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Wiltshire area, collecting wood...

Ryan Young

Member
Joined
17 Jun 2015
Messages
168
Hi all,
I live in the Wiltshire area, I have a lot of countryside around me and would love to find a piece of wood/ pieces of wood to use in my new scape.
Could anyone suggest safe and common wood types that I could use in the scape?
 
Thank you, I am always anxious about using materials I have gathered as there is always an uncertainty. I will give it a go! :)
 
Yeah, exactly why I wanted to do it. I would rather spend less on hardscape and more on plants, totalled up £85 on just plants which is a first for me so any way to save will help a lot. Going to take a trip up to Avebury or towards that area as there are a lot of areas where I think I could get some good stuff.
Cheers
 
Soaking it before hand also makes it easier to remove the bark, any wood i want goes into rainwater butts after a few days I remove as much of the bark by hand then back into the butt, repeat as often as required.
Hazel is a great wood to use.
 
Cheers, yeah need to find some that has a horn wood effect or similar to it.
 
Hi all,
Going to take a trip up to Avebury or towards that area as there are a lot of areas where I think I could get some good stuff.
I'd try Savernake for starters, plenty of Oaks there. Braydon forest would be another option, but it is bit wet under foot in the winter.

cheers Darrel
 
May start a new thread but will post it here first. I ended up going to Ravenswood; I picked up two different types of Oak in their dead stages. One still has its bark on but is quite boring and the other pieces I picked up are completely dead, they have no bark remaining and the base of them will need to be cut off as they have gone 'flaky'. I am not sure if the latter would be suitable for an aquarium hence why I am asking.

In the pictures there is a piece of Yew, this is not for my aquarium and is another project so disregard that, the piece on top is Oak and the driftwood looking ones are piled underneith. Could someone confirm whether the ones with no bark are safe or not; I am also not sure whether to add an aquarium safe treatment to it, to stop the wood crumbling once soaked with water.

Thanks Ryan
IMG_1291.JPG
 
Hi all,
I ended up going to <"Ravenswood">;
How wet was it?
the piece on top is Oak and the driftwood looking ones are piled underneith. Could someone confirm whether the ones with no bark are safe or not; I am also not sure whether to add an aquarium safe treatment to it, to stop the wood crumbling once soaked with water.
The bits of Oak without bark are the heart wood, where the softer sap wood has rotted away, they are ideal.

Just trim any soft ends back to sound wood.

If you look at a <"stag-headed Oak"> they are the dead branches you can see.

cheers Darrel
 
Thanks Darrel, appreciate it. The wood itself is pretty wet but they have done a lot of irrigation work around there and removing a lot of trees due to ash dieback but it actually looks really nice as a cause of this.

Glad that wood can be used, might just give it a soak for a week in the water butt and then into the tank it goes. :)
 
Don't forget that you can glue and nail these together and get creative.....
 
Sounds like a plan, kinda thinking about going for the generic wood starting at left side sticking out of the water to the right :p cant go far wrong with a design like that
 
Also a good idea, I have more than enough wood now so might play with a few ideas and see what is best. Thanks :thumbup:
 
Hi,
I am going to continue to post to this thread as it seems pointless starting a new one, also the people who have responded are more likely to have done this before.

The pieces I got have now been cut to size, they were way too large to boil so have put them in the bath to soak for a day or two. After 5 minutes of being in the water a lot of the wood had an outer layer that was soft and could be picked away with my nail. I understand that this is likely to happen when it is soaked but some pieces look as though they have marks on (I dont want to use the word fungus but it looks to be like it). They can be scrubbed off but just want to know whether I should continue using the wood with that being said; I will post a picture of a piece with it on.

Again many thanks, Ryan
IMG_1293.JPG
 
Also, I was wondering whether these marks could be a result of having boiling water directly onto the branches; could it be kind of like a shock thing where the wood is changing shape due to heat?
 
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