In my last thread, I mentioned a job I missed for 21 logs. About a third were beech. One of them was a perfectly straight 28" log. I haven't seen beech discussed much and I was curious what everyone's thoughts were on beech. Is it tough to cut? My limited wood working experience with it is that is is heavy and hard. Do you see any real demand for it from local wood workers?
I searched the archives but most mentions of it were just in passing and no real in depth discussion.
Just curious,
I'm not a lumberman but I can attest to the fact that beech is hard .
So hard that a dried log will have about the same effect as petrified wood to a chainsaw .It takes a lot of file work to cut much dry beech .
I've sawn a few Beech logs (fresh cut) and they sawed almost as easily as Pine that has been cut for a while.
If you need lumber with strength and "usually" straight grained, Beech would be a good choice.
For instance, if I was going to put a loft in the garage, I would not hesitate to use Beech for the floor boards!
Also, Beech would be a good choice for a hoisting beam for pulling engines, etc.
I considered making a counter top from beech, but got maple instead, mainly because of availability.
Beech is kind of a"signature" tree .You can find initials within a heart carved in the bark when 60-70 year olds were teenagers .Kind of makes you wonder what incriminating evidence the old tree could tell if it could talk . :D
Count yourself lucky you have nice smooth beech. Ours up here is mostly all diseased severely. It's all firewood and pulp, the odd one makes a tie. Beech is a nice hard hardwood. Should be like sawing hard maple or red oak I would think. It's heavy stuff and not as high an MC when green as oak.
I need to sharpen Al's saws so they can cut I guess. ;) :D
Quote from: SwampDonkey on May 19, 2013, 06:08:46 PM
I need to sharpen Al's saws so they can cut I guess. ;) :D
--so says the guru of brush saws of the great northern frozen tundra --- :D
To All:
I have sawed a quite a bit of beech and there seems to be two types. Some is straight grained and some seems to have intertwined grain. The latter is very hard on the wood splitter and impossible to stack neatly. The only thing I have been able to do with beech is make stickers. The wood warps, bends, twists, and anything else it can do when drying. It is an excellent wood to practice learning to saw with and then destroy the evidence by heating the house with it. If you study each piece as you feed it to the fire you can relive your learning experience(s). As others have stated it is a strong wood and properly sized can carry a heavy load. If you plan on using it for a floor or it has to be nailed either oil, grease, wax, or soap the nail points before starting and it may save you from having to use as many cuss words. Gerald
I have sawed a few Beech logs, and if memory serves me correctly, the lumber was very nice.
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I have 150 acres of wood land. I think I only have one tree like Magicman posted. I was walking my land and came across a smooth bark beech. If it did not have leafs on it,I would not of known what type of tree it was. All the rest of my beech is like swampdonkey said. I burned alot of that stuff in my other house. We had some big ones. Than I only had iron wedges and a sledge hammer.
Beech is wonderful firewood. :)
Around here I have heard it is suggested to people to let beach live if it still had the smooth bark. Those are the trees that were able to resist the fungus or parasite that causes the rough bark. The hope is that their seeds will yield similar resistant trees as well. I don't know if it's true or not but I was told that.
I have practiced this myself. But the trouble is, pollination is wide open in the forest and resistance would not be bread true for the vast majority of seed that falls to the ground.
I've only sawn a few beech logs, about like the size of MagicMans, and I thought they sawed like butter, until I hit a cluster of nails 2' from the exit of the log. They were pretty recently felled prior to sawing, and extremely heavy. At least that's what the offbearer (customer) told me!
Excellent firewood and i have made a good bit of quality lumber out of beech.
I sticker the bejabbers out of it and put some weight on the top of the piles out of direct sunlight, air dry then dry in my de humidification kiln.
Made 2 nice cabinets and a nice 8 ft long table for my hunting club.
It is a pretty wood.
Hereabouts Beech is afflicted with the beech scale (insect) and Nectria (fungus) complex and is dying out.
I still have about 50 to 60 nice specimens in my woods.
Pretty wood.
The smooth bark of a beech tree can carry a day to day blog. There is some national forest property close by and this particular area I'm speaking of contains some Beech trees. One particular Beech tree is located right next to a cross county ski/hiking trail and they named it bear claw. One look at the tree and you would know why it bears such a name. The tree has the claw marks of a young bear forever etched into it.s bark. I noticed the tree and it's bear tracks intact 33 years ago. The feds have since built this ski trail and it was planned to go right by that tree. If I only had a picture to fly up for you to see. You can't beat Mother Nature for having a great show for us to see on display.
rim
Not a Beech, but a bear tracked Aspen
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Those claw marks went at least 30' up that tree.
Clubs will climb aspen quite often when they are alarmed of danger. One spring we were picking rocks in the field by the house. Went to dump the rocks on the rock pine on the edge of the woods and there was momma bear about 300 yards away with 3 cubs with here. The fence row is lined part way along with large aspens and those cubs went up those aspen trees like they were running on level ground. And momma disappeared into the woods.
And of course the bears love the beech nuts, so they climb them and make what appears to be 'nests' by pulling and braking fine branches to get at the nuts. I see the nests quite often, but never have seen the bear up there yet. I get the same thing happening with my red oaks. I have a bear that comes to 2 of them every year for the acorns.
