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Gimlet
Guest
Wild birds love hedges for the same reason.
We are Spoiled by Cheap Tools
- Thread starter Briar Lee
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Are you kidding!!!?? No way, that is fascinating work and skill set. We have nothing like this here in the US. I encounter very old,field stone fencing, but now that is largely decorative and not entrusted for livestock containment (for the most part).
G
Gimlet
Guest
Here's another one. Hazel, about 18 feet high at the start and a full-sized cow could have sauntered straight through it.
And after treatment:
My usual avatar on social media. A John Beavis made 3 1/2 Lb hedging axe that's just dealt with a walnut tree:
G
Gimlet
Guest
You could have laid hedging. Most deciduous species will take it, though some have more cooperative growth habits than others.
It's not particularly difficult to do either, once you understand the principals and apply them to the tree's biological needs. It's little different to pleaching or espalier training fruit trees.
And while they say a bad workman always blames his tools, this is one trade you cannot do satisfactorily with bad ones. Fine tools are essential, but you wouldn't have any trouble with that if this thread is anything to go by.
I've moved to the north east of England since taking those pictures. Hedge laying is less common up here. Dry-stone walling is the norm because so much of the landscape is moorland and it's sheep country. Sounds much the same as the stone fencing you're describing and is still very much the prevalent type of field enclosure. I do that as well though the idea of constructing something from stone knowing it has no foundation or mortar and will at some point fall down and have to be done again somewhat offends my instincts as a brick layer.
But there's no reason why you couldn't develop your own hedge laying in the US. I'd love to see the craft exported and made use of in other parts of the world. And if you want birds, insects and pollinators, plant hedges. And lay them so they stay hedges and don't turn into a line of trees.
It would be fascinating to lay some hedges over there and get to know your species and conditions and learn to work with them and see them react and flourish.
Two questions please?
How do you get the tall trees to twine together?
I’ve heard of the legend of Blackjack hand hammer forged axes that cost sixty dollars back when a $20 gold piece was one Troy ounce of gold.
The fish gigs I did see, supposedly cost $20 in the twenties which would be a fabulous price in our money today.
They were branded by the maker, and highly prized. Not like this one.
How is a hand forged blacksmith made axe made to make it worth so much?
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Gimlet
Guest
First question: you start at one end, usually the highest ground level and work your way back downhill one stem at a time. Each stem is pleach cut, meaning it's cut about 3/4s of the way through at ground level to create a "tongue" or flexible hinge. Each stem is then bent downwards from the hinge and simply woven by hand into those laid previously. The weaving is to keep them in place and create an impenetrable barrier to livestock. there's no particular pattern to it. If you work in sympathy with the plant each stem will more or less tell you where it needs to go. You're not forcing or coercing anything, just feeling what it wants to do and working with it.
The line of stakes down the centre allow greater height to be achieved because without them you'd have to press each stem down very tightly into those in front to ensure they were secure from the wind. With stakes you can allow them to stand up at a less acute angle and use the plaited bindings weaved between the stakes to hold them down.
The stakes and binders will rot away after two or three years but by then the plants will have sent out masses of vertical laterals which will effectively knit the hedge together.
Around the base cut, called the heal, a new leader will sprout. When a dominant leader establishes and out-grows the lateral shoots on the laid stems (or "pleachers") the plant will transfer its energy to this new tree and your pleachers you've laid will start to get mossy and die off. At this point, if the hedge has been maintained properly, it's time to lay it again. Your old pleachers are cut off and discarded and the new leaders laid down as before, effectively cloning a new hedge. With fast growing species like hazel this will be every five to ten years depending in growing conditions. With slower growing species it could be twenty five years or longer. If you keep repeating this cycle the hedge will live almost indefinitely. It's much the same principal as coppicing. A hazel tree left to grow out naturally will live 70 to 90 years before dying of old age. The same root stock of a hazel tree regularly coppiced or laid will live three or four hundred years.
Second question: man hours, pure and simple. It takes time to forge and finish a blade by hand from a lump of steel. And each tool is often custom made to the customer's requirements. Each piece is unique. Then the handle or shaft has be be fashioned and fitted, the cutting edge finished and the whole thing polished and oiled. The cost is simply down to the labour involved. But you just can't get the same quality from machine stamping.
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Here is a Maryland example. These folks do keep sheep in here. Excuse my gravel bike!
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Gimlet
Guest
Nothing wrong with that. Perfectly good looking bit if dry stone walling. Wouldn't look out of place in the English Pennines.
There's something wrong with your bike though. The engine appears to have fallen out.
lf people use tools on a more or less daily basis, they need higher quality. For the average householder like me, a big tool box may hold all you need.
Sears used to have Craftsmen tools, now sold by Ace Hardware I believe. It used to be that if the tool wore out in standard usage, you could send it in and get a free replacement.
Briar, I have that same Black and Decker corded drill. We've had many adventures together.
Sears used to have Craftsmen tools, now sold by Ace Hardware I believe. It used to be that if the tool wore out in standard usage, you could send it in and get a free replacement.
Briar, I have that same Black and Decker corded drill. We've had many adventures together.
I'm wearing the engine, both of them!
My dear solicitor, you get spoiled by every cheap Chinese products. Somebody's gotta send them to colleges in US.
Fifty years ago was actually modern times as far as power tools go. The basic gadget hadn’t changed in a hundred years and really is the same today.
The motors then weren’t reversible.
