The Forestry Forum

General Forestry => Timber Framing/Log construction => Topic started by: skudak on January 22, 2019, 10:09:11 AM

Title: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: skudak on January 22, 2019, 10:09:11 AM
Good morning, 
I am planning on building my timber frame house over the next couple years, I picked up a LT-15 sawmill, a tractor, and my father has 30 acres of trees I am going to be using for the timbers. He is having a logger come and take anything I don't want soon, so I need to decide and go mark all the trees I'll be using in the next week or so. We are in central NH. 

We walked the property this past week and found there's a ton of red oak, and a good amount of white pine (the problem with the white pine is that a lot of it is 36"-50" or more in diameter which would be very difficult to move with my tractor on the rough terrain, and my mill would have a hard time with it as well). 
Then there is this one grove of tons of pin straight and clear red pine, with a perfect landing spot for me to setup and mill. I've done some searching and from what I gathered, red pine tends to twist and warp a lot.  I feel like since it is straight and clear for the first 50', it shouldn't be that bad, but I have nothing to base this off of. I've seen plenty of warped and twisted red pine trees which may be what most people see/experience.

So my question is should I be fine using the red pine or is it worth the extra effort of using the white pine? Maybe a middle ground of using white pine for the main post and beams, then red for joists and smaller spans.

Thank you!


this is not an actual photo but very similar to what ours look like
(https://extension.unh.edu/sites/default/files/pictures/3%20Clough%20SP.JPG)


Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: Don P on January 22, 2019, 07:10:18 PM
It tends to throw a whorl of branches each year so suffers the same structural/ grading problem as white pine, that is, clusters of knots spaced up the timber. They seem to self prune better and have smaller knots. The timber has the same design strength values as white pine but I think it is easier to find higher grade material. That was from the NDS where the engineers go. In the USFPL wood handbook, it is actually slightly stronger, denser and can handle compression perp to grain better than white pine. It also shrinks more. I would have no reservations.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: barbender on January 23, 2019, 12:46:32 AM
I'd use the red pine without reservation as well. I don't doubt what Don says as far as the official design numbers, but my experience on the ground is that Red pine is way stronger than White. White pine is nice and stable, and nice to work with but it is really brittle. I'm a logger and you approach falling the two differently because of this. White pine will break right off on your hinge because of it's brittleness, where red pine you have to be careful you don't leave too much of a hinge- it won't break and it will end up splitting the tree in half.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: wisconsitom on January 23, 2019, 08:42:44 AM
+3 on using the red pine.  FWIW, red pine is considered a "hard pine" while white pine is considered a "soft pine".  I think this has to do with characteristics that are being noticed by folks who fall timber like barbender.  Additionally, I think P. resinosa wood is more dense than that of P. strobus.

We built a very large deck in a very wet location using only locally-sawn red pine.  I have sprayed wood preservative on it twice now, and hope to do so again this coming warm season, but in the main, it has held up better than I'd hoped-going on 9 years duration.  You can't, of course, lay this material right on the ground.

tom
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: Heartwood on January 23, 2019, 08:59:58 AM
Our experience with western MA red pine has not been good; it tends to twist a lot and we would not prefer it over white pine if both were available. We had some beautifully clear red pine 12-foot 5x5s and half of them twisted 1/2" or more over their length. If you use it for small pieces you can minimize the effects, or use where twisting can be accommodated with scribing, planing later, etc.; joists might be a good place, rafters no. You could also mill a bunch of extras and cull them, then resaw the rejects later into something smaller after they settle down; that's what we did (do). If they're going to sit for awhile (a year or more), mill them 1" or so bigger and resaw them.
Strength is good, as Don says.
If you use the red pine, it would be useful to report back here with your conclusions; thanks in advance
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: firefighter ontheside on January 23, 2019, 08:55:23 PM
From someone living in a log home built of red pine, I would say red pine is the way to go.  With heavy timbers, I would think there is much less chance for twisting.  Granted mine are still in the shape of trees, they have not twisted and have behaved very well as they shrunk.  The house was built 18 years ago from green logs.

