showing everywhere.

My Bachelor’s Buttons, Kerria Japonica, are in flower however despite the really wet winter, the flowers are not as plentiful as in previous years. Although that may be because I have not pruned it, preferring instead to let it spread and become bushy as it is a boundary shrubbery.

The same applies to my Forsythia, which has just a few blooms this year. I noticed there were some dead stems, so once the leaves appear, I think I will give both shrubs a “haircut”.

Felling Trees

Well actually it is just one tree, the Nettle tree, Celtis australis, which has been growing out of a stone wall for years.

I have mentioned before that this is a “weed tree”, which if left can grow to 25 metres tall. It readily sets seeds everywhere and when I looked in the east orchard, I counted more than a dozen saplings which are growing. They will have to be removed.

The tree does provide shade, but apart from that has no redeeming qualities. The flowers are insignificant and the small black fruit, spread by birds, grow readily.

I attached a rope to the first limb, to prevent it falling onto a building and breaking the stonework. This did the job and the limb fell exactly where I wanted.

The problem I have is where this tree was allowed to grow. Because of where it is growing, its shape and size, it means that I cannot just fell the tree in one go. Instead I need to remove limbs one at a time.

From then on, cutting the limbs became easier.

I will leave them to dry for the summer and then burn them in the wood stove next winter.

Quite how I am going to get the trunk out of the wall, I do not know. I suspect I may have to leave it in situ.

Flat tyres

I needed to move some very large planters out of their over-winter area, so brought the sack barrow out of my store, to make the moving process easy.

That was until I found that both tyres had gone flat. That is not unusual though, because it is probably six months since I last used it and small pneumatic tyres do deflate over time.

I have an electric pump, so connected it to a 12v battery and tried to reinflate them.

One tyre inflated to 30 psi, however I could hear air leaking from the second.

Being small, they are fiendishly difficult to remove the inner tube out of the tyre cover. Even with small fingers, it took ages to just grip the rubber inner tube and manoeuvre it out between the hub and the tyre.

Once out I inflated the tube, then used a bucket of water to see where the leak was. It is the seam where the filler tube was vulcanised to the body of the inner tube.

Clearly a manufacturing defect, so I brought out my tyre repair kit. This is another of those essential pieces of equipment which are very necessary, but seldom used.

I found that the rubber cement had dried up, so the kit was useless.

Rummaging around in the workshop, I found a bag with two new inner tubes, bought just for this purpose.

What I decided to do though, was to inflate the tube to test for leaks, before I tried to get it back into the tyre and on the wheel rim.

I was pleased I did, because I found that the first “new” tube also had a leak. Fortunately the second tube was sound, so I started the reinstall procedure.

I have tyre levers which help enormously in getting the tyre cover back onto the wheel rim.

So what should have been a one hour job of repairing the inner tube, actually took the best part of the morning, before I was ready to move the planters into their summer position.

Seat work

I finished the cutting wood for my new window seat this week.

Working outside means that problems with sawdust are minimised. I needed to use my router to prepare rebaits for the centre support for the seat.

I’m using a cantilever arm to support the seat. The rails are 1.4 metres long, enough for two people comfortably and three people at a pinch, so there needs to be a support in the centre.

I don’t want a leg under the centre support, so the alternative is to rebait the support into the wall plate with a cantilever support underneath, like a flying buttress.

The router allowed me to quickly cut the 20mm rebaits. The corners I then finished with a hand chisel. Occasionally I think that a CNC milling machine would be useful!

When I tried the joints dry, they are tight and stable.

On Saturday morning I fixed the cantilever into the wall plate, using waterproof wood glue and 70mm screws through the back of the plate. Once this first piece is dry, I will glue and screw the other elements together.

There is still some work to do, painting with Sadolin etc., however I hope by the end of next week, I will have the seat assembled and ready to use. NCG