What loggers do with big trees

[livemusic]

I came across the log specs for a mill and it was something like 20 inches maximum diameter allowed. Or 20-something. So, if they clearcut a tract and it has trees larger than that, do they ever just leave them growing? Cut them down to rot? If it's hardwood, do they routinely harvest the butt log to take to a small mill or do they just not deal with it? If it's southern pine and it's a huge one, there probably is no use for it if their regular mill won't take it?

[sawguy21]

I am not a sawyer but understand the big 'uns are quartered with a chainsaw to bring them down to a manageable size.

[Frickman]

livemusic,

If a logger buys the timber he is cutting then he has a great opportunity to sell into a niche market.  If a logger is contract cutting he just sends the logs to whatever market the timber buyer directs him to.

I bought the majority of the timber I cut.  Over the years I found/developed markets for any sound piece of wood coming off a tract of timber.  Sound is important.  If a log is rotten, as many oversize logs are, it is usually best to leave it in the woods, where permissible, or dump it in hole somewhere to just get rid of it.  

Every consuming mill has a "sweet spot" optimal size of log.  And then a size it just physically can't exceed.  At my mill I couldn't physically saw longer than thirty two feet, or greater than thirty six inches in diameter.  I just couldn't physically do it.

There are many small, specialty, niche markets for oversize logs.  I sold many logs to chain saw carvers who used them for their creations.

I had a college professor who spent a lot of time in Russia.  While in Russia he had the opportunity to visit some saw mills.  He said many mills are sash gang mills and can only saw up to a certain diameter.  Larger logs would be discarded.  

[BargeMonkey]

 Out here the 24-30" stuff is the sweet spot. 36"+ unless it's real nice they start knocking you back. The way it's being raped out here I doubt in 10yrs there will be 10 4' trees left in the county. 

[Autocar]

Here where I am located the bigger the better, quarter sawing them

[Nealm66]

We have a few markets for over size here in western Washington. High quality logs can export to Japan, lower quality to China and Korea. A few domestic mills still around but if they're rough( limby/sweep) the prices aren't great. If I'm on a small job I'll truck it to a small private mill and try to sell the lumber and eat whatever profits just because I don't like giving the oversize away. Manke in Tacoma takes about anything. Even pretty rotten stuff and makes hog fuel out of it. But the price for large rough logs isn't pretty low considering what can be milled out of them.

[ehp]

Here the mill will start  talking to you on how much your sending  on stuff over 48 inches on small end if it stuff like black oak  but if walnut they take anything that comes , On the real big rough  stuff say 55 inch and up it goes to guys to make table tops 

[Southside]

So being you are in Louisiana, and talking clear cut, my presumption is that spec sheet is from a pine mill.  Odds are the max diameter is 26", that's because nothing bigger than that will fit through their ring debarker.  Likely that's a SYP  production mill, might be a chip-n-saw set up or another high speed, low drag operation that is focused on production.  Just how many BF can they saw in a shift is the goal, quality as we think of it is not even on the list.  Simple economics.  With that in mind they are likely sawing plantation pine on a 30 year +/- cycle so not many, if any, logs will exceed that maximum diameter limit.  If they have a truck load they may sell it to another mill if the numbers work, otherwise it becomes worm food.  

[peakbagger]

When I worked at the local pulp mill, the wood handling system to the chipper was limited to about 20" diameter max. We bought close to 1400 tons per day of 8 foot logs so some big ones would sneak in. For what we paid we were only getting the low grade wood that no one else wanted but on occasion nice logs would end up getting dropped off. If things were busy in the yard, they went right into the chipper if they would fit. The over 20" logs got set aside until they got quite a stack of them and were desperate for wood (usually during the annual mud season. A local contractor had a monstrous log splitter on a trailer they would bring in. Looked very similar to a home log splitter with a 12 foot ram. They would split the big stuff down to size. Most of the stuff they split was big old yellow birches and old maples full of knots and weird grain. Odds are someone slabbing for grain would find some neat grain. 

When I went to work there in 1987 the mill still had their own woods crew in addition to many jobbers, they had the last company woods camp in the Northeast. Once the roads got impassable the managers needed to find something for them to do so they sent them out in wood yard and they walked the rows of logs looking for good sawlogs. They usually got a nice haul including usually finding some figured maple logs. I heard a few times where they found curly maple logs that they sold for thousands when the mill paid $40 to $60 a ton. The new owners of the mill eventually laid of the crew and shut down the logging camp and they went to exclusively outside suppliers. The pulp mill is long gone and is a biomass power plant that buys prechipped wood so no log piles any more. 

[customsawyer]

You have different deals. Most times either the mill or the logger, depending on who bought the tract, will have other mills that they will haul the different sizes and different kinds of wood to. Used to be that the hardwood mills would sell the pine to pine mills. Now a lot of hardwood mills around here are cutting pine as well as hardwood. Two of the highest volume hardwood mills in the US. are both sawing a good bit of pine now. However they are sawmills so have no need for any pulp wood or chipping saw on the tracts. All the smaller dia. wood will be shipped to the mills that run that material. The same when there is oversized logs on a tract. There are mills that are set up to handle it and they get that wood. Other things that come into play is how far they have to haul the logs to the mills. It's rare for there to be many logs left on a tract if it was bought lump sum. If it is bought by the ton, like on a thinning job, you need to have the right logger or it can hurt you later.