(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/36921/DC58A3B6-0201-4482-8D43-092D0198EE8F.jpeg?easyrotate_cache=1540295459)
 
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: D L Bahler on January 25, 2019, 03:56:15 PM
I would support the approach of pre-milling red pine and allowing it to season for a year, then culling the pieces that display excessive movement.
This is a very common practice in the Alps where they've build with softwoods for thousands of years. They will cull the timbers that want to move a lot and saw them into smaller timber or into boards.

I'm sure you'll be wanting some decking, so this shouldn't be a hug issue.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: SwampDonkey on January 25, 2019, 05:15:18 PM
Red pine makes great furniture, so I'd use it for sure.

Got a kitchen table of red pine, thick material, has behaved well. Made from local red pine. :)
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: skudak on February 07, 2019, 10:07:57 AM
Quote from: Heartwood on January 23, 2019, 08:59:58 AM
Our experience with western MA red pine has not been good; it tends to twist a lot and we would not prefer it over white pine if both were available. We had some beautifully clear red pine 12-foot 5x5s and half of them twisted 1/2" or more over their length. If you use it for small pieces you can minimize the effects, or use where twisting can be accommodated with scribing, planing later, etc.; joists might be a good place, rafters no. You could also mill a bunch of extras and cull them, then resaw the rejects later into something smaller after they settle down; that's what we did (do). If they're going to sit for awhile (a year or more), mill them 1" or so bigger and resaw them.
Strength is good, as Don says.
If you use the red pine, it would be useful to report back here with your conclusions; thanks in advance
Sorry for taking so long to respond. After talking to a couple other local timber framers and sawyers, they had the same experience as you with them twisting a lot. General consensus is they're not worth the work. I'm curious if New England has a different species of red pine than other places since there's such differing experiences with them. Or maybe our climate affects them differently.

I decided to just do the extra work up front and go with the red oak and white pine, I'll save the red pine for other projects. This is my first big timber framing project so I want it to go as smooth and easy as possible.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: SwampDonkey on February 07, 2019, 01:04:44 PM
I suspect plantation red pine skudak, not slow grown tight ringed natural red pine. A lot of it planted over the last 70 years or so. Fast grown managed young wood has different characteristics. Sometimes for the better and other times not, depending on tree species.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: skudak on February 08, 2019, 12:50:59 PM
Quote from: SwampDonkey on February 07, 2019, 01:04:44 PM
I suspect plantation red pine skudak, not slow grown tight ringed natural red pine. A lot of it planted over the last 70 years or so. Fast grown managed young wood has different characteristics. Sometimes for the better and other times not, depending on tree species.
I would definitely agree with you on that. Red pines are not native to NH and were planted in big clusters. I found this article from UNH that provides a little insight:
The Stories Behind Red Pine Stands | UNH Extension (https://extension.unh.edu/blog/stories-behind-red-pine-stands)
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: wisconsitom on February 08, 2019, 02:35:11 PM
Plants Profile for Pinus resinosa (red pine) (https://plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=PIRE)

USDA PLANTS database is not always 100% correct.  However, it is sins of omission, not inaccurate placement of a species where it was not originally found, that makes up these inaccuracies.  For example, they used to not show tamarack as present (or native, for that matter) in Shawano (pronounced 'shaw-no')County, WI.  I drive through several watersheds in that county on my way to land I own in the next county north.  And I can assure that tamarack is present in the former location, in great abundance!

But I gave the USDA folks the locations where this tree was present in that county, and they went on to revise the map.