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Around here aspen, red maple, red oak, beech, red pine, and white pine are wildlife targets. The bears will even pull over young spruce for the cones. :D
We have some enormous beech trees here. There are a few on our property that were near Civil War camps and have initials of the soldiers and the dates they were there carved into the bark. Pretty cool stuff :)
To stay on topic - I've never cut beech for lumber but have cut a pile of it for firewood. Burns nice and hot :)
Beech makes excellent firewood! This winter cut over 10,000 board feet of beech sawlogs and probably a little over 100 full cords of beech firewood logs. Veneer grade is hard to come by as I had no more than 30 logs that made the cut. Even then the price for veneer grade was low. At least 50% of the larger tree harvested in the 22 inch range had large hollow areas. Have used the lumber for butcher blocks and flooring and it cuts easily on the sawmill.
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I cut into one and the water started to pour out of the tree. I had no idea what was going on for a minute. I thought I hit a water line. :D
Quote from: thecfarm on May 21, 2013, 08:49:20 PM
I cut into one and the water started to pour out of the tree. I had no idea what was going on for a minute. I thought I hit a water line. :D
I had that happen with a big honey locust one time. It was a lot of water. Wood had very pretty red streaks in it. ;D 8) 8) 8)
The bees seem to have a fondness for hollow beech to set up a hive .
We have no bears but possibley under those trees with big hearts carved in them there was at one time some "bare " without further elaboration to that subject ;)
I found the big old rock maple in the yard attracts honey bees. I got swarmed (the maple) last August, heard this hum, looked out and there was a cloud of'm around a hole in the maple. The winter did them in though, no sign of life, just dead bees. But, I got to thinking, them dang bees come around here for those basswood flowers. There's three of them basswoods in the yard and they flower profusely in July. Native American basswood.
I've seen white face hornets take up residence in rotten hearted fir with an exit hole like a pencil hole up about face level. I got lambasted by a bunch from one of them hotels one time running a brush saw around it.
Basswood is supposed to make great honey in years when the trees bloom heavily. I have never had an opportunity to taste it that I know of, although I grew up in heavy basswood country.
These flower every year, they are in full sun. I've been trying to get the seed to germinate. I read in a USDA bulletin that only about 2 % is even viable and will germinate. I guess I have not found the 2 % yet. :D I've only found one basswood on the woodlot, it was cut down, and I thinned the stump suckers. It's now flowering (not yet this year).
I'd figure you'd have to wait until the spring after you plant for them to come up.
According to Forest Service, Handbook of seeds of woody plants of the US, USDA handbook #450, the seeds of Tilia americana have an impermeable seedcoat, dormant embryo and tough pericarp. They recommend 40 minutes of conc H2SO4 for 40 minutes to soften the pericarp, force through a screen, then another 15 min of sulfuric acid, rinsing and then stratifying for 3 months at 34-38°.
Might be easier to just scarify the seeds with a dremel with a cutoff wheel, then plant and forget for 1-3 years, as the seeds require up to triple stratification before coming up. Good luck.
I've been collecting them and just broadcasting them in the woods under aspen. I do this because I was once in an aspen stand that was 60 feet tall, and in under was a lot of wild basswood seedlings that were 3 to 10 years old all over. And basswood is very shade tolerant. I thought the aspen would be a nurse tree. ;D
Quote from: mesquite buckeye on May 22, 2013, 12:06:03 AM
Quote from: thecfarm on May 21, 2013, 08:49:20 PM
I cut into one and the water started to pour out of the tree. I had no idea what was going on for a minute. I thought I hit a water line. :D
I had that happen with a big honey locust one time. It was a lot of water. Wood had very pretty red streaks in it. ;D 8) 8) 8)
Big red oak did that to me, good tree just split up the middle
I cut a 3" diameter beech springpole years ago, leaned way down and reached wayyyyout with the saw and clipped it off,that sucker came sideways!!! hit me in the forehead and sent me sailing backward,i knew enough to hold the saw in front of me ,but i could not move for a few minutes ,basically knocked me out !!! then seems every time i started a notch in a frozen beech a piece of that damned bark would get in one of my eyes, i"HATE" beech !!!!!! ;D ;D I do know one time years ago my dad loaded a full trailer load of big beech to go to Penley over in South Paris Me, on a old international tractor trailer ,18 wheeler.318 detroit with a 13 speed roadranger,it would hardly get out of its own way, low gear the whole length of Gorham hill up and down , some pretty exciting riding with no jake brake, when it got weighed up at the mill it weighed 132,000!!!!!!!!no more loads like that !!!! ;D ;D
Quote from: SwampDonkey on May 23, 2013, 07:39:52 PM
I've been collecting them and just broadcasting them in the woods under aspen. I do this because I was once in an aspen stand that was 60 feet tall, and in under was a lot of wild basswood seedlings that were 3 to 10 years old all over. And basswood is very shade tolerant. I thought the aspen would be a nurse tree. ;D
If you fed them to some nice forest creature that likes to eat them it might work. Otherwise, looks to be a bit of a wait. Hard seed coats are very patient. I wonder if they can be fire scarified with pine needles????
Penley's,have not heard that name in a while.
My first basswood seedling. Growing in under the picnic table. And over the top of that is a box elder as broad (crown) as it is tall. :D
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_basswood-seedling.jpg)
NCDiesel, I'm glad you started this thread because I've been wondering about beech too. I have some beech on my land big enough to saw into lumber. I've never sawed beech but been thinking about it. It's always interesting to saw something different. Maybe later this year.