Notre-Dame on fire, apparently...

[andrewc]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/20/notre-dame-1bn-fund-pits-paris-against-provinces-gilets-jaunes-macron


I've read that the huge donations made by a few billionaires are eligible for 60% tax relief. 





Rebuilding Notre Dame or looking after the poor.  France is rich enough to do both, but that doesn't seem to be the plan.

[T42]

I've read that the huge donations made by a few billionaires are eligible for 60% tax relief. 

All donations are eligible for 60% tax relief.  What you maybe haven't read is that several of them aren't going to claim it.  Our donation wasn't that large but neither am I.

Re the dogs in the manger complaining about how people would fork out for this but not for the poor, they possibly don't appreciate how Notre Dame affected people.   Unfortunately, the poor form an abstract mass, and N.D. is a concrete part of the psyche of everyone French, religious or not. My daughter remarked that she was almost in tears watching it, as were we. For us it was almost as stunning as watching 9/11.

[andrewc]

I'd seen that one plutocrat wasn't going to claim it. Didn't know about others.   Some payments I make can have the tax recovered by the receiving organisation (Gift Aid) but only at my standard tax rate.


I was fairly saddened myself as I've visited the place whenever I'm in Paris. 

[Exit Stage Left]

@ Aunt Maud. I thought we were talking about oak beams for the roof restoration of Notre Dame, not cleaving oak into short lengths for joinery. I'd be suspicious of the stem on the left, less so about the 'V' marked one you bought, and happiest about the one on the right. That's for beams of course.

[The French Tandem]

@ESL: In the long run, the three stems are probably of equivalent structural value. The one on the left simply had the opportunity to dry  a little bit more than the two others. The problem is that wood has orthotropic properties, which means in this case, that whenever shrinkage is, say, 1% in a radial direction, it will be 2% in a circumferential direction. The difference in shrinkage rates is such that a complete stem will always crack while drying, no matter what you do with it. The only way to prevent cracking is to saw a beam from a green log large enough so that the center point of the growth rings is out of your beam. Admittedly, this is not always possible if you need a very large beam

I hope I was clear enough but I'm not sure!

A

[Exit Stage Left]

The beams of Notre Dame cathedral would have had a lot of 'redundancy', so ultimately defects in the timber aren't that important. There's been a lot of work done on the reasons behind 'shakes', as Oak and Chestnut have the potential to replace high quality tropical hardwoods if the quality can be improved. Domestic timber is often used in situations where stress grading isn't important.

Defects are more of a problem when producing boards. I once had to price up building a 650 metre boardwalk across a wetland nature reserve. We couldn't use chemically-preserved timber, so the choice was between Larch and Oak, which are both durable without treatment. The Oak was twice the price, and would have needed drilling and screwing to avoid splitting. That's assuming the boards were sound in the first instance. The quote worked out at £40,000 for Larch and £75,000 for Oak. The customer went for Larch.

I went direct to the sawmill for that amount of timber, and it was interesting to discuss the difference between softwood and hardwood milling. I made a short film at the time of the mill, it's since been upgraded. Buying direct meant I could up the board length and thickness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il_0hkPHTtc

The site for the boardwalk was interesting, a typical lowland peat moss that had succeeded to woodland, mainly Birch, with a secondary succession of Oak. Cheshire Wildlife Trust have since cleared the trees. The construction was a bit of challenge due to poor access.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXgT7I2pv_4

[Exit Stage Left]

I was curious to know what's become of the boardwalk we built in 2008, and how much of the woodland it ran through has been cleared. I'm used to checking up on woods I've planted on Google maps, and it's gratifying to be able to see an example of our carpentry on there. It looks like the higher parts of the site have been left wooded.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Danes+Moss/@53.2302044,-2.1427295,359m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x487a4f2ace0bbd6b:0x185077883d8600f1!8m2!3d53.2392214!4d-2.1439765?hl=en&authuser=0

We deliberately exceeded the specification, as the sawmill wanted to produce material to a bigger dimension. It would have cost more to have it sawn smaller.

The interesting part of the Notre Dame restoration will be in specifying the replacement roof beams. The whole structure would be stronger and lighter if it was engineered to modern standards. But there will be a strong pressure to reproduce the original structure.

[andrewc]

https://twitter.com/AgnesCPoirier/status/1250341320305995777?s=20


Hey! #NotreDame’s 356 year old bourdon Emmanuel will toll tonight at 8pm for the first time in a year to join France celebrating doctors and nurses fighting coronavirus !


The Dastardly FORRINS can even fix their bells faster than we can.       BigBenNotBonging.

[andrewc]

https://twitter.com/AgnesCPoirier/status/1678795808425013248   New roof trusses being delivered by barge. 

[Jaded]

 

I hope they have planted another oak forest….

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

I hope they have planted another oak forest….

In my garden in the Limousin the oaks grew like weeds. It was astonishing how fast they could put down a deep root making them hard to pull up and very drought resistant; the rate of growth above ground surprised me too.  In 2005 I left an oak to grow which was so slender I could easily use one hand to shake from the topmost branches the June bugs that ate its leaves.  By 2019 when I left, it was a real tree giving a large spread of shade beneath its branches.  I couldn't encircle the trunk using both hands, never mind shake it. 

Oaks are propagated by Jays and there were plenty of them around to do the job.  If I had left my garden alone, in 20 years there would have been a forest of oaks.

[davelodwig]

https://twitter.com/AgnesCPoirier/status/1678795808425013248   New roof trusses being delivered by barge. 

We were there in June and my boy who has a thing for cranes was in his element.  If we'd been there when they lifted the roof sections in he'd have probably burst with excitement.