Red, black, pin oak

[shelbycharger400]

any differences in the wood? as far as lumber is concerned.

im havin a bit of difficulty determining  some of the oak trees here.  i will post pics tomorow.  i do have only a handful of pins.

the other oaks...   have leafs that are anywhere from 6 to 10 in long. variable even on the same tree,  tooths look like a white, being round with no hair ,   ,   i have cut some of these down.. and the wood is either all red,  or red heart with white sap

[WDH]

The wood from the red oaks is indistinguishable as to species once it is sawn and dried.  Some species grow on poor sites or are adapted to drier, less productive soils.  These species usually have a lot of knots due to their growth habit, species like scarlet oak or blackjack oak.  The true pin oak can be rough and knotty. 

So, some species make lower grade, more knottier lumber on average, but if you had a bunch of FAS boards of different red oak species, the book says that you cannot tell them apart from the lumber.   

[shelbycharger400]

soil here is bout 1 ft of black dirt then sand/ gravel..  then at 25 ft...is granite.         i have a 4 in well pipe drilled here... with a shallow well.  water tastes as good as a bottled type.         most of the trees here are 8 to 18 in dia.. with 3 to 4  are 2 to 3 ft dia.    they closely resemble  black oak

the pin oaks....  i have a clump of 3 thats 12 in dia,  and 2 that are almost 3 ft dia.       

[Jeff]

Remember that black oak and pin oak are both red oaks.  We used to get a lot of pretty good black oak into the mill here in Michigan, we are also in a primo Northern Red Oak area. Black Oak gets sorted right in with the red oak when grading.

[Ron Scott]

It sounds like you may have some black oak. Ditto to the above, the lumber of these red oaks will all go as red oak, but they may be lumber graded differently.

We will cruise the major oak species seperately for appraisal purposes since our northern red oak brings a much higher price and the timber buyers like to know the percentage of different oak species in a stand so that they can bid accordingly.

It will usually all be sawed as red oak lumber, however.

[paul case]

my guide book ''Forest Trees of Oklahoma'' says of all three of them'' marketed as red oak lumber''. pc

[Jeff]

Ron, the lumber isn't graded differently. they are all graded on the same standards. The pin oak and black oak may grade out differently simply because the species in general, usually has a higher amount of defect then Northern Red Oak.  The logs certainly might be graded differently though.

[shelbycharger400]

see..thing is ,wavy,  knots and "defects" graded out,         whereas  thats what i like in material.
straight grain, defect free oak/ash / pine is rather boring to me.

How do you all market such material?   as per grading,  or do you cull out the highly figured material for select

[WDH]

I sell "as per grading".

[barbender]

I live in sand country, and I have on my place what I thought were just poor specimens of Northern Red Oak. I was reading a tree ID book last fall and recognized the slightly different leaves as Northern Pin Oak. I'm always finding I don't know as much as I think I do : I haven't seen more than an occasional pallet bolt in the pin oaks in this area, they are so crooked and gnarly they would only make firewood.

[Ron Scott]

Yes, they are all graded by the same lumber and log grading standards, but the species characteristics will usually grade differently due to species characteristics with our northern red oak usually grading higher. Timber buyers will bid much higher for our northern red oak over the other oak species so as a forester we need to know what timber species we are selling for the landowner.