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4 foot pulpers?

Started by gman98, January 05, 2018, 06:26:52 PM

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gman98

I was talking with my boss the other day about the times of the 4 foot pulp industry.  Anyone on here experience the 4 foot days in the northeast?  What was it like?

Thanks
Forest technician and part time equipment operator.  Looking to get set up with some logging equipment of my own.

Firewood dealer

You learn quick to put the butt sticks on the bottom of the pile!  :D

snowstorm

Do you mean 4 footing in the woods then loading it on a trailer or scoot? No did not. Sawing it 4ft on the yard cause it was the only market you had. Yes lots of it

thecfarm

My Father cut some 4 foot pulp here on The Farm. He did it with oxens before the tractor.
Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

Maine logger88

I only caught the tail end of the 4ft days but for a few years I did a fair amount. it was ok and compared to our current spruce and for pulp market quite good! Although it was a lot of work I enjoyed it as long as I could break it up with cutting other species and not just cut 4ft pulp for weeks on end.
79 TJ 225 81 JD 540B Husky and Jonsered saws

Maine372

I have stump cut 4ft, stacked on a trailer behind a crawler. sawed skidded wood 4ft on the landing. I saw the rumford mill when it was still heaps of 4ft unloaded by crane slings. ive unloaded 4ft into the flume in jay. been on tours in the wood rooms in both bucksport and Millinocket.

honestly I grew up doing it and didn't know any different. more labor intensive than tree length but I could pick up doing it again tomorrow.

if all you bring out is pulp pull it a little past and then unhook and turn around. now push the butts square with the rest of the pile. if youre good you don't have to measure. dad hauled off one guy that was meticulous about it and you could just about load his wood with a forklift.



mike_belben

At 37 im too young to have ever seen it but i grew up around the chicopee river in massachusetts and have heard stories from old timers about the holyoke paper mills (the paper city turned out just like the motor city) and a few relayed stories about the log drives a century ago.  Pretty neat stuff.

The pallet mills here in middle tennessee used to be short wood until fairly recently.   someone i know that hadnt hauled in a few years just gave me a bunch of 4ft oak to go into my firewood pile, that he hauled out and back when it was refused.  8'3 min now.  He was pretty mad when he got there and argued it.  They told him they dont have the equipment to handle short wood anymore but it was the same stuff hed always seen.   thinks they did it to take advantage of the taper.  Paying on small end of an 8'3 butt log will produce a few free side boards off every flare. 

None of the stave mills will take a short piece either anymore even though theyre bucking into 40" chunks first thing, no debarker.
Praise The Lord

thecfarm

Yes,I remember Boise only would take 4 foot wood. That would of been back in '94,'95,'96.We did not send much to Boise,I'm only about 20 minutes away from what was IP in Jay. So most went there.
Maine372,And yes,I use to rick up the pulp the way you said. We did not cut much pulp. Not much money in it and this was on our land and we got all the money. We was cutting some old BIG pine. Some of the limbs was so big,we would haul them out for pulp.
We use to send more hardwood up to Jay. Use to $56 a cord. I had many people try to tell me to cut and split for firewood.  ::)  I could not get it through thier thick heads all I had to do was rick it up into a pile,cut it 8 feet and I was done. Trucking was $15 a cord,so that was $41 in my pocket. Only minutes of work,no handling the wood. I had no splitter,no dump truck at that time.
Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

Mountaynman

up until just a few years ago here in ny at finch in glens falls they were still running the trucks thru the saw on the island all the boys had a slasher rack on the truck. They were cutting it 4ft was good cause you could cut the hemlock 17 ft and they would swap butts for tops and put a real good load on hardwood was 8ft then cut in half I'm sure some of the fellas in the Adirondacks have some pics of a truck going thru the saw. they have gone to all 8ft now no more island with a just in time inventory at the mill which is in the center of town.
Semi Retired too old and fat to wade thru waist deep snow hand choppin anymore

loggah

I cut some and loaded it in trucks by hand when i was a teenager,also cut 4' poplar and peeled it . Didn't work at it to long the lady we worked for would only pay $7 for 11 hrs of work!! but she did provide lunch.Took a lot of throwing to fill up a parmacheene pulp rack on a 10 wheeler.
Interests: Lombard Log Haulers,Tucker Sno-Cats, Circular Sawmills, Shingle Mills, Maple Syrup Making, Early Construction Equipment, Logging Memorabilia, and Antique Firearms

Rick Alger

One good aspect of four-foot pulp, especially if stump-cut,  was that you didn't need a lot of equipment to get started. If you had a saw and a pulp hook you were in the logging business.

hopm

Quote from: Rick Alger on January 06, 2018, 07:36:42 AM
One good aspect of four-foot pulp, especially if stump-cut,  was that you didn't need a lot of equipment to get started. If you had a saw and a pulp hook you were in the logging business.

You're exactly right...In our area when the economy got bad everybody started cutting pulp. I've seen them come into the yard hauling in pickups and those old big, long stationwagons. After the woodyard shutdown, everybody picked up a stepladder and paint brush to make a dollar.

gman98

Quote from: Rick Alger on January 06, 2018, 07:36:42 AM
One good aspect of four-foot pulp, especially if stump-cut,  was that you didn't need a lot of equipment to get started. If you had a saw and a pulp hook you were in the logging business.
That's what appealed to me about it all the most.
Forest technician and part time equipment operator.  Looking to get set up with some logging equipment of my own.

