Selling Squares of Bark

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

I was looking on the Sawmill Exchange and saw a rig that takes the bark off logs.
My interest would be taking the bark off Poplar in the spring.

The rig was $2000 and comes with 2 pallets of bark...and it looked like Poplar.

Any of you selling or have a market for bark sheets?

I've seen some really nice tables and bars etc. with Poplar bark applied to them.

[Jeff]

https://barkhouse.com/whole-system-architectural-bark-wall-coverings-wood-wall-treatments/poplar-bark-shingles/

[Lawg Dawg]

I've seen it used for siding up around Blowing Rock, NC....looks like it's cut into squares and installed like shingles, on high end new construction homes and remodels.

[moodnacreek]

The only place I've ever seen [birch bark squares] it was at Specialty lumber in Bloomingdale, N.Y.  Also some years back Northern Logger magazine did an article on white birch being debarked standing prior to being logged. 

[Corley5]

I read something a while back about it being used for siding and roofing.  Interesting

[nativewolf]

DonP was posting about doing this, even had some pictures in his gallery I think, maybe he can chime in here.

I was shocked by how much he said it was worth but maybe a very shallow market.  Or, it could be the next slab market.  There is a reason that person is selling.

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

......but maybe a very shallow market.

What I was thinking. Its almost like it should be classified as primitive material.

[Chuck White]

I watched a TV show today called "Barnwood Builders" and they showed an old house that was covered (sided) with Poplar bark!

The bark was put on vertically and the pieces looked to be about 12-18 inches long!

Interesting!

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

I watch it sometimes Chuck but have not seen that one.

[Chuck White]

IIRC, this show was filmed in West Virginia!

[starmac]

Thanks for that link Jeff. I would have never thought of bark as a permanent building product, but they are claiming 80 year life, interesting.
I have to wonder if they treat it with something.
When the guy that peels the white spruce house logs does them the bark comes off in one piece, and lays there flattened probably 6 feet wide and anywhere from 30 to 60 feet long, must be a reason that poplar is the only kind mentioned for construction though.

[moodnacreek]

The Adirondack museum they used to have a spruce bark covered shack on display.                       

[Don P]

The town of Linville, NC is a summer resort community developed when the railroads came in. Many of the buildings were originally chestnut bark clad. Nowadays it's tulip poplar bark being used on many upscale vacation homes. There is an old school building in the next county, 2 stories and what I suppose was the headmasters cottage both entirely clad in poplar bark. I think I'm remembering a small poplar bark building in the middle of Courtland, VA as well. I can't remember if it was in the thread from early this summer when we were just playing around with it or from somebody local but I have a scrap here that says Barkclad in Asheville was buying 40"+ long x 12" wide at $1.50/sf. We got busy and I never pursued it. W shuffled the three 4'+ wide x9' long sheets out of the way in the haybarn the other day, that would be nice wallpaper in a room. Oh, I was in a friends new house a month or two ago, they had sweet birch bark as wall covering in one of the baths, very nice. It was sourced out of Boone and I believe there is a buyer around there as well. Pickup and small trailerloads move out of here heading that way early summer.

[starmac]

The Adirondack museum they used to have a spruce bark covered shack on display.                     

That is interesting.
Where the logger I hauled for that dealt in house logs kept his logs, basically looks like the ground is paved with the bark. he retired so there will be no fresh bark there, kind of wish I had heard of this when he was still having logs peeled, would have been fun to have done a little experimenting.

[Slingshot]

Birch bark canoe......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27VZtSl02B8

[Kbeitz]

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/259027416040673379

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgjotFLrTIQ

[WV Sawmiller]

   Neat video of the poplar bark processing. I'm tempted to try to save the bark off the next poplars I cut. Not sure if I could still salvage the one in my yard right now. I twisted a squirrel out of a big one in the pasture yesterday and was thinking about cutting it next time I need one as its a big, tall, straight tree with easy access but I know for a fact the hole in base goes up at least 10' so the butt log would be of low yield. May be better to just leave as a den tree.

   The Barnyard Builder guys (Bowe) mentioned above are based out of Lewsiburg WV in Greenbrier County about 40 miles away. My wife's cousin married one of their cousins. I operated/trained a Wisconsin doctor with a local farm on his LT50 and after training he walked me through his log home they had built for him. Their workmanship was very high end. They also built a cabin on an island in the New River about 6 miles away last summer. The had to use a helicopter for some of the lifts although at low water you can drive a normal pick up truck to the site.

[Peter Drouin]

Wonder if they saw the rest of the log.

[starmac]

Surely they do, what a waste if they didn't.

Interesting video, I wonder how it would do if just air dried.

[Don P]

It air dries quickly and will curl up into uselessness in a day or few. Our mason said they lay it on one pallet till there is a small stack and then ratchet strap another pallet over it. One of the buyers did have some kind of system to certify you, apparently there is some poaching of bark off live trees which just wastes an otherwise perfectly good tree and doesn't recover a fraction of the bark. They don't want any defects from handling or dirt from dragging so it would be drop and peel immediately, we didn't have that kind of time this time. You have to be careful scoring it not to go too deep and get into your boards. We were peeling everything for the log barn but had already drug and handled the logs too much. When the bark was slipping my partner called me scissorhands, my preferred method was to have a felling wedge in each hand and work my way down the log popping the bark off, we were getting the bark off much of the time in one piece 21' long. You have to take care around those little branch stubs lurking under the bark. With bigger logs a sticker did good while the other one unpeeled and supported the bark. As the summer wore on and the bark stuck it was drawknives and cussin.

