willedoo

It's interesting how the different bird species get on with each other. The raven and the butcher birds seem to tolerate each other ok although they compete for food. All the honeyeater species get on well together and the butcher birds get on with them ok. It's not unusual to see a butcher bird and honeyeaters rubbing shoulders around the bird bath. Yesterday a butcher bird was having a bath and he had an audience of noisy miners standing in a ring around him waiting for their turn. It's only a small bath consisting of one of those enamel wash basins you buy from the camping places. I've seen a similar thing before when the raven was in the bath. Because of his size he takes up most of the bath. He was happily splashing away while directly above him perched on the guttering was a line of noisy miners with one lone butcher bird on the end of the line, all looking down at the raven. They don't fear the raven, but for security the smaller birds keep a few feet distant from him. The kookburras on the other hand are disliked by all the other birds. They're like the beagle boys of the bird world.

I once had a 60lt drum as a water heater. It was on it's side on a frame with legs long enough to build a fire underneath. For the water outlet I screwed some threaded gal pipe into the bung hole which was positioned at the top. At the other end of the drum I cut a round hole in the top. Into this went a length of gal pipe that ran almost down to the bottom of the drum. The top of the pipe was brazed to a half cut 20lt drum that acted as a bucket. You would light the fire, heat the water up, then whatever amount of cold water you poured into the cut 20lt section would go to the bottom of the drum and force the hot water up and out the outlet spout. A fairly primitive donkey. This is a rough sketch done by a mouse:

The 60 litre oil drums were handy for a lot of things like that. I don't know if they still make them or not; I haven't seen one around for a long time.

Meanwhile, up here on the highway there's a big billboard advertising Australia Zoo with Robert Irwin having metric tonnes of fun. Some things just aren't right.

That's ok Marty, if he gets arrested we can all chip in with a character reference.

When I went to ag college it was a two year course that was the equivalent of grade 11 and 12 high school. The college owned a bush block up in the hills and in the middle of the second year we all had to go up there to do a week long timber camp. It was real back woods stuff. Accommodation was a long corrugated iron hut with one big long dormitory room full of bunk beds and a second room on the end with a kitchen and eating area. There was no electricity, just kerosene lanterns and a wood stove with an old shearers cook toiling away with the biggest, blackest pots and frying pan I've ever seen. He could cook bacon and eggs for a dozen or more people in one go with that frypan. It was freezing cold at night with no showers on site. We all had a bogey in the dam after work and it was that cold, you had to strip off and run in, scream and run out to soap up, then run back in again to rinse off. It was like those Russians jumping in a hole in the ice for Epiphany. We didn't do any chainsaw instruction until the last day of the camp. The rest of it was all cross-cut sawing to drop the trees and stump and top them. A little Cat crawler (D3 or D4?) would snig the logs up to the flat area where we would bark them, cross-cut saw them into fence post lengths then split them into posts with wedges and sledge hammers. They also made us adze the rough split edges of the posts. I think it was supposed to be one of those character building things. When my dad did the same camp back in the 1930's, he sunk the adze blade into the side of his foot and ended up with a stay in the local hospital.

1988 was the same year I bought my Stihl which is an 034 Super. The Super was about 61cc so an extra 5cc on the 034. It's been a good saw. I don't know what the smaller Husqvarnas are like but the one I have was the most used saw in forestry work around the world at the time I bought it. The professional range seems to have a fairly good name in the industry although I don't know much about the new model that has replaced mine.

I don't remember the last timber I cut with it but it would have been either brushbox, ironbark or bloodwood. I've never had it happen with the Stihl saw; maybe the Husqvarna case has a different alloy composition.

It was a good lesson not to leave a saw lying around in an uncleaned state for a long time. The chain oil residue mixes with the sawdust to make corrosive gunk. It ate a few decent sized pit marks on the inside of the aluminium drive sprocket case and even went right through in a couple of small areas. I think it's the acid or tannin in the sawdust that does it. When I get the saw back I'll do the old superglue + baking soda trick to fill the pits.

One step closer to those slabs. Yesterday I got the saw all bolted together, cleaned up, free of hornet mud and in to the local Husqvarna dealer to see if they can get it going. I gave it a few pulls before taking it in but saw no sign of any spark. Fingers crossed it won't cost an arm and a leg to fix. That's one job that's been a long time coming. It's been sitting around semi disassembled for a long time.

I had a plywood returning boomerang when I was a kid but it was a bought one.

Most plywood is imported, but I suppose the few remaining Australian manufacturers wouldn't be able to offer any better price due to the high production costs here.

