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I cut a fairly big eucalyptus for father in law a few years back. Once dry it burnt extremely well with terrific heat, strange thing was it appeared to burn like a lump of charcoal staying in one piece & then vanishing quickly after a while.

My first bandsaw was a 30" wheeled Wadkin DNA158, i believe they went out of production around 1926, got it from a demolition site which had been a timber yard in Billericay. It was laying face down in 2ft of mud & i bought it plus a big saw & morticer. That bandsaw ran for the next 16 years...

I saw a photo on fb of a walnut that had been cut & slabbed, it was obvious that they had cut the tree off just above ground level & right where the tree forked. Ruining it & thus reducing its value by a huge amount. Walnut exhibits its best figure in the base where it flares into the rootball &...

I had a lathe bed & saddle reground a couple of years ago, parts of the saddle were turcited, the stuff is famously slippery & needs a specialised glue that is astronomically expensive. Does a good job though!

People are trying it on with secondhand machinery but is it selling? I sold a fine Union graduate fully tooled on here last year & it was a struggle to get shot of it for £850 & i took an offer on that iirc! A friend who is a scrap & general dealer reckons the arse has dropped out of the market...

I use Titebond 3 for joinery. West epoxy for boatwork & i still use Aerolite 306 for masts & spars. Doing a lot of boatwork i dont use Polyurethane glues like gorrilla as they are not reliable & have no uv restistance.

I would be interested to know what brand of varnish the Op was using? As a boatbuilder i have done a fair old bit of varnishing over the years & varnishes differ hugely. Some have an extremely long shelf life, i used some old Rylards a few years back that must have been 50 years old & it was...

Having stripped several school workshops & spent years building boats out of it I would say that all those photos are Iroko. Teak may have been used for lab benches before ww2 but after the war most were iroko, By the 1970's iroko was standard fitment in schools. Afromosia is similart but...

My woodworking machines get a wipe over with a wd40 soaked rag from time to time & a wipe with an old candle stub if doing a big cutting session, thats about it. The machines that get covered up every night are my Harrison 140 Lathe & Arboga Milling machine, as both are usually covered in...

East coast fibreglass do epoxies, also Easy composites.

Most of the moulders i used to work with were mad as a box of frogs!, think the styrene had got to them too much!

I am a boatbuilder & used to do big GRP repairs for a living. First its a pond so it hasnt got to look marvelous. Grp doesnt have to be done from both sides it can be done from either side. What you do need is to sand or grind the surface back to clean material preferably to a feather edge in...

My son carted a section of hawthorn trunk home from the woods, 8" dia & we sawed it lengthways then quarter sawed it on the bandsaw into 1" slabs, air dried under the house for two years. Its a lovely timber but as said can warp badly when drying. It tends to grow with the grain in a spiral...

My wife works for a local authority in Environmental health, They moved their offices largely to hot desking about two years ago, everyone hated it & productivity fell. Of course to make a covid safe environment hot desking goes out the window very quickly! She now works flexibly from home &...

I used to use one at the school i worked at. It was a lotus laser systems RF tube machine of 30 watts output. 600 x 400 bed but the whole machine took up a lot of room 30w will cut 4mm birch ply or acrylic. Water cooled DC tube machines are far cheaper but as ever you get what you pay for, From...

Whenever i see a Name like Hikoki or Boschman they are often being flogged by dodgy blokes with Irish accents hawking them out of white vans. Insisting they are the same quality as the original they are copied from. Cheap chinese knock offs that are not worth wasting your money on. Buy cheap buy...

I wasnt the originator of marmalade with kippers by any means, I read about it in a book on Thames barges & it was reputed to be popular amongst bargees & fishermen. I was always sceptical until the day i tried it. It was a revelation, Absolutely superb, you should try it!

I love kippers, last time i had some was in Lancashire 18 months ago while clearing mums place, bought 3 big ones in Booths & they were excellent. Thick fresh bread & a big dollop of good marmalade to spread on the kippers. Lovely!

You have put a polyurethane varnish over the top of an oil finish. Bad idea as the poly wont stick & stops the oil drying. You will have to strip the poly off let it dry properly & do one or the other not both.

I worked in a 6th form College as D&T & engineering technician for 12 years then 5 more as D&T in a secondary school. I echo "Peri's" sentiments as my experience in college was very similar. When i went to work in the school i was lucky enough to work on a one to one basis with a very good lady...