I think they did have a variable speed trigger. No high and low speed switch. No adjustable clutch and you need a chuck key.
But Black and Decker tested that drill for at least a thousand hours, maybe more.
And Underwriter’s Laboratory made sure the thing wouldn’t short out and kill you or burn down the barn.
I’ll bet the only replaceable parts are the trigger and the cord, if that.
My mother sold my Daddy’s huge all chrome electric drill at the auction, by mistake.
I’ll bet the 20 volt lithium 2 speed reversible cheap electric drill they sell today will work a hundred years, in light household duty.
They claim lithium batteries may last longer, with newer tech.
As I’ve said many times, before and even after my father died when I was thirteen and all we had was Mama’s $500 a month schoolteacher’s check and the farm rent, I never knew a really desperate minute about paying for the things we needed.
The Social Security Administration sent Mama $60 a month for my survivor benefit.
Fifty years later when I file a social security case for somebody I can still see those green checks I got each month and Mama talked me into saving.
But me and Black and Decker and Crescent and Rigid and Diamond and Sears and Montgomery Ward tools repaired every thing that needed repair in our home and our rental home.
My first good tool complete tool set to carry in my car cost $29 from Fingerhut and I paid $5 a month, no interest. That would be about $180 today and they were Taiwan made cheapies.
This $99 Crescent set is no doubt many times better:
So is this one for $67
It’s not that I don’t own better tools.
This heavy duty 8” Crescent wrench is most of what I need around my home, office, office annex, three rental homes, two big campers, a one ton truck, a car, a Yamaha Rhino, and our Suburban.
I just like to know I have spares.
The better gambit is to charm the prosecutors.Briar Lee, I write this in all good humor but, I bet befuddling judges in your forte.
First of all, @Gimlet has a trade that needs to make its way to my area so I can do this job! Dude, that is fascinating. George Washington tried it here on his Mount Vernon plantation, but I guess couldn't make a go of it. So I'm curious if this is a dying trade like our New England stone walls?
As to the tools, I work with professional plumbers. Opinions on tools are generally heated. We have a Harbor Freight chain around here. For anyone not familiar with them, it's a very large Chinese made tool shop. The guys will buy channel locks and screwdrivers by the pallet from there. They figure the apprentices will wall off with those. But any tools they "need" (power tools, specially tools, or anything they don't want the apprentices getting their "grubby mitts on") sure don't come from Harbor Freight.
For power tools, our shop tends to be Team Milwaukee. We won over the last of the holdouts by making connections with a Milwaukee rep who takes care of all damaged tools and gets us deals on new. It's nice knowing that those tools are going to be more capable than I am (they are plumbers, I'm a purchasing department).
As to the tools, I work with professional plumbers. Opinions on tools are generally heated. We have a Harbor Freight chain around here. For anyone not familiar with them, it's a very large Chinese made tool shop. The guys will buy channel locks and screwdrivers by the pallet from there. They figure the apprentices will wall off with those. But any tools they "need" (power tools, specially tools, or anything they don't want the apprentices getting their "grubby mitts on") sure don't come from Harbor Freight.
For power tools, our shop tends to be Team Milwaukee. We won over the last of the holdouts by making connections with a Milwaukee rep who takes care of all damaged tools and gets us deals on new. It's nice knowing that those tools are going to be more capable than I am (they are plumbers, I'm a purchasing department).
Unfortunately, I think the steel age never outlasts, in regards artifact permanence, the stone age. That's why our infrastructure is collapsing.I’m sitting here ruminating what will ever become of the millions upon countless millions of extra tools we buy in another fifty years, and fifty more years after that.
No homeowner ever throws away or wears out or breaks a pair of water pump pliers.
They’ll be like flint arrowheads, in a couple of thousand years, I suppose.
Tools are so cheap we take them for granted.
I love to look up facts:
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Global steel production in 2022 reached 1,878 million tonnes, barely surpassing the pre-pandemic production of 1,875 million tonnes in 2019.
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In 2022, it was estimated that there were roughly 180 billion metric tons of crude iron ore reserves globally. These reserves are distributed across identified and yet-to-be-discovered deposits
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60 percent of steel is recycled but because more steel is produced than scrapped, recycled steel makes up about 40 percent of the total amount of steel produced. A total of 1085 million tons of steel is recycled a year.
—-
There is a butt load of iron ore to make steel, at least a centuries worth.
And as iron ore gets scarcer it will cost more, other materials will be substituted, more will be recycled, and marginal reserves will become profitable,,,,but the day comes the main uses of steel will taper off to where it will be a rare specialty metal.
There’s still a market for bronze, which steel replaced in common use.
Humans are smart critters, they’ll figure it out.
My father had one 8” Crescent wrench (made for Western Auto) in a drawer when he died and I still have it but I cracked it forty five years ago and retired it. I still occasionally use it for very light duty.
My best 8” Crescent is heavy duty and would take a long cheater bar to crack.
The day will come a common adjustable wrench will cost so much people will have one that they use, instead of my mantra about tools my boys smile when I have them repeat —-
Buy one to use, one to lose, and one to hide where you know where it is when you need it!
We have too many tools because they are cheap.
Yup, some drystone walls here in Britain date back to the bronze age. Here in West Cornwall they are in abundance, also on Bodmin Moor & Dartmoor in Devon.
When we lived in the Peak District my father employed a guy to do some dry walling in the back field. By the time he'd finished I reckon a mouse couldn't have got through it.
Jay.