69bronco

In the late 70s I had 2 loads of 4' red pine left over on the landing. Got wires crossed with trucker, guy shows up with a straight job. Tandem with tag, no loader. My loader wouldn't reach over rack, had to dump on rear of bed and he carried and stacked both loads the same day. Heard a couple weeks later the driver quit the next day! Used to cut and stack 4' firewood for weekend sales on site. My brother used to cut and peel poplar in 4' in the spring. They'd run over each hitch with ice chains back and forth, helped some. The good old days! say_what

thecfarm

I can remember dual wheel dump trucks with just wooden round stakes going by the house full of 4 foot pulp in the winter time. Did not see much of that in the summer.
Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

dgdrls

Here is a pond full of pulp (4 footers?)  headed to the I.P. mill on the Raquette River at Piercefield. Lots of pulp and paper history here in NY

D

 

Dan W

In the U.P. a charcoal making plant used 4ft dense hardwood.  Anything over 9 inch diameter had to be split.  It was slashed at the plant into about 18 inch blocks.  Closed up maybe in the late 60s or early 70s.

Peter Drouin

 

  

  

  

  

 
Rumford Maine.

Looks like they cut it 4'
A&P saw Mill LLC.
45' of Wood Mizer, cutting since 1987.
License NH softwood grader.

JB Griffin

They used to buy short pulp around here, now the shortest they take is 14ft
2000 LT40hyd remote 33hp Kubota with 6gpm hyd unit, 150 Prentice, WM bms250, Suffolk dual tooth setter

Over 3.5million bdft sawn with a Baker Dominator.

Corley5

  There used to be pallet mills around here that bought short bolts.  Seventy two inch, 64", 58", 50", 46", 42" and 38"were common lengths.  Fifties were the most popular.  My favorite was 50" basswood.  Didn't take much to be in business and make dollars.  There were lots of old 3/4 ton "boltwood" trucks on the road.  Some had a rough sawn flat bed others the wood was stacked across the bare frame.  Wooden stakes were the rule.  A cord was a load and paid $50.00 delivered to the mill in '87.  The price was $65.00 per cord just before the last mill went out of business in the early 90s.  Lots of groceries and beer was bought with $$$ from bolts. 
  I hauled with a trailer made from a one ton Chevy single wheel frame and pulled it with a 78 Dodge Ramcharger.  A cord and a half of 50s was a load.  No trailer brakes, fenders, or lights; wooden stakes, etc.  I switched up to a 77 Ford 3/4 ton 2wd later.  A DOT officer today would stroke out over one those old rigs.
  I'd cut the bolts to length at the stump and pull the trailer around with a 180 MF and load by hand.  The tractor had a loader but it was faster to throw them on by hand.  When full I'd pull it to where the truck was and switch it over for the trip to the mill.   
Burnt Gunpowder is the Smell Of Freedom

mike_belben

Its more or less a fact of life, when the plants and factories start closing, the middle class slides down into the lower class. 

If bolts were still sellable here, thered be a lot less thieving and welfare checks.  Everyone has a truck and a saw, but skidding and loading full length is like a line drawn in the sand. 
Praise The Lord

Hackermatack

When I was a kid I would help my dad cut a little pulp every year, we cut it short in the woods and loaded it on a wagon or sometimes just piled it on a chain and skidded it that way. We would pile it beside the road and before long some trucker would stop and want to buy it. Sometimes we had a load other times just a cord or two. One spring we cut a load of popular and peeled it because that was the only way they would buy it, I know it was slippery as snot and hard to make stay on the load. 
Jonsered 2230, 590, 70E. Kioti DK 35 /w fransguard winch. Hudson Oscar 236

Hackermatack

White birch bolts were cut a lot around here, I think they went mostly for dowel wood. My wife's cousin had a 49 ford 1 1/2 ton truck when he was in High School, he and his little brother would put on a load for a local logger after school one day, drive the truck to school loaded the next morning and run it to the mill on the way home from school.
Jonsered 2230, 590, 70E. Kioti DK 35 /w fransguard winch. Hudson Oscar 236

Rick Alger

Another good thing about the four-foot days was there was far better utilization. Softwood butts with heart rot could go as pulp instead of being left in the woods. You could also cut out crooks for pulp and make short logs out of the rest of the wood. With hardwood you could get decent boltwood out of trees that now are only good for pulp because of sweep or crooks.

Maine logger88

Quote from: Peter Drouin on January 06, 2018, 12:06:59 PM


  

  

  

  

 
Rumford Maine.

Looks like they cut it 4'
That is the aspen that they 4ft they buy it in 4ft increments from 12'to 24'. There softwood and hardwood they buy at 3 different chip mills one in Farmington one in west Paris and another in New Hampshire. Then just truck the clean chips to the mill. The aspen is groundwood that's why they slash and debark it 4ft still
79 TJ 225 81 JD 540B Husky and Jonsered saws

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