Here's one possible scenario: it could start with a chainsaw wielding bloke in Borneo. The trees are cut, topped and hauled out of the jungle with a log skidder so a grapple can load them onto timber trucks for the journey down to the coast. There a crane loads them onto barges for the trip down to the main port where they are unloaded and loaded onto ships for the trip across the ocean to the port at Jakarta. There they are unloaded onto trucks and transported to the plywood factory where the logs are processed by peeling and cutting to size. Add lots of expensive glue, pressure and heat and a bit more sizing before stacking the finished sheets on pallets, strapping them and forklifting them into shipping containers. Then container trucks take the containers back to the port to be loaded onto a container ship bound for Australia where the importer will pay customs duty and a raft of other port and inspection charges on top of the freight and initial product cost. When the ship arrives here, the containers are loaded onto trucks and transported to the wholesaler/importer's warehouse where the plywood is unloaded from the shipping containers and stored. As orders come in the plywood is then loaded onto delivery trucks and taken to the big green and red shed, forklifted off and stacked in the building supplies section where the friendly staff will sell us a sheet or two and collect the GST for the government. But that's only a guess.

I wonder where you go to buy second hand stuff these days. Most of the demolition and scrap yards are closed down around here, Gumtree is nearly dead and Facebook Marketplace is inhabited by crooks.

I was at an old mate's 80th. recently at his nursing home (he has Parkinson's). He belongs to one of those born again churches and I think I was the only non church friend there. One of them was talking about the need to use cash and how cards are the mark of the beast referred to in the bible. I can remember working for some born again people back in the early 1990's and they were banging on back then about debt and credit cards carrying the mark of the beast.

I miss the dry inland climate. Here on the coast the winter is ok but for a lot of the year doors and windows stick and mould tries to take over.

They also do a lot of building stuff we can't do because of termites.

Thanks Pete. The one I have on it is a ripping chain for ripping fence posts out. I'll see how it goes on slabs. On the subject of fence posts, I saw these on Facebook Marketplace recently. They're rip sawn Gympie Messmate posts. Almost a shame to use such nice timber for a fence post. My weatherboards are Gympie Messmate. Wall frames, rafters, ridge boards and verandah joists are all very old recycled Iron Bark from the local RSL. Verandah posts and verandah floor boards are Spotted Gum, bearers are Blackbutt and the floor inside is mixed species, mainly Spotted Gum mixed with a dark red board that I'm not sure of the species. A lot of nice wood. I'm glad I built it years ago; good timber costs a fortune these days.

We get a variety here in this arrea. We get the swamp sheoak C.glauca, the horsetail sheoak C.equisetifolia, the river sheoak C.cunninghamiana, black sheoak Allocasuarina littoralis and the forest sheoak Casuarina torulosa which I have on my place. I also have a line of horsetail sheoaks I planted many years ago along the street frontage. They're nice trees - hardy, attract birds and fix nitrogen in the soil. If a sheoak blows over I usually try to cut it up as it's excellent firewood. If you pull the branchlet segments apart you can see the true leaves arranged around the segment join if you have strong glasses or a magnifying glass. A lot of the species have different numbers of leaves. I think from memory my forest sheoaks have five leaves.

If that was the photo you posted near your place, I thought it looked like brigalow. There's brigalow in your area as far as I know. It polishes up well as most acacias do. Belah is a casuarina. This is a turned brigalow bowl:

I'll see if I can locate it (buried in the shed somewhere). It's fairly similar to this one: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/405134261000?_skw=chainsaw+slabbing+jig&itmmeta=01J8HHQ5P1DP0QSFA9ABBGQJPE&hash=item5e53e23b08:g:dDUAAOSwv6BmqX7G&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA8HoV3kP08IDx%2BKZ9MfhVJKkyax%2B7QtvSccvV7df9a%2FF14FZrsw2YGAsyXBf56FchguvkKxSI4slgbw%2FVpDSYgXv2CkWmPI7dLY39qNCMRyB64c4HU0rDfvG9K7dviaCHDnLc1%2Bji0rWHHC%2FR23M39Em978HLcw8IC%2FVbU6tLC7fCJM6l%2F4JyYpA2hav0tMzT9ArIRLROmaddoB2alEJJjSILggLkt%2FZQjkO7rrXC2h7Z5VHE8Yq2F9FEy%2B81ptO9zrLR0CmYO4R4lsmSszpBFLIwUG3nJPOeb60Itlhq3ClBkqsMK7c0et7AZatsQ0dp1A%3D%3D|tkp%3ABFBMjNvcscRk

Looks like Elle.

Nev, why don't you start a thread on it? I haven't found a better country. Beats me why people from around the world are breaking their necks to get into the U.S..

My Husqvarna is a 372 XP, about 70cc, and predates the newer models with fuel saving and emission technology. I looked up the newer system that Husqvarna calls X-Torq. They basically have air blowing in the cylinder to purge the exhaust gases.

I haven't built the log jinker yet but I've dragged out the big saw and started to clean it up before taking it into the dealers for some needed maintenance. It's been sitting for a few years so will need a good going over. I haven't got it reassembled yet to test the spark but it was ok last time I tried to start it. It wouldn't fire up on that occasion after sitting for quite a long time so I'd say it needs a carburettor kit. Same thing happened to the smaller Stihl saw after sitting around eg: the diaphragm drying up and going hard. Hopefully the Husqvarna won't cost a fortune to fix. It wouldn't have any more than five hours work on it so is fundamentally a new saw despite the neglect. Replacement cost now is over $2,100 so it's worth fixing. I'm keen to try out the eBay special slabbing jig I bought about three years ago and never got to use.