Blow down salvage

[Firewoodjoe]

Will large blow down oak and maple still makes sawlogs? They're not broken up just uprooted.

[Southside]

I have sawn both and they were fine. Sometimes the maple are still alive

[John Mc]

Better chance of it working out if they were uprooted vs snapped off.

[Firewoodjoe]

That's my thoughts. Thanks. All one direction also will help. I may not cut it. Others have looked at it also.

[Ron Scott]

Uprooted and not splintered, twisted, or broken is usually ok. Be aware of a possible decrease in grade however. We're going through a lot of tree damage here after last weeks heavy storm.

[Firewoodjoe]

That's what this is. Have u heard how many acres is in the manistee national forest Ron?

[Ron Scott]

I haven't heard just how much acreage was damaged yet. They are still doing an assessment. I believe that the Baldwin/White Cloud Ranger District was hit the hardest. Priority is being given to opening up the trails and recreation areas.

Quite a bit of damage on private lands also.

[olcowhand]

You're not kidding , Mr. Scott.
I was out of town on business this last week, and my wife called to tell me the wrath of our Creator was visiting our humble home. There was either a tornado or some kind of wind that was estimated at ~90 MPH. Our house is surrounded by Maples, and she said these trees were bent over almost level. The destruction is beyond words.
We have dozens of trees (of all diameters) blown down and uprooted. Others (dozens more) have been sheared off at heights of 12'- 20' high.
Pics to follow, but I just cannot believe the force of wind that could have done this. There are places in my woods that have 1/2 or more acres of the canopy opened up where there was no daylight that showed through before this.
Unlike other parts of the country this year (see latest posts of "Post what you're currently cutting"), I think firewood and some saw logs are going to be very reasonable this year in our area.
I still haven't had a chance to walk all of our woods, but there is no way I'll be able to process all of my damaged wood before it starts to rot....
Steve

[Ron Scott]

Very sorry to hear that. Nature made a big change in many home and forest landscapes leaving a lot of wood for salvage along with property destruction. Foresters, tree service companies, and loggers are busy.

[mike_belben]

Glad youre still here to post about it.  

In about 2012 or so an EF4 went thru springfield mass.  It sucked up houses, brick buildings and serious trees.  A slurry of flying bricks broke every window near it for 30 miles or so into monson.  Most impressive damage to me was the brass plated flagpole in front of smith and wesson.. It had curved like a shakespeare ugly stick with a 10 pound smallmouth on it just from the flag catching wind.  astounding force.  

[jd540b]

I am just finishing cleaning up a bunch of oak blowdown from almost a year ago. They have all been fine and log yard bought every stick-around 20k bf.  As long as they are still attached to the rootballs, they will stay good for quite some time.
The one recommendation I will make, especially with fresh blowdown is to bore it them just like you would a strong leaner.  If you just start sawing them off from the top, they WILL split.  That has been my experience anyway.  You don't need to put a face cut in them, just hold a strap at the top to keep them together and cut that last.  You can also sinch them together with a choker and some tension away from you. 

[thecfarm]

Sorry to hear about the mess there guys,
There is a place in West Sumner,ME that something went through,maybe 10-15 years ago. Not a lot of acreage,all I ever saw was from the road,5-10 acres? But what a mess. Would be a hard place to get a tractor through. It's all grown up now,can't tell anymore from the road. Trees easily a foot across blown over.

[dsroten]

Blowdown stuff is what got me started logging.  Sometimes its a twisted up mess and the trees will move in funny directions real quickly when you lay a saw in them.  But like others said, if its on the rootball it should make fine logs.  I've cut a lot of small blowdown jobs and gotten the timber for free, or in exchange for pushing the brush up in a pile.  What I've been doing is measuring off my butt cut, and making my first cut there, leaving butt attached to stump.  Then I'll take the skidder or tractor or whatever is handy and stand the butt up and then saw it off.  No busting the butt log this way, and no sticking my saw in the dirt trying to get it all the way through.  

[mike_belben]

I did a blowdown cleanup for about a week at a camp up the road.   I know it was 900 acres and his take of the sawlogs was just shy of $20k on shares, with plenty of tie and grade logs left behind.  Big oaks just stacked ontop each other.  

My strategy for tangles is always start at the tips.  I begin by just giving a quick and dirty haircut with a tophandle, throwing off all the branch litter i can.  Then trim off the firewood worthy limbs and pile them on the forks.  These will go on my limb processor.  Now i start bucking off the stem at the crotches unless its really straight.

  Tie logs start at 12" small end so when i get to that diameter the tape measure comes out and i start looking to make sellable top logs between the crooks. When theres no more crooks, im looking at my butt log and will then cut the rootball off and see if its got a sound end. Since all the top weight came off there is way less chance of a butt splitting when ya put the saw in.  I just try to make sure i do this in a way that no one comes in and snatches the buttlogs overnight.  If they want firewood its easier to back up and take the small stuff ive already piled then  risk starting a saw to cut my logs. 