It would appear that red pine is most definitely native to New Hampshire.  I'd be very surprised if it was not.  Red pine was planted "in big clusters" in many northern states.  That certainly does not mean the tree was not native to those states.

tom
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: SwampDonkey on February 08, 2019, 04:47:31 PM
Do you find it has an affinity for red soils with clay?  It seems to up here, I mean the roads into the natural stands I've been to is red clay as clay can be. That map from the USDA basically just says it's present in those state and provincial boundaries. Basically, it is present here in tiny pin pricks on the map where those red clays are. It's very scarce and uncommon naturally here. Lots of old farm fields around here have plantations though. They are old pastures, wet, or difficult to work.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: wisconsitom on February 11, 2019, 09:53:25 AM
If you don't mind reading another one of my editorials....red pine is an interesting case.  While red pine plantations abound in my area...so much so that some "conservationists" resent the very existence of the tree, so sure are they that plantations have no ecological value ( I strongly disagree!) that they are then blind to the fact that "wild", naturally-occurring red pines are now quite rare on the landscape.  In WI, we have a listing of every native plant species with its associated coefficient of conservatism.  This is a number between one and ten, ten being high, that gets at the rarity and value of any given species.  Red pine rates very high, even though there are all those plantation trees around.

When one goes up the gut of northern Wisconsin, one really starts to see some big old red pine relics.  Think the area around Three Lakes.  Big, big trees, with their gleaming reddish purple bark.  Wonderful site.  Of course, white pines and hemlocks are generally nearby.

Now about those dang plantations.  So many criticize conifer plantations, especially red pine plantations here in WI.  I heard right around 50 years ago that they were "biological deserts", devoid of anything that sustains life for any other organism.  I now see that that is bunk.  First of all....in my own plantation area, which does contain more species than just red pine, there are more songbirds than in my adjacent natural forest patch.  There are deer beds all over the place.  There are woodchuck burrows.  Deer, bear, porcupine, turkey, coyote and many more frequent the area.  We have ring-neck pheasants in and around our property!  That's almost unheard of anymore in most sections of WI.  Yet I hear the rooster cackling many times when I'm up there.  Further, pine plantations mature and then get thinned.  After the final thinning, these stands resemble old-growth stands to a degree.  Widely-spaced large trunks, high crowns, and lots of undergrowth in some cases.  The earliest machine-planted red pine plantations in the world are in Oconto County, WI, where my land is.  Very good growth is the norm.  And red maple, paper birch, white pine, and northern red oak are frequent inhabitants of the developing understory.

Swamp, in WI, red pine just follows sand.  Many of our soils are full of iron here and quite red in color,  But the reddest stuff around here is a red montmorillonite clay subsoil, and the red pines do not like that stuff especially well.  They prefer sand.

tom
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: Dave Shepard on February 11, 2019, 11:32:16 AM
I've been burned too many times by red pine. Not worth messing with, in my experience. We've got a bunch of it on the farm that my grandfather planted in the '40's. 
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: barbender on February 11, 2019, 12:24:21 PM
Red Pine does best on sandy soils here. I've seen really old plantation stuff, that you can't tell isn't a natural stand. One site was planted in 1904 I think, first plantation in MN. I wonder if you guys out east don't have a bad strain or something, kind of like the Scotch line that was planted around here. That stuff usually makes Jack pine look nice and straight. Look at the Scotch pine in Europe they grow like arrows.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: SwampDonkey on February 11, 2019, 12:29:52 PM
I know one particular stand growing top of glacial sand uphill of the Wapske flood plain. The road in there is red clay mud though and those red pine are no touch, or were. Down hill in the flood plain was red spruce growing like white pine, 32 m tall versus the typical 24 m you get in glacial till of sand and boulders. I was in there a few years ago and the fir was all dead, got old and died as they do, some scattered cedar. I think deer yard up here. I know near there, on the Odell, easy to count 50 on winter deer yards.

