Northern red oak vs. Scarlet oak

[Gary_C]

Thought I would add some pictures of Northern Red Oaks from Northern MN. I took these pictures while walking a marked sale back in 2002. Location is in the St. Croix State Forest north of state hwy 48 between Hinckley, MN and Danbury, WI.

There are some nice red oaks in this area, but by the time you get 40 miles north of there, the quality drops dramatically and you get a lot of frost cracks.






Obviously not all red oak.



I did not buy this particular sale but the species normally included in these hardwood thinnings in the area are Red Oak, Sugar Maple, Red Maple, and Basswood. There will also be Birch and Aspen.

The forester that marked this sale does an excellent job of marking the sale as he scales it. Obviously the L is for log, V is for veneer, and the line or slash is just pulp logs.

[SwampDonkey]

A fellow has to be pretty confident about the inside of a tree to be marking "L" or "V" on them. They just get dots or lines here (if they are marked). In NB, what looks like a perfect 18" maple tree often is black in the heart or hollow.  :(

[Gary_C]

A fellow has to be pretty confident about the inside of a tree to be marking "L" or "V" on them.

I've thought that too, but it really is not true, because of other factors. It is true that you do not know what is inside, especially on the Hard Maple. But The DNR always has low base prices and normally will be under the actual scale by about 10-15 percent. But regardless, you need to look at the trees yourself and those markings give you an excellent vision of what the forester was thinking when he appraised the stand and you can bid or not accordingly.

This forester is one of the few that do mark that L or V and I have learned that his judgment is good and I never come up short on his jobs. The trees that he marks as logs that are not are offset by the logs he marks as pulp that have good logs.

[Old Greenhorn]

I'm gonna take a shot and resurrect this thread as I was about to pose the exact question it addresses. But I did a search and found this thread which answers a great deal of my questions. So thanks for anticipating my needs by more than ten years.

I stopped on a work-site a logger friend was doing and commented that one of the red oaks he had would make some nice lumber. (Maybe I was hunting around to see if he might make me a deal on it.) Nice straight 40' stem with no knots I could see. He shook his head and said "Nope that will be great firewood, it's scarlet oak, not red oak and no mill will buy it." I felt a little stupid and wondered if he was pulling my leg as he often does.
Now all of the oak that I get has either storm damaged blowdowns, or cut several years ago and left. There are no leaves or acorns available. Is there anyway to ID these logs?
Now I am not particular like a mill would be, but I am wondering what is the real difference between the two with respect to strength and lumber quality/appearance? (I read the comments about knots in scarlet, but I just milled a beaut of a log that I THINK was scarlet and it was knot free, straight and made beautiful boards and one large timber. If I knew anything about grading I would call it perfect.

So what is the functional difference between these two and why don't the mills around here want it?

[nativewolf]

It will make ok lumber, just likely to have more knots and other defects.  If you want beams, no problem I'd think but Don or Danny might offer different advice.  When we sell it the buyer discounts.  Bridge timber is a good market for those long scarlet and black oaks.  Black oak has even more defect in my opinion (having cut a good many fence boards 2 years ago from black, red, pin, and scarlet.  Pin oak was messy too.  Really a question of yield and do they want to mess with it.

[Don P]

Scarlet does tend to hold its dead limbs and often has poorer form, slightly coarser grain, more likely to have borers or other defects but a good log is a good log. As far as strength northern red is to oak what longleaf is to pine. In bending a #1 northern has Fb1350psi, scarlet falls in two groupings.. mixed oak at 1150 or red oak also 1150. Stiffness, northern red 1.3, mixed 1.0 and red 1.2. For a longer span floorboard, joist or rafter that might come into play and is often the control, well more than adequate for your 5/4 diagonal laid floorboards on typical centers. Horizontal shear is an even larger spread although usually only a structural control on a shorter, VERY heavily loaded beam, northern red at 205 psi, mixed and red at 155 psi. So if you are building a church belltower wait for a northern, other than that if it is a good log and for structural run the numbers. If it is just for pretty grab it.