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Red pine vs white pine

Started by skudak, January 22, 2019, 10:09:11 AM

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Mike W

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 
 

shinnlinger

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
Shinnlinger
Woodshop teacher, pasture raised chicken farmer
34 horse kubota L-2850, Turner Band Mill, '84 F-600,
living in self-built/milled timberframe home

shinnlinger

I will also point there are more than a few frames cut from red oak....
Shinnlinger
Woodshop teacher, pasture raised chicken farmer
34 horse kubota L-2850, Turner Band Mill, '84 F-600,
living in self-built/milled timberframe home

SwampDonkey

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
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

wisconsitom

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
Ask me about hybrid larch!

SwampDonkey

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
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

SwampDonkey

9 year old tamarack planted behind me. (2011 photo)



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
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

wisconsitom

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
Ask me about hybrid larch!

barbender

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.
Too many irons in the fire

SwampDonkey

Since this thread is about pine. This is what moose do to white pine. :D



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



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.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Edvantage

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.

barbender

I'd put them up green if you're not getting them closed in for a few months. Let them dry in place.
Too many irons in the fire

TimFromNB

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.



 

SwampDonkey

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
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

TimFromNB

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!




SwampDonkey

Yes a tractor is good solution to save shoulders and backs. Some of us ain't 20 no more. :D
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

skudak

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
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.

WDH

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.
Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

SwampDonkey

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
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

wisconsitom

Yes, clay zones here are circum-neutral.  Perfect for a vast array of species....but not red pine.

tom
Ask me about hybrid larch!

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