(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_redspruce-crown.jpg)

That's a diameter tape, ain't circumference. ;D

(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_redspruce-tape2.jpg)
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: SwampDonkey on February 11, 2019, 12:39:32 PM
You bring up jack pine, plantation jack pine here is junk. Wild jack pine found up in the hills of the Christmas Mountains was like telephone poles. Was, because the 1995 Nov wind blew down thousands of acres up there, it was all salvaged, what they could get. Look on Google earth there and she's like Mount St Helen all regenerating now. But mostly fir because it didn't burn. Funny how nature can change the cover type to. :D
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: wisconsitom on February 12, 2019, 08:33:34 AM
I too wonder if there's a bad strain of red pine that ended up getting used in western MA.  Something isn't adding up in the comments section.  Red pine is just about the most reliable softwood species there is in the western Great Lakes region.  My 24' by 32' deck-entirely red pine and now ten years old, is not twisting one bit.  

There's something wrong with western MA red pine, that doesn't translate to the rest of the country.  Then too, red pine is not very diverse, genetically-speaking.  One red pine's genetics look pretty much like any other red pine's genetics.  Much less diverse, than say, white pine or especially, Norway spruce.

tom
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: skudak on February 12, 2019, 09:00:52 AM
I definitely agree Tom. Looking at the comments here and everyone's locations, paired with all the people I spoke with locally it seems that New England red pine is worse than red pine in other places in the country.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: SwampDonkey on February 12, 2019, 10:11:41 AM
We had a similar discussion about tamarack (eastern larch). Some people claim they can make nice straight boards of it. It is so full of spiral grain around here that it twists about as quick as it drops of the sawmill. I've never seen it used even on a woodshed. :D But, I'd burn it, so I guess I could fill the woodshed at least. :D
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: Dave Shepard on February 12, 2019, 12:26:07 PM
It could very well be a regional issue. Some of the rp I've sawn was not plantation grown from the Catskills over in NY. Higher altitude, poorer soil. Larch head been variable, also. Some nice and straight, others split and twist.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: wisconsitom on February 12, 2019, 01:24:13 PM
Yup...got to be something to this, both red pine and tamarack.  So long as one is not talking about poor, stunted tamaracks in acidic bogs where growth is almost non-existent, the species tends to be of good wood quality here in WI and the UP of Michigan....the 2 main forested areas that I know anything about.  Tamarack is highly prized for a range of uses.  Weatherfast, strong, durable, rot-resistant....what's not to like?  It also calipers up nice and fast, has minimal stem taper (for a pine-family member), and smells good!  Great log cabin logs.

Regional differences must be in play here.

tom
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: barbender on February 12, 2019, 05:02:53 PM
My experience with tamarack has been the stunted stuff is un-sawable, it twists and moves on the bed of the mill. Other faster grown stuff sawed beautifully.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: SwampDonkey on February 12, 2019, 05:33:20 PM
I've planted some tamarack here and you can see the twist in the leader growth. She'll burn nice and hot. :D  It's very low value wood here. I think a mill or two in Maine buys for pulp, but it is not much money.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: Mike W on February 12, 2019, 07:45:49 PM
Hi all,

just for what its worth, here in the North Eastern corner of Washington, the Tamarack (Larch) is a fantastic milling material, we have milled several 36" plus dia. trees from our property that we have milled a few posts and beams from as well as 2x decking and siding material, all has milled great, processed great and stayed straight as one could hope for.  as mentioned several different ways on this post, its got to be something to do with region as well as slight variations to species within the Larch family.  

Cant speak to red pine, we only have white and yellow in our area, I have no experience in milling red pine, so have no baseline to add to the convo. in that respects ???

Mike 
 
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: shinnlinger on February 12, 2019, 09:11:36 PM
I am not too far from the OP.  My timber frame is mostly white pine, but some of my purlins are "Norway pine". Is that the same as red pine?  Anywho, some old timer told me the red pine was harder than white pine and made decent flooring.  My purlins are 6x7 and dropped in pockets.  They didn't twist too bad.  I did make a point of boxing the heart.  This is in contrast to my 4x8 white pine floor joists.   I sawed them out before I stumbled on this site and thought it was a great time save to take boxed heart 8x8's and split them right down the middle to 2 4x8s.  Now those are currently pretzels over my head. Makes a good story though.

