Blown down pine

[shtickhead]

Hi,
My father's bush lot got hit by 'flat line' winds that knocked down a lot of eastern white pine.

Some are uprooted and I assume they will be no different than a tree that was cut down.

Some are snapped off at different heights,if I saw them into cants/timbers now and leave them for a couple of years will they be usable as posts in a timber frame?

I wont to salvage what I can but don't want to waste my time stacking timbers that will split into toothpicks.

Should I be asking this in the saw milling section?

Thanks.

[thecfarm]

Eastern white pine,are you in the Northern states?
No,everyone will see the title. I did not realize it was in the Timber framing section.

[shinnlinger]

My house is a wind blown salvage white pine timberframe. You will know if it is any good as you saw it, but most of my trees yeilded good lumber.   A few had some hiden checking but I still could usually get some boards out of them if nothing else. 

[drobertson]

not sure about yalls timber, but pretty sure if the tree blew over with the root ball intact, you would be good to go.  there is a wind shake folks talk about, but I have yet to see it.  Get them off the stump and cut them up. It should be a good day.

[JustinW_NZ]

Yeah, if the root ball is still on they should be fine.

Just be VERY carefull dealing with the windthrow, very dangerous stuff to clean up  :-\

Cheers
Justin

[macpower]

I sawed a EWP blow down clean up last spring. Most of it came out OK, you can pretty much tell with your opening cut what you will end up with. Up-rooted stuff was just fine, anything broken off just stay well away from the break. Most of the broken stuff was broken in the tops and didn't effect the logs anyways. It was a pretty healthy stand before the blow and I didn't see much wind racking.
The logger had the hard part, I don't like going near an up-rooted tree, too unpredictable.

[Meadows Miller]

Gday

They should be just fine  ;) how you attack them like Justin said is a very different matter root balls fine but you need to do a step cut to let the root ball of safely usually thats from 8" to1'  from each cut  ;) with stuff thats snapped of higher up drop it like a normal tree with a good scarf and back cut with a nice step in it with plenty of holding wood but at 90 deg to where the head is facing be careful doing that as they can sometimes want to come back at you hence the holding wood and you alon will have to decide how the tree is loaded  ;) Good luck  Mate

Regards Chris

[bandmiller2]

You will be coming into fall and winter soon,so insects shouldn't be a problem til next summer.I would cant out the best of it,what you can't get to, stack well of the ground and peel the bark when it loosens. Frank C.

[shtickhead]

Thanks for the replies and warnings.

I've had some close calls with root balls, spring poles and widow makers.

Lots of ways to get hurt.

[hamish]

Hi,
My father's bush lot got hit by 'flat line' winds that knocked down a lot of eastern white pine.

Some are uprooted and I assume they will be no different than a tree that was cut down.

Some are snapped off at different heights,if I saw them into cants/timbers now and leave them for a couple of years will they be usable as posts in a timber frame?

I wont to salvage what I can but don't want to waste my time stacking timbers that will split into toothpicks.

Should I be asking this in the saw milling section?

Thanks.

I live in Renfrew and have seen first hand the damage done.

The trees that are uprooted will be fine as they where just blown over, no internal stresses or damage will be in the tree.

The trees missing there tops and are snapped are another story as they were twisted off, I have been busy dropping several of theses over the past few weeks, few if any of them are salvageble for anything other than fire wood, as the heart wood is twisted up and had near no integrity left in the wood.

[paul case]

This may be a little off the subject, sorry for that.

In the last 4 years we have had a lot of tornado damaged timber(mostly oak here) to clean up. The ones that were uprooted in may last year, when cut off the stump would leak black juice out the ends of the log. The worst ones were the post oak. It didn't effect the lumber at all except for being stained black on the ends from the leaking juice. It was hot, above 90 during the day when it was blown over and cut. I only noticed it on the ones cut within a month of being blown over.

What cause this?  PC

[cptbob06]

I was limbing a cedar blown over and when I removed enough limbs and a log from the top, it stood back up. If someone had been standing behind the root ball, they would have been buried.