[olcowhand]

That's good advice, Mike. Thanks.
My neighbor is a Pro Forester (retired, until he had to pull his gear out for this event), and he said the same thing. He's got a skidder and trucks coming this week.
It's amazing how well a good, methodical description of a process can help me visualize how I'll go about it.
Steve

[mike_belben]

Glad to be of some use steve.

[barbender]

Good advice here. I haven't tangled with blowdown much from the ground- only enough to know how dangerous it is. We cut a lot of it with the CTL equipment, as we've had a lot of wind events in the MN timber country in the last decade.  The harvester guys that do well in it, work with what they've got. Guys that struggle, try to fight it and horse it around. To be honest, I hate to even hear of guys hand cutting wind thrown timber, I've heard too many stories of guys getting hurt and killed in it. It's often not the big trees you have to worry about, it's the small trees that get bent over and are waiting to catapult you 30' when you nick them with a saw. Be careful.

[Skeans1]

Back in 2007 we had a bad storm here knocked down millions of board feet of timber, a guy I knew was doing what Mike is advocating and it was his last day on the job if you release too much weight from the top they can stand back up.

There's time if something is all tangled between a few tree I'll put some relief cut in then drop something on top to bust it out of the jam.

 Stuff like this you use a long bar a big saw to get out of the way quickly.

[mike_belben]

You can get catapaulted from either end just as easy.  Imagine standing on a barber chair when it splodes!  


I guess i should insert the caveat that if you cant see the free end floating, assume it is under tension in the direction you are occupying.  I work from the tips back and this way am almost always cutting a piece that is off the ground.  If i cant see the free end or its pinned down and must be cut, i use a whittle and watch approach.  Knick, pause, knick, pause.  When you see the first movement you can then know where is safest.  I cut fish gills until the tension is relieved.  If it takes 10 gills i cut ten gills.  

I use a ms201t with a 12" bar and then a husky 61 with a 24. Then a 395 if the butts warrant it.   


A full face screen is pretty important.  A limb wack taking out an eye isnt hard to imagine in the tip tangles.  I wear a petzl climbers helmet with muffs and mesh screen 

[mike_belben]

Those ones skeans posted, its slow but if i had to start at the butts, i'd cut out pie slices from every corner that emerges and take them down like a beaver.

When its fully hourglassed you cant get pinched and the tension is gone.  You get a preview of whether the butt log will spring up or stump lay back over etc. 


 Anything to delay removing the leash until the tree's internal commotion has simmered down and dissipated.

[olcowhand]

Thanks, guys.
As you remember them, keep the tips coming. Having said that, I hope we're not "Hijacking" the original thread regarding the quality of the saw logs from blowdowns.
Steve

[thecfarm]

I think we are all learning. ;) hijack and all. ;D

[WV Sawmiller]

Mike,

   Sounds like a great system. One caution is on that last butt log. If the log is small/light enough and the rootball is big enough it may just stand right back up. I cut a big pine for a friend a big Derecho we had here 6-7 years. It laid across his driveway and I think when I got to about 10' left it just stood right back in place. Pretty impressive and got my attention.

[John Mc]

Mike,

  Sounds like a great system. One caution is on that last butt log. If the log is small/light enough and the rootball is big enough it may just stand right back up. I cut a big pine for a friend a big Derecho we had here 6-7 years. It laid across his driveway and I think when I got to about 10' left it just stood right back in place. Pretty impressive and got my attention.

It doesn't have to be small or light for the stump to stand back up. I was clearing a 20" Red Oak that fell across one of my trails after a big winds storm last fall. It had a nice long, straight butt log that I wanted to keep whole. When I cut it off, the stump stood right back up. I was expecting it to happen, so had cut with that in mind.
A similar thing happened when volunteering to clean up damage from that same storm in the woods at the local elementary school. I cut a hemlock about 12 feet up from the stump, and it stood back up up, settling perfectly into its old hole. When walking through the woods later, one of the kids asked, "How did you reach that high to cut it off way up there?" She eventually figured it out, with a couple of hints: "See the top of the tree over there?"   "I wonder how it got there?"  "How far away is it from the trunk?"  "How tall do you think the part left standing is?"  The only part she didn't finally guess was that it stood up by itself. She thought I had stood it up myself for a joke.

[mike_belben]

I will say it another way.  

It does not matter what the tree does when you cut it. Infinite variables abound, no 2 blowdowns are identical and it isnt as simplistic as felling from the stump.   What matters is that you know for certain what it is going to do, before it does it. Finding out by surprise gets people killed.  If you adopt a mindset of 'im not sure yet so im not gonna cut all the way through this' you will remain at less risk in all parts of blowdown

 When you whittle and watch and see movement, the tree shares it's plans and you make arrangements not to put your head in the mouse trap.   No matter which end you start from.  Watch the kerf, watch for rising or falling and especially dont forget about rotation or limbs you cannot see stabbed into the ground that cause unexpected pivot points.   When im really not sure i chew like a beaver.  Never seen a beaver create a barber chair.