Woodfuel: Heating The Nation

You may have noticed that the image at the top of the site has changed... and this is because I have embarked on a new project that I'm really excited about - and also the reason that posts may slow down here for a bit, as I put a lot of my spare time into the new project.

However, I'm not leaving you, the site will still be active and please do contact me if you want to see something specific related to chainsaws on here. I'm also holding off doing any videos for the moment as I want to work out how to best bring you the new structure for chainsaw units.

But what of the new project? Well, I've was fortunate enough to record and photograph a woodfuel conference in Surrey, back in September. Fast forward to the end of December and I had an idea that I wanted to increase awareness of the industry through the creation of a documentary about it, or rather those people that are involved. If you are in the timber industry, a woodland owner, or thinking about fitting a wood chip / wood pellet boiler, then this project might interest you.

I've been really lucky, and although I'm currently only at the pre-production stage, I've been lucky enough to get agreement from several businesses, organisations and individuals in the industry, allowing me to interview and film them. I'm hoping to start this phase at the end of January / start of February.

If you would like to keep up to date with what is going on, I've created a Facebook page at http://facebook.com/woodfuel.heating.the.nation and have more in-depth (but less frequently updated) posts at http://www.davidvickers.co.uk/blog - I'll also post up here about it occasionally too.

So, please do visit and "like" the page at http://facebook.com/woodfuel.heating.the.nation and keep up-to-date, or tell me your news and what you are doing in the woodfuel industry. Have you thought about supplying it, but didn't know how to start? Post a comment and I'm sure someone will help you out.

Dealing With Stihl Chains: Part 3

Apologies for the delay for getting part 3 of the Stihl chain series to you. It's probably worth a very quick recap on what we've done so far, before carrying on with this part. Let's take a look at this Stihl chain...

...from what we know so far, it's not one of the latest chains as it has the pitch marked on it, rather than just a single identifying number. How do I know that? Because it says "3/8" on the depth gauge of the cutter - therefore it's a 3/8" pitch chain. For a bonus point, how would still now mark a chain with this pitch?

Now look at the drive link, that's got a 6 on it. So now, double or quits... what does this number tell you? No peeking!

So how did you do so far? The new chain would mark the depth gauge with the number "3" for a 3/8" chain. The 6 on the drive link tells you that it's a 1.6mm gauge chain. Knowing this, we can tell this is a model 36 chain. But in this post we want to know about the letters that Stihl would use to identify this chain.

The third character of the model identifier is a letter and it is either an "R" or a "P". The "R" denotes a Rapid chain, a "P" is for a Picco chain. What's the difference? The Rapid chain is a standard height chain and is the one shown in the picture. The Picco chain is a lighter-weight chain often found on the smaller chainsaws. One quick thing, the older Picco chains were easily identified as they had the letter "P" stamped on to the depth gauge, and Picco chains were 3/8" pitch.

So, we now know that the chain in this image is a model 36R-something, and in the next post we'll have a look at what the 'something' is.

New for 2013...

Happy New Year for 2013, and I'd like to wish all of you best wishes. This year promises to be a busy one, with a fairly major project just getting started - more on that in a moment. Later on this week, I'll be getting back to completing the short series on dealing with Stihl chains, and after that it might go quiet for a little while. Why..?

 

I'm working on producing a documentary about the woodfuel industry. I've already got several key people ready to be interviewed, and late last week it started to turn international, with help and information from the US, Belgium and Zambia.

 

I've set up a Facebook page at http://facebook.com/woodfuel.heating.the.nation - please take a look, "like it" and check it out on a regular basis as I'll be posting up various questions, news and views and some behind-the-scenes stuff going forward.

Xmas Hols...

Just wanted to wish you all a Happy Xmas and New Year - I'll be back with more chainsaw related articles, and the continuation of the Dealing With Stihl Chains series.

But that's going to be it for this year - I was going to post a couple more articles but as my Nan died yesterday afternoon, just a couple of hours after seeing her, I'm not much in the mood for it.

Anyway, I wish you all well for the festive period. See you in 2013.

The New CS30

You may be aware that there are changes afoot with the qualification structure around all the Certificates of Competence. So, in this quick post I'll just try to set out the main points of (what used to be) the CS30 ticket.

As from May 2013, the CS30 will be no more. It'll now be called the rather snappily titled City & Guilds NPTC Level 2 Award in Chainsaw Maintenance and Cross-Cutting (QCF) 0020-03. It's still made up of 2 units, just as CS30 was made up of CS30.1 (maintenance) and CS30.2 (cross-cutting) these have become Unit 201 and 202 respectively.

So much for the renaming, what about the content? It's largely the same; there are a few subtle changes but nothing that will radically alter the underlying and underpinning knowledge. There is now a requirement to show some very superficial knowledge regarding health and safety legislation such as HASAWA (Health And Safety At Work Act), PUWER (Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations) and the AFAG guides (Arboriculture & Forestry Advisory Group). You'll need to explain why maintenance should be undertaken, and what to do with a faulty chainsaw. There are some very minor changes to the chain elements - there is no longer a need to identify the individual components of the chain and state their function, and they've limited the cutter types to just chisel and semi-chisel; although there is still definite merit in knowing this information... if someone tells you to read the model number off of the drive link, but you don't know what a drive link is, then...

Within the crosscutting section, you will now need to explain how to grade timber and present logs for extraction and describe how to move timber safely by hand, with aid tools or using some form of mechanical assistance.

To be honest, it really doesn't appear to be any kind of radical departure from what I would normally cover in one of my courses, mind you trying to fit it all in in 2 days of tuition can be a bit difficult at times!

CS30 is dead, long live CS30! Or at least long live the City & Guilds NPTC Level 2 Award in Chainsaw Maintenance and Cross-Cutting (QCF) 0020-03.

Health and Safety: Fine of £111,000...

I was just flicking through the latest (January 2013) copy of hsw magazine, dealing with health and safety at work when I came across this mention of a wildlife park owner was fined £111,000 after a Beech tree fell on a visitor. The site had had trees assessed by an expert, but seemingly had not actioned any recommendations.

To find out more information on this ruling and the events leading up to it, visit http://www.healthandsafetyatwork.com/hsw/risk-assessment/manor-house

Dealing With Stihl Chains: Part 2

In the last post, we saw that it, perhaps, wasn't all that obvious how Stihl derive their model numbers - which you need to understand to be able to read a Stihl filing table. Last time, we saw that the first character of the model designator was based on the pitch of the chain. But what about the second character?

To decipher the model number we also need to recognise that the second number relates to the gauge of the chain. Just as there are industry standard sizes for chain pitch, there are recognised sizes for chain (and bar) gauge.

Starting from the narrowest, these are 1.1mm, 1.3mm, 1.5mm, 1.6mm and 2.0mm. Here, Stihl just take the number after the decimal point and stamp that on to the drivelink, thereby indicating the gauge of the chain. Therefore, a chain with a "3" stamped on to the drivelink is a 1.3mm gauge chain. Easy.

The second character of the Stihl model number is just this single gauge reference number. This means then, that with the knowledge gained from the last post and this one, if we have a chain stamped with a "2" on the depth gauge, and a "6" on the drivelink, then we can deduce that it's a 0.325" pitch chain with a gauge of 1.6mm; furthermore the model number (so far) is "26".

With the slightly older chains, the pitch was marked up differently, so a "3/8" on the depth gauge and a "6" on the drivelink would have told us that it was a model "36" chain.

We have now looked at how the model number is formed, but if you look at a filing table, you'll see a whole bunch of letters after this number - they gotta mean something. Surely? Well, yes, of course - and that's the subject of the next post.