I suspect your white pine is likely too big for most mills to want and they are unwieldy.  My suggestion is to make your cutlist for your frame before you fall your trees and buck the log up 3 or so inches longer than you want your finished timbers to be.  That way you are only dealing with 10 footers or whatever rather than a 30 foot tree.  You might as well get the biggest chainsaw and bar you can afford and you can whittle them down as needed.

Good luck.

Dave
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: shinnlinger on February 12, 2019, 09:17:42 PM
I will also point there are more than a few frames cut from red oak....
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: SwampDonkey on February 13, 2019, 05:43:09 AM
Jim Irving buys white pine up to 40" on the big end. If there are any red spruce bigger than 22", your out of luck, hope for a veneer market. Only veneer market close enough here is for maple and birch. I don't know if Twin Rivers still has a spruce veneer mill in northern Maine or not. It's been 20 years since I heard of it when we were cutting 30-40" red spruce on the old Perth town watershed. Now that's cut'n wood. ;D
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: wisconsitom on February 13, 2019, 08:43:15 AM
Pulp mills don't always like larch.  There is a polysacharide-arabino-galactan-in the butt-ends of the logs that gums up the process.  That same material can and is extracted for a wide variety of uses.  Western larch is the species most associated with this substance, but it is found to varying degrees in most larch types.  It is an excellent soluble fiber for human gut health.

If one was attempting to grow high-quality timber by say....planting lots of sugar maples in a swamp, it would be expected that if any survived, their timber properties may be less than great.  I see no reason why the same kinds of relationships would not exist in a coniferous species.  The hybrid larch-an upland tree-that I and some others in Maine, Michigan, New York, and elsewhere are growing, is a straight-grained, straight-boled super tree.  10-year-old trees on my farm are 35 ft. tall.  Tamaracks grown on better sites behave similarly, though a shorter-lived tree by far.  The hybrids can last centuries, the tamarack about one hundred years tops.

Please refer to the Dec. 2018 issue of Northern Logger magazine for an article about these trees by Dave Maass.  A retired Scotts Paper Co. forester, Dave is heading up our agenda to promote the greater utilization of this tree.  Included in the mix are such things as providing a perfect nursery tree-every other row-for those who would like to plant oaks.  The larch casts light shade, grows much faster, and is harvested long before the hardwoods (or what-have-you) are anywhere near mature.  A pretty good system, superior to the widespread use of spruce to accomplish much the same thing.  Much potential for land remediation with this fast-grower too.  Enriches the soil where it grows.

tom
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: SwampDonkey on February 13, 2019, 11:47:03 AM
Tom,

Yes, probably so. Only market I see from the marketing board is tamarack logs. $60-74 a cord. So no pulp. Got it cornfused with the hemlock market. :)

I may be wrong, but I don't think there is much experimenting that way with tamarack here. Down at Acadia research centre, now closed, they were testing provenances a few years ago. I measured a lot of the plantations they had in NB, NS and PEI. Looking at growth, vigour and form. Not long ago travelling to work daily in remote NB, I did see where some must have been planted on a hardwood site a few years ago. The hardwood was cut out since. I think it was strip clear cut before the tamarack was planted. Anyway those tall slender tamarack have about 6 live limbs each and ready to bend over and touch the ground. Sick spindly things.  :D

As far as a commercial tree stand point, it is better to grow tamarack than non commercial alders and willows. Tamarack will practically grow on water and grow quite quickly actually. I'm not talking sphagnum bogs though but wet runs through a patch of woods where cedar and white spruce were cut from. I've planted there, but also on well drained ground. Growth isn't much different as long as they have sky and not muskeg.  Only thing is they blow down easy in the damp places. Then there is the saw flies every few years to make everything interesting. :D
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: SwampDonkey on February 13, 2019, 12:10:03 PM
9 year old tamarack planted behind me. (2011 photo)

