adm wrote:
"Chris Potts" wrote in message
...

Hello all,

We have quite a big garden and at this time of year we thin our trees and
collect quite a lot of branches. The bits that are under about 2.5 inches
diameter go through the muncher and go on the compost heap or used on
paths, but that leaves us with lots of lengths up to say eight feet long
and up to six inches in diameter. Has any one any idea what we could use
these bits of wood for? In the past we have put them round our boundary
to rot down and provide food for invertebrates and the thicker ones are
dotted about in "artistic" heaps, and some are used as edging for paths,
but this year we have a great surplus and we would like to do something
creative.

Thanks you,

All the best,

Chris and Mavis Potts


If they are fruit tree bits, please send them to me to use in my smoker
(I'll even come and pick them up if you live anywhere near Surrey)

I love to slow cook big hunks of meat with different types of wood.
Particular favourites are cherry with duck, apple with pork, etc, etc.....


Hello ADM we are a long way from Surrey, in North Lincolnshire, but how
do you smoke your meat? Is there a recipe book?

All the best,

Chris Potts

The message
from Chris Potts contains these words:

Hello ADM we are a long way from Surrey, in North Lincolnshire, but how
do you smoke your meat? Is there a recipe book?

You want a tall, wide flue - I made a sixteen foot high by two foot six
inches square tower of corrugated iron, with a constriction at the top
and a tall eight-inch steel chimney on top.

The chimney had a butterfly damper in it.

A very small fire fire was laid on the ground at the bottom, and when it
was established, covered with oak chips and sawdust - or apple, when I
could get it.

When the temperature at the top had reduced enough, I opened the door
there and slid in truckles of cheese I'd made. Or occasionally, parts of
billy kid, chickens, quail, guinea fowl, etc.

You really need a textbook on the subject, because some things must be
cold-smoked (cheese) and others, hot-smoked (kippers, and some meats).

Any old wood will not do: well, it will, but the results wouldn't be
palatable.

No sooner had I got the smokehouse operational when the famous hurricane
blew it down. I rebuilt it, and blow me down, another gale demolished
it.

--
Rusty
horrid dot squeak snailything zetnet point co full-stop uk
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/

"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...
Spider wrote:

I know you could burn it for fuel, but that would only add to pollution
levels. Perhaps a creature tower is the very sort of creative
'something'
you had in mind?

Wood rotting naturally by fungal action also releases dioxins. There is no
free lunch. Pristine woodlands actually have detectable levels of dioxin
from natural sources (with or without recent forest fires).

It comes from the way fungal enzymes attack lignin in wood...

Regards,
Martin Brown

Thanks Martin-That's an interesting bit of info. Can you beam me onto the
source? I would be interested to know which isomeric dioxins are detected.

"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...
Spider wrote:

I know you could burn it for fuel, but that would only add to pollution
levels. Perhaps a creature tower is the very sort of creative
'something'
you had in mind?

Wood rotting naturally by fungal action also releases dioxins. There is no
free lunch. Pristine woodlands actually have detectable levels of dioxin
from natural sources (with or without recent forest fires).

It comes from the way fungal enzymes attack lignin in wood...

Regards,
Martin Brown

Any chance of some type of link to this?
I was under the impression that fungal action was one way of degrading
dioxins into non toxic materials.

Rupert wrote:

"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...

Wood rotting naturally by fungal action also releases dioxins. There is no
free lunch. Pristine woodlands actually have detectable levels of dioxin
from natural sources (with or without recent forest fires).

It comes from the way fungal enzymes attack lignin in wood...

Any chance of some type of link to this?

I can't see anything that I would trust in the free to view zone.

Google: natural fungal dioxins

Will get you some stuff but I don't trust Eurochlor any more than I
would trust the ban all synthetic chemicals brigade.

I was under the impression that fungal action was one way of degrading
dioxins into non toxic materials.

They can do either. There are lots of fungi but only a few have enzymes
that can break down aromatic chlorine compounds!

Regards,
Martin Brown

"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...
Rupert wrote:

"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...

Wood rotting naturally by fungal action also releases dioxins. There is
no free lunch. Pristine woodlands actually have detectable levels of
dioxin from natural sources (with or without recent forest fires).

It comes from the way fungal enzymes attack lignin in wood...

Any chance of some type of link to this?

I can't see anything that I would trust in the free to view zone.

Google: natural fungal dioxins

Will get you some stuff but I don't trust Eurochlor any more than I would
trust the ban all synthetic chemicals brigade.

I was under the impression that fungal action was one way of degrading
dioxins into non toxic materials.

They can do either. There are lots of fungi but only a few have enzymes
that can break down aromatic chlorine compounds!

Regards,
Martin Brown

OK --Very interesting many thanks.
This is not an area of my expertise and I admit that until recently I always
assumed that the chlorine content of dioxins (whichever isomers) came from
co-existing chlorine organics reacting to form the dioxins during
incineration etc.
I now know that chloride anions are also responsible during incineration.
There always appears to be confusion over the issues of where dioxins have
come from prior to producing them by incineration. Again I had always
thought that they were introduced as the minor impurities in chlorinated
phenols etc, which are used in the timber industry.