[starmac]

On the spruce here, the bark easily comes off in one piece of the winter cut logs. But there is a short window of time you have to do it when the weather starts warming up.
The ones I have been around has been skidding, but on snow, the logs have never touched dirt, a guy might be able to get by with that, the bark doesn't look affected.

[Magicman]

It's my understanding that you would want to fell the Poplar tree in the Spring when the tree is waking up from dormancy.

[WDH]

I have peeled poplar bark off a tree in the Spring a number of years ago to make a bark berry bucket.

Like this:

https://survivalsherpa.wordpress.com/2016/10/09/how-to-make-an-appalachian-berry-bucket-from-tree-bark/

[Southside]

It's my understanding that you would want to fell the Poplar tree in the Spring when the tree is waking up from dormancy.

Around here by mid April poplar bark begins to slip, and does so until about July.  Picture what would happen if you grabbed a banana that had been peeled and soaked in oil then wrapped the peel back around it, that is what grabbing a poplar log with a grapple is like when the stuff is really slipping, there are times the log will just shoot out of the grapple and you are chasing it around, it's funny for the first 3 seconds.   

[barbender]

Our Aspen up here "self peels" from about mid May through June, it messes with the harvester's measuring systems and is not fun to haul on the forwarder, I've seen guys go home early after getting frustrated with springtime aspen.

I've also read of Birch being used for roof shingles long ago in Scandinavian countries. Paper birch (or Baltic in their case) is very impermeable to water, which is also why birch rots so fast if the bark is on it.

[Chuck White]

I've found that each species of tree has a certain time of year when they peel the best!

[tgalbraith]

Several years ago, my wife and I took a "Fall Colors" bus tour thru the Adirondacks, and visited the Vanderbuilt Estate Summer Home.  All the original buildings were sided with white pine and hemlock bark. It had been exposed to the weather since the turn of the century, and still looked good. They had a photo gallery that showed the workmen peeling it with spuds and staking to dry.  The individual pieces were quite large and they had about 18" exposed. Don't know if there is market for it now.
'

[WV Sawmiller]

   My wife and I visited a pygmy village in north and east of the town of Kribi  Cameroon in West Africa back in February 2008 and I noticed the huts there had been sided with big sheets of some kind of bark off a local tree. I found this unusual as the pygmies normally made round huts covered with various big local leaves from the jungle added from bottom to top to shed water. More/replacement leaves would be added as needed if they stayed in that spot longer than the original leaves would support. A common roof and sometimes side walls material were palm fronds split then the leaves would be folded to one side and pegged with what looked like toothpicks. These panels were usually 5'-8' long and 14"-16" wide and were installed from bottom up to shed the rain. An advantage of corrugated metal panels, commonly referred to as "Zinc", was that they cost nothing except a little labor which had no value there, and they were much cooler than metal but they did have to be replaced every few years while metal typically lasted 20+ years.

[47sawdust]

Hemlock was peeled in much the same way for use in tanneries.The stripped tree was left behind.I wonder if those stripped poplars were left behind as well.Would be a shame as they were some very nice trees.

[starmac]

While stripping the bark and leaving the log would seem to be a terrible waste, I see on a regular basis here where someone strips a 2 foot section of bark from a birch tree and leaves the tree standing, looks like it would be less waste to drop the tree and strip the whole trunk.
I think it is mostly used for arts and crafts, so they probably do not need that much bark though.

[LeeB]

And may not know that they have doomed the tree.  :-\

[WDH]

Taking off the bark and leaving the skint tree standing is like killing a deer and only taking the backstraps. 

[starmac]

Drive any of the log roads and you will see it quite a bit, usually about a 2 foot section. I suspect it is mostly folks using it for arts and crafts and they probably think the tree will be fine if they just take a little.

[alan gage]

I don't believe removing the bark from a birch necessarily kills it. A little googling found this paper: http://nrd.kbic-nsn.gov/sites/default/files/GatheringBirchandBirchBark_0.pdf

It's long but the first couple pages cover birch bark removal from standing trees.

Alan

[Ianab]

Difference is choosing between the outer and inner bark. If you can peel off the outer 1/2 thickness of the bark, while leaving the "green" and still living layer next to the wood, then the tree is likely not harmed.

If you remove all the bark layers, then the tree is in trouble.

Same thing with Cork Oaks. They can go around and trim off the out layer of cork bark, without harming the tree. More bark grows back in the future, and can be harvested again.

[starmac]

I should mark some of these and see what they do. I know where the bark has been removed, they are pretty much black after a while.

[low_48]

Walnut will peel just as well, timing of the sap moving is everything. I slit a small 10" log, 5' long, vertically with a chainsaw, just starting to cut into the sapwood. Got it started with a flat bar, and took the entire bark off in one piece. I was just goofing around, and as mentioned, it curled like a potato chip as it dried.

[Rigg]

I sold a little this year.  Its more work than you think.

[starmac]

Well was it worth it, is the market pretty strong?
Watching the vides, yep it is labor intensive.