(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_tamarack-2002~0.jpg)

The black spruce are 15 years old when the photo was taken. This is one of the damp places. Better than willow bushes, unless your a moose. But they wrestle them tamarack to. :D
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: wisconsitom on February 13, 2019, 01:01:34 PM
Great stuff, Swamp.  One of the unfortunate things that happened throughout N. American timber species research was the dumping on the market of tropical woods by China, Malaysia and others.  This cut the legs off all the larch ( and other) research, back about 2000.  Dave Maass and the rest of us are now trying to go back and measure those plantings.

The city I happen to live in was for a long time home to The Institute of Paper Chemistry-this being "The Paper Valley" of the world.  Back then, larch trials were very much a part of things.  All got sold down the river to U of Georgia...back when they thought southern pine was taking over the world....lol.  A few droughts and hurricanes later, well...we'll see on that!  At any rate, there are now larch plantations sleeping in odd places, largely forgotten, and it is these plantings that LarchResearch.com is attempting to find and calibrate.  The general finding is one of outstanding growth.  Researchers describe plantations where species like spruce and red pine were planted at same time as larch, and just as in my own plantation, it is game over......the larch are clear and obvious winners in the growth category.  The general feeling is that, if markets could be developed, this tree-especially Larix x marschlinsii-could be an important player in the north.  Both in terms of what I cited above....and in more general ways, by simply boosting productivity of these forests.

I was able to source plug stock of Larix x marschlinsii before Itascagreenhouse.com, the one US vendor that had this item, got sold.  The new owners might get there eventually, but the business isn't the same.  They don't offer the plant.

I do think however that if one is sufficiently serious and determined, we would be able to source seed/plugs/seedlings.

tom
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: barbender on February 13, 2019, 03:25:41 PM
Tamarack is a tremendously underutilized species that we have thousands and thousands of cords of. We have one local market, Lonza, that extracts sugars from the larch species. It goes into dietary supplements and such. We had one of our trucks accidentally bring a load of tamarack into the Potlatch stud mill, apparently it made it to the graders before anyone caught it😂 They said it went through the mill really nice, and made beautiful lumber. Some of the employees were going to buy it for their own use, so no harm no foul😊 Otherwise, the pallet mills buy some, and the Packaging Corp. mill uses some to make cardboard.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: SwampDonkey on February 13, 2019, 05:02:52 PM
Since this thread is about pine. This is what moose do to white pine. :D

(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_WPine-moose.jpg)

and that cabbage pine I mentioned. Not a good one in the lot. Hard to see much, but take my word it's all junk. Don't bother calling Jim Irving. :D

(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_WPine-field.jpg)

The deer like to mill around in there though. Coyotes got one in the fall. All deer that were around here in November have migrated out. You won't find a deer track now. There was tracks every night up in the Christmas trees. Nothing now. They go down the Preque Isle stream toward the big river (Saint John). Winter cover is quite fragmented on these old farms, if any at all. No old spruce-fir stands of any size. The last 30 years has cut all the big stuff.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: Edvantage on February 13, 2019, 07:59:41 PM
I plan to start cutting red pine for my log home soon. One stand has 30in diameter trees a bit too big. Other stand I can cut for free is 10in dia trees. Ideally I would need 18in dia for full scribed log home. Thinking of cutting 30in but log into floors joists rafters and use rest of log for walls. Would saw 10in trees for t&g interior walls and interior wall framing. Log walls will be green. How long must milled lumber be air dried Before I use for floor joists and rafters? I had planned to buy dimensional lumber but just got a woodmizer which I had never dreamed of owning. Finished basement walls last fall and need to get trees cut soon.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: barbender on February 14, 2019, 09:31:27 AM
I'd put them up green if you're not getting them closed in for a few months. Let them dry in place.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: TimFromNB on February 16, 2019, 02:58:49 PM
I am in South East NB and bought white and red pine for my frame. I wanted only white but at that time the logger I was dealing with didn't have enough, so I got some red for brace stock, joists and spares. Within a few months of milling, the red pine had moved  noticeably more than the white. The white pine was huge and hard to handle, but I think it was worth it being this is my first project and the more stable the better. Without a tractor to get the logs on the mills and turn them, not sure it would have been possible.

