And you thought your job was bad!

We have recently added a new range of British made recycled plastic planks to our product selection. These planks are a composite made from recycled polymer and glassfibre, and the glassfibre makes the planks so stiff that they can be used for all those applications where the flexibility of most recycled plastic planks would be a problem.

We supplied planks to one of our regular customers, Gaskin Brothers of Sutton, for a special project they are working on for Cambridge City Council. Hobson’s Conduit is a 17th century historical monument in the city which brings water from a spring in nearby Great Shelford. In recent years it has been silting up causing a serious blockage. Gaskin Brothers are clearing the silt and installing a number of silt catching barriers to stop the watercourse becoming blocked where it continues beneath a major road. The barrier was prefabricated by Gaskin Brothers using our new Rigid Decking Planks with a range of standard recycled plastic profiles to form a framework. The barriers will be hidden in the water once the conduit is reflooded.

Initially a wooden structure was going to be used but Gaskins suggested using recycled plastic since it would not decay. When they came to buy the materials we offered this new product as an alternative. Director James Gaskin enthused “It’s a brilliant product, lightweight but also very strong. We’re really glad Filcris could offer it, it made our job a lot easier”

Gaskins Brothers and Cambridge City Council are hoping to install another four barriers along the length of the conduit. As a Cambridge based company we are really pleased to see our products used in such a beneficial way in our home town.

Interestingly the originator of the phrase Hobson’s Choice was also a Cambridge business, Thomas Hobson, this time a 16th century stable owner who offered his customers a choice of the horse he wanted them to use, or none. We hope that with our expanding range of products we can continue offer a large number of alternative solutions to our customers.

This product is now ready to purchase on our website here: http://www.filcris.co.uk/products/product-details/cr4522536pkbk

Graeme approached us requiring a recycled plastic with a white surface. We had exactly the right product for his requirements, and we were also able to save him valuable time by cutting the panels to shape using our state of the art computer aided routing equipment. He was delighted with the result and has sent us these pictures showing them in use.

The project was inspired by the flowering of mathematics, philosophy and science during the Age of Reason, during the period when the garden was created (ca. 1670).

The sheet material used is our standard 12mm thick recycled plastic stockboard available with a white surface available from our online shop here: http://www.filcris.co.uk/products/product-details/cr12mmstokboardw. This product has been used for a number of applications, most frequently for our Swift Nest Boxes.

http://www.16mm.org.uk/newsite/show/default.html

A fabulous homemade bridge plus edging boards in one of our customer's gardens, plus a speeding train!

Even if you are not an enthusiast it makes for a fun day, and it looks like the sunny weather will have come to an end then, so you might as well be inside looking at trains.

Our range of Garden Railway Products can be seen here

Mink Raft on the River Rhee in Cambridgeshire

You might need to be sharp eyed to find the camera though, I have hidden it well! It is in the picture above – maybe we should have a competition…

 I won’t be able to go back and check for a couple of weeks, we have a big exhibition looming (http://www.16mm.org.uk/newsite/show/default.html always great fun and very busy) following our financial year end (always no fun what so ever and and also very busy).

But with luck I will get some useful footage.

Little Shelford Lectern Installation

It’s just a bit of fun – I don’t think it really helps anyone installing a lectern. If you want any help with installing one of our lecterns, email us!

Chris

I delivered an A2 interpretation board to the local Cambridgeshire village of Little Shelford on Saturday morning, with the aim of helping them to install their lectern, and take a few pictures and some films to provide advice to other customers wishing to install their lecterns. Although our interpretation boards are often installed by contractors with plenty of experience, they are also frequently purchased by small community groups who would really benefit from some advice.

Unfortunately the week before I had injured my back working on my allotment, so all I could do was stand around and take a few pictures and offer advice. It turned out that one of the team, Richard, was a civil engineer with numerous projects under his belt, and Shelagh, who ordered the board from us and worked with us in developing the design, clearly had a better back than I do since she picked up the lectern and lugged from my car to it’s final location with ease. 

In fact, they worked so quickly it was all I could do to hobble around and keep up with them, so didn’t really get many pictures in the end. The word ‘pub’ was mentioned a few times, perhaps that was a motivating factor! But everyone agreed that the end result was an excellent interpretation board which will provide a great resource to the people of Little Shelford and visitors alike. I am sure we will be able to extract all the information we need for a simple installation video.

One pleasing end to the story is that we have recently managed to reduce the price of our interpretation boards (you did read that correctly, our new prices can be seen here: http://www.filcris.co.uk/pdf/Lectern%20leaflet%202012.pdf). I went back to Shelagh and told her that we could save them some money although they had already ordered the lectern from us and they were able to buy a picnic table for the village with the extra funds. Not from us unfortunately, but you can’t win them all!

Our range of interpretation boards can be seen here:http://www.filcris.co.uk/products/signs/interpretation-boards
The A2 interpretation lectern is available for purchase here: http://www.filcris.co.uk/products/product-details/interplecta2

Mike has promised to send us more pictures as he gets them. Thanks for the feedback Mike, I was planning on doing the same thing with one of the local Countryside Restoration Trust rafts as part of their “Bourn Free” project.

The mink raft used by AVDC can be seen here:http://www.filcris.co.uk/products/product-details/minkrafteco

The shopping trolley hedgehog made me wonder whether there was any scope for using our offcuts and scrap in a more creative way, so I am going to make some enquiries with local artists to see if they are interested. Any ideas from out there on the interweb would be very welcome!

Besides getting distracted by the neighbour’s bling I had an excellent day and had a very positive response to our Mink Rafts and Otter Holts.

Chris demonstrating how to use the mink raft - thanks to Laura from the Mammal Society!

It was also great to catch up with Chris Matcham, formerly Wetland Mammals Officer at Surrey Wildlife Trust (now retired) and a huge help to us while we were developing both the Otter Holt and Mink Rafts.

Chris & Chris - thanks for the subtle promotion of our leaflet Chris!

We had a chance to discuss some new design options for the Otter Holt and Mink Raft, our ongoing small mammal monitoring tube project, and Chris said we really need to add the trapping combs like the ones we supplied for him a few years ago. So we soon will…

Mink Rafts: http://www.filcris.co.uk/products/wildlife-products/mink-rafts

Otter Holts: http://www.filcris.co.uk/products/wildlife-products/otter-holts 

The otter slide at Tophill Low Nature reserve.

“Hello Chris – you had mentioned before you were keen to demonstrate any proven success with the artificial holts; well here you go!

“We installed the holt in April 2011 for BBC inside out with our volunteers and Yorkshire Wildlife Trust - here is a youtube link:

“We subsequently felled all the trees and landscaped the area (including dumping around 2 tonnes of poplar roots on top of the structure in October). We haven’t had the trail cam on it yet and hope to when the vegetation grows up a bit. However in the snow last week you will see a spectacular otter slide (above) all the way down the river bank into the ditch and the tracks lead straight into the pictured left hand hole of the holt pipe (right).Hope that’s of use!
Richard
Tophill Low NR”

Otter Spraint on Eco Mink Raft

He said “We have deployed 2 rafts and both have been sprainted on by otters within 5 days, see photo. Will keep you posted with any interesting developments. Really pleased with the rafts.”

I have helpfully ringed the otter poo for those who are interested!

To read more about our mink rafts click here