Marion Kaye

Maieshe Ljin wrote:Also want to mention that I cut my finger very badly a few years ago trying to split common reed stems. I was holding the stem below, thinking I could split it at that node without excess force. But no… so be careful! Though maybe it’s my foolishness more than any inherent danger. Then, the nodes can be difficult.

Ouch!  I managed to cut my finger on the actual stem while cutting them down, but it was only a bandaid job thankfully.
If you want to try it again for any reason, the artist in the Japanese video shows how to hold things so that your body acts as a block between your hands so that the knife cannot reach your fingers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcwFPWkLVdUA friend recenly cut down a large patch (for the second time!) of 10-15ft tall stems of this, and intends to have a controlled burn some time in the winter. I hate to see anything go to waste, so cut off the leafy top halves with a view to making a temporary shelter for a test rocket stove, but then realised I wasn't going to have enough time before I had to leave. So I've just laid them pretty thickly in a rectangular area to see if they will act like a light-barrier mulch and kill off the grass and weeds ready to plant in spring. I'm pretty sure by the time I get back there (hopefully next Feb.) the leaves will have shriveled and I don't have much hope of it having killed off any weeds, but . . . I am now wondering if I could make mats with it, to use in a construction project ( too long too explain how here). To do this the reeds would need to be split, like bamboo, so I looked on YT and found
This guy is an artist so I won't be half so fussy about width or anything, but I will definitely be splitting it pretty thin, if it's possible! I'll let you know how I get on in February.
This is an interesting idea too, if the stuff has regrown in three months, I will try this on the new growth

I'm with you on the water run-off theory. It does look like an alluvial fan to me, as it's top is right by the low point of the clearly older and cut into original slope. That would explain the greener vegetation too, as it's where most of the run off water goes.
If you made the back wall of the house into a retaining wall, you could effectively have an earth berm house, but the fact that it looks like water deposited it, you could have 'water management issues'. That is a very steep slope above too. It's not a plot that appeals to me.

Aha! Silly me! The link is near the top, in the first post, in between the photos. XD

So how did it go? I agree somewhat with the previous poster, that land looks very flat for the source spring, you'd have to run a VERY long pipe . . .
If I've understood what you are trying to do, it's kind of a cross between piping a spring, and a mini water mine?

Thanks for posting me a link to this thread.
I particularly like the 'hood' over the cooktop.
I'm thinking this could be adapted to become a bottom heated oven, but I have a long way to go before I can try it!

What did you use for the cooktop?

Oh awesome!!
Thank you so much for the link, I'll post more on there, when I've studied it more closely. This thread had gotten very tedious, but now it's turned up gold, I'm glad I asked.

Thanks for that info., I'd often wondered if that was the case, but as I only use well dried, smaller diameter stuff I've never really bothered/needed to try. I don't use so much that storage is an issue, so I always have dry stuff available.

Mark Deichmann wrote:It takes ash about 15 -20 years to reach a diameter of 4 inches at chest height. Keeping in mind that where you cut one tree you get 3-6 on average back. Its long term at best but a nice tree to manage and nice to look at too.

Depends on climate and growing conditions, also on age of tree/rootstock. Round here, it grows a lot faster than that, more like 10 years to 4" diameter, though personally I wouldn't want it to get that thick, especially for the first cut. Not only will it be a shock to the tree, but it's more work to cut and handle generally. Coppicing (or pollarding) is the way to go. An established rootstock cut down regularly will put on much more growth than a new sapling. Typical cycle times are given as 7-10 years, but it really depends on how many stems you leave, and how thick you want them.
I have one that was cut at waist height (long story) when it was about 3" at that height, about 10 years ago, it now has three main stems all 4" or slightly more at chest height, but then again, I know where there are some ash trees in a car park that have hardly grown at all in the last 12 years.

For BTU per acre per year SRC willow is the best, and can be burnt in a rocket stove/heater, but if you need logs, I reckon ash cut at 2-3" is the best. Cutting down on your energy requirements will make 'which wood is best to grow for burning' less of a concern and you can have more space for growing other things, even other trees with other uses. Rockets aren't fussy about what they burn and will burn sticks, so once you have one you really don't have to grow anything special for fuel, just enough to provide adequate quantities of prunings.

To make stoneware pottery, you need stoneware clay. You could possibly use that clay to make a kiln to fire pots made of the same clay, but stoneware is vitrified clay, and that is a different ball game from earthenware.

On the positive side of things, I know from experience that you can use local earthenware clay to make a kiln to fire pots made of the same clay, and it will last many, many firings.

Unless you are seriously into medieval reenactment I recommend a domed downdraft style. Superficially this is much like the kiln in the video, but has a single central hole for the fire to enter the kiln and typically four equally spaced exit flues. Once the fire is going nicely the central hole in the top should be completely blocked so the hot gases redirect to the exit flues. (think rmh barrel, only without the insulated riser and with flues to encourage the draft rather than a bench.)