Look at this stack of 4x6s and 5x7s. Mostly all white pine except for the 4 on the right, second row from the top. Those a red. And they twist the same amount on the other end, in the opposite direction. I haven't seen as much movement in the red 8x8s, but they have moved enough that I will probably have to use scribe rule for those.


(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/43011/20180802_133511.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1534176110)
 
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: SwampDonkey on February 16, 2019, 03:34:46 PM
Some, or all mills, not sure, have log loading attachments. Some manual and some hydraulic. Here's one for Woodland Mills. He's talking about his trailer kit to.

Spruce Logging & Sawmill Loading Kit from Woodland Mills- Log Cabin Update- Ep 10.11 - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUOJwuwlXBM)
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: TimFromNB on February 16, 2019, 04:39:29 PM
That would certainly help. But you still need to get the log out of the pile and turn it to milled out a beam.

We had a hard time turning the big ones (22", 24", etc) by hand with 3 or 4 of us. Plus when they finally turn past the balance point, it's very hard not for it to slam down on the mill. And these were only the 12' ones ;D. I guess you could probably turn the log with the hand winch as well. Just take your time and be careful!


(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/43011/20180603_124930.jpg?easyrotate_cache=1528162205)
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: SwampDonkey on February 16, 2019, 04:56:55 PM
Yes a tractor is good solution to save shoulders and backs. Some of us ain't 20 no more. :D
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: skudak on February 18, 2019, 07:45:38 AM
Quote from: SwampDonkey on February 16, 2019, 03:34:46 PM
Some, or all mills, not sure, have log loading attachments. Some manual and some hydraulic. Here's one for Woodland Mills. He's talking about his trailer kit to.

Spruce Logging & Sawmill Loading Kit from Woodland Mills- Log Cabin Update- Ep 10.11 - YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUOJwuwlXBM)
I love that guy's videos. I have a Wood-mizer LT15 which does not have a log loading attachment. You can buy one like he has with the winch thing, or go up to the next model and get hydarulics ($$$ for a personal mill imo). I was going to go with the hand winch and use a log arch on my ATV to move trees at first, but instead ending up buying a Kubota L2501 which has made life a million times better. Though it's still a small tractor and has its limits. It won't lift some of the red oaks I got, but will drag them and lift one end at a time just fine, as well as flip the real heavy logs.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: WDH on February 18, 2019, 07:52:20 AM
Quote from: wisconsitom on February 11, 2019, 09:53:25 AM
But the reddest stuff around here is a red montmorillonite clay subsoil, and the red pines do not like that stuff especially well. 
Likely the pH is more basic with the 2:1 expanding clays.
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: SwampDonkey on February 18, 2019, 07:55:40 AM
For me, I wouldn't be moving anything bigger than 18-20" and cut to length at the stump and yard out with an arch on a wheeler. I would make my piles along side parallel to the mill, roll off the pile with a peavey and use the log loader. Only cutting for myself, non production. I'm not there yet. But probably 2 years out from now. I have lots of nice fir. Any waste, I would stack at the house to burn for heat. It all makes heat. :D
Title: Re: Red pine vs white pine
Post by: wisconsitom on February 18, 2019, 08:23:50 AM
Yes, clay zones here are circum-neutral.  Perfect for a vast array of species....but not red pine.

tom