Steam-powered log cutting

click photo to enlarge
On Saturday and Sunday it was Bicker Steam Threshing weekend. This is a small, Lincolnshire country fair featuring traction engines, the operation of an old threshing machine, vintage vehicles of many kinds, stalls, and more. The purpose of the event is to raise funds for the village's medieval parish church, St Swithun's.

Events of this sort are ripe with photographic opportunities and I'll be posting a few shots that I took there over the coming days. Today's image shows log cutting on a bench circular saw. The common methods of making logs for the fire is to saw them to size then split them with an axe, or use a hammer and a purpose-made metal log "grenade" to make the fire-sized pieces. However, a gathering of traction engines (I wonder what the collective noun for that is?) is a gathering of sources of power. One was towing a trailer giving rides round the village, another was harnessed to the threshing machine, and another was powering the wood-cutting saw with a long belt drive. That left other engines quietly sulking, puffing and whistling, hoping that they too would be selected for gainful employment.

I spent a good few minutes watching as the logs were trimmed to size and thrown into the trailer, and found myself mentally transported back to the time when this sort of power was the norm. In those days traction engines would move from village to village, from farm to farm, working a few days here on the harvest, a few days there powering a saw. A simpler time. But then I was struck by the slight absurdity of what I was actually seeing - a machine that gets its energy by burning large amounts of coal being used to cut up woood that will be burned over the coming winter to provide heat energy. I started to do mental calculations about the energy used in the cutting process compared with the energy available in the wood, but the complexity and futility of that gave me a headache, and I soon stopped and simply enjoyed the spectacle!

For anyone who was wondering, yes, the two photographs are shots of the same scene taken from different angles.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1 (Photo2)
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 114mm (228mm/35mm equiv.) (14mm (28mm/35mm equiv.))
F No: f6.3 (f6.3)
Shutter Speed: 1/250 (1/500)
ISO: 100 (100)
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 (-0.7) EV
Image Stabilisation: On (On)

Bigger toys

click photo to enlarge

"Little boys never grow up, they just get bigger toys!" Old saying, probably twentieth century

To pick up a theme from the previous post - what is it about men and forms of transport? Look at the attention that young men lavish on their cars - taking out perfectly good rear light clusters and replacing them with custom-made versions, fitting exhausts the width of land-drains, bolting on snowplough-like body kits, or installing "sound systems" that, if they're lucky, they'll live to regret as their ears degenerate due to the volume and insidious bass thumping. Or how about the the older blokes with their "Sunday cars" - the Mark 2 Cortina or 2.4 Jaguar that they couldn't afford when younger, but is now their "treat"? Others indulge themselves with shiny motorcycles, model railway layouts of various sizes or even full-size, canal barges, aircraft and the rest. And then there are the traction engine enthusiasts, people who spend their spare time lovingly restoring, operating, and showing a form of mobile power and transport that existed for a relatively short period of time in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries!

I recently attended Bicker Steam Threshing weekend, a Lincolnshire village's fund raising event for its medieval church. The centre piece is the threshing of wheat by an old threshing machine that is powered by a different traction engine each day. Other activities take place over the weekend, but it is the gathering of several traction engines, veteran and vintage cars, motorcycles, steam organs, stationary engines, old tractors and even the odd military vehicle that seems to attract the crowds. And the biggest clusters of people are always found around the traction engines. The men (and the one or two women) that own and operate these venerable machines have an affection for their charges that is palpable. I suppose it is their functional solidity, simplicity, the relative ease of repair and refurbishment, as well as their sheer size, noise and presence that makes them the boys' (and girls') toys par excellence! And, of course, as well as powering a threshing machine, a circular saw or a steam organ, it's a simple matter to hitch up a trailer and give rides around the village, as in the photograph above. Long may they continue!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 79mm (158mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On