Tree Damage

[johnjbc]

This weekend I'm ready to cut the first lumber for my cabin. Went out last weekend and cut 6 white pine. Got 18 logs mostly 15 feet long.


I am cutting trees, that were damaged by the logging that took place before I bought the place, like this one. It was 53 feet to the first live limb




Had the state forester out and he told me that the hard woods will usually recover from this kind of damage but that I might as well cut the pines. All most all of the trees along the skid trails have been damaged. Is this much damage normal?
How big an area of bark do you need to loose before the tree can't recover?

[Tom]

Dings like that don't bother us too much down here, although we would prefer that it didn't happen.  Heavy equipment in the woods is difficult to operate without dinging something.  Some trees are designated as "rub' trees and are usually taken at the end of the harvest.  The skidder operators use them to keep from damaging other trees.

The damage on the tree you picture is moderately bad but nothing that wouldn't recover down here.  Pine is usually real good about closing wounds.  I've seen trees survive with 2/3rds of the cambium missing.  Almost girdled.  That's not good but they can still make it. The wood behind the wound won't make good boards because it will eventually rot or become impregnated with pure pitch.  These trees are usually "jump cut".

You have a pretty stand of pine and will be the envy of many a miller on this site who likes pine.  I wish I were there. ;D

Your water lube will be important on this job.  It will be a learning experience to determine how much will stop the gumming.  Before you get started, be sure you have a bottle of pinesol or dish soap.  I like Palmolive best and will use as much as  two tablespoons to a gallon. :P

[HORSELOGGER]

The only way I could do that much damage with my horses is if I had a full out run away with a load on. I take extra measures in real tight spots to look for the potential dings and set firewood size bumpers at the base of them to prevent it. I go in to do the minimal amount of damage, that is what people hire me for and pictures like the one of that pine are what get me more work ;D

[Tom]

Yeah, what you do is pretty surgical, Horselogger.  I admire the craftsmanship that goes with using animals.

[Corley5]

A good conscientious skidder operator will do very little damage to the residual stand.  Some damage is inevitable and can't be avoided but most can.  Don't skid anything over 16' long and don't be too lazy to drag some cable out rather than backing over and squeezing between trees to get to logs.  Look the situation over to see how they are going to pull out and hook accordingly.  That's how I've always operated.

[Ron Wenrich]

Corley hit the nail on the head as how to avoid most skidding damage.  Log length skidding instead of tree length.  Grapple skidders also do a bit more damage since the logs are held tighter.

The biggest factor is the time of year of harvest.  If harvested in the spring or early summer, the bark will pop and peel off pretty quickly.  But, do that in January, and there is minimal damage.

Those trees will survive, but they won't grow good wood in the wound area.  It also opens areas for rot and ants.  It takes pretty much of a wound to kill a tree.

Do you have much pine in the understory?

[johnjbc]

Ron
My ground was probably about 20% Pine Half is white pine and it seem to favor the higher areas. There the regeneration is heavy enough that you have trouble walking
the rest mostly oak, hickory, and tulip popular only has an occasional pine.
John

[Frank_Pender]

John, one of the things I have done out here in the West, is to locate tires at the base of trees that are near skid trails.  I  attatch them with cotton rope so as to not to be very abrasive like my humor.  In this way I have been able to relly cut down on the ground level damage from skidding.

[Ron Scott]

A timber harvest needs to be planned and managed to prevent tree damage. Damaged trees should not be tolerated as a logging practice. An objective of any harvest is to do minimum or no damage to remaining trees.

Do not use tree length skidding in selection harvests, but rather variable length logging and forwarders. Be sure that any "bumper trees" are bought and paid for as part of the harvest.

It doesn't make much sense to remove selected trees and then damage the residuals intended to remain. A loss of future stand stocking, quality, quantity, grade, and $$$.  



  

[johnjbc]

I had planned to spend this weekend sawing up my logs Saturday was used up doing things like :
Putting in posts and a wire so that I could chain my dog beside be side my sweet corn patch. The ground hogs have been doing a job on it.

