Stuart,

> Silly me. When I said 'exotic' I meant 'not used very often for
> construction purposes etc'.

Thought so... A nerdy point, but worth making (spot the tree nerd!) as there is
a terrible lack of awareness even amongst 'environmentalists' here as to which
species are native.

> As for the cutting across the grain, I do recall one huge lump of trunk
> that was about 30cm in diameter that had obviously been brought down
> with a bronze axe, and was a bugger to cut a slice from with a hand-saw.
> I got hand-sore (groan).

Gawd, and I thought I was the one round here who made bad jokes. 8-/

Was this oak from the bog? If so it was probably like cutting iron. I've
re-ordered the book from the library so I should have hold of it again before
the end of April. In the meantime, can you say how it was cut - in terms of the
angle of the cuts. I'm assuming it was used for a bog trackway, so there was no
need to trim the log ends and it should reveal a lot about how the tree was
felled. If it was an oak, it should have been about 50-60 years old when felled,
going by the diameter, so it was still relatively young. Were there any logs
larger than this? I can't see that larger logs would have been of much use
unless used for a dugout or for a pretty huge piece of construction, and I don't
remember either being mentioned in the report.

Stiof
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