Then I need to wire up the lights on the woodmizer to connect to my truck. I had a 4 pole plug and connector. I drilled and taped the bracket on the truck and mounted the connector and wired the plug to the saw. Everything looked good until I tried to put the plug in, guess what. :-[ Well I need to go to the grocery store anyway . They just open a new WALMART Super Store and I can get everything there. They had a 6 pole connector setup so I picked up my other Items and went to checkout. What a line had to wait at least 30 min.

Went to mount the new plug and it needs a 11/2 inch hole. Oh well get out the drill and taps  again.

Now at last I can pack. Ended up leaving at 7:00 PM

Sunday morning I setup and leveled the saw and started sawing. By 7 PM when it was time to go home I had sawed 450 BF of lumber plus about a dozen pieces of edged slab siding out of 5 logs. Used a tank of gas, 4 gal. of water/soap and broke one blade.

Guess I'm a little slow at 450 BF but I did waste some time cutting flats on  5 or 6 inch  poles for cribbing. Will try to do better next time. :
John

[Tom]

John, one of the WoodMizer guys told me that 14 logs a day was a good days work.  I hustled for a long time to be able to reach that and then found myself surpassing it.

It doesn't matter how much you cut in a day, if you have produced all good lumber.  That is expecially true when you are cutting for yourself.  "who are you trying to impress?"  That's what I try to keep in mind when I find myself running faster and faster.  :D

One day you will wonder how you could have been so slow.

A little help off-loading makes it go a lot quicker too.

Here's a tip.......If you will cut your logs square on the ends and not mix lengths, it will make it a lot easier to stack and your stacks will look a lot neater.  If you hve dragbacks, those rough ends will actually get into the blade and push it off.

If you are cutting 16 foot stuff and have over cut the log to 17 or 17.5 feet.  You are cutting a lot more Board Feet than you will use.  It's better to cut it off before you saw than throw that piece of wood from each board away. :P ;D

[Bibbyman]

I skidded logs for Dad back in the 60's and 70's.  First we had a farm tractor with a loader and then an IH industrial loader.  Dad was a gentle man (maybe even a gentleman at times) but I would get a good hollern' at if I barked a tree or cut a rut. I've been over a couple of these farms again some 30 years later and could not find any signs we'd been there other than a few stumps that hadn't rotted away.

When my son was logging, I tried to impress on him the advantage of not damaging other trees or making ruts.  I told him it would look much better if he took the time to clear a main road down a ridge than to just wallow the brush down as I've seen some do.  I think he took note and so did the land owners as he was starting to get a lot of calls from people wanting him to come and log their timber - all word of mouth.

[Ron Scott]

That's the way! Landowners will seek out the loggers that do "no impact logging" and leave a sustainable and plaeasing landscape.

I impress upon all my loggers that we are "landscaping" the forest, not "cutting" it.

[Tom]

Here is a picture of a S. Georgia pine that is in a turpentine plantation.  It has had catfaces cut on both sides and is still healthy.  That strip of bark between the two faces is mirrored on the other side of the tree so that the tree is living with only half of its bark.  Usually a tree like this is cut for timber within a year or so of being turpentined but it may be left for years to put on enough girth to make it marketable.

[Ron Scott]

Not being use to seeing that, it wouldn't be aesthetically pleasing in a forest landscape here. Is this type of operation on public or private lands or both?

[Tom]

Ron, This is on Government land.  

Turpentining is not a business anymore and is done only for historical purposes to support a single distillarie put up as a museum.   The turpentine industry was once Big business in the South where most every tree had a cup hangin on it.  

Pine trees, in the south, have the same distinction as a pig.  Everything gets used but the squeal. The tree, when young is thinned for fence posts, older it's made turpentine and pulp and then lumber and beginning at about 12 to 15 years, the needles are harvested. The tops and limbs were once used for pulp before heavy equipment processing took over.  When the tree is gone, the stump is dug up and sold to companies like Hercules and it ends up in dynamite.

Turpentine has been replaced with synthetics and Turps were boiled and distilled from the trees that were processed for paper in later years.  Now that pulp mills are closing or only reprocessing card board, I don't know what will be done for "Ships Stores", Turps.  It is used in everythiing from paint to womens makeup so there must be a lot of synthetics to replace it.  :P

[Ron Scott]

One can't go wrong with that kind of wood utilization. That story needs to be told more.