I planned to cut down some pines in a month or so for easy debarking. I would like to take advantage of the spring growth / spud / ease of debarking rather than the dry debarking using a draw knife at other times of year. Due to reasons beyond my control, I will not be able to debark in May but could cut the trees down at least. Is there any benefit to cutting trees down in May and debarking in the fall? Or would it be the same as just waiting until the fall to cut the trees down? Does the spring slime under the bark start to dry and harden if you cut down the tree? Thanks!
What are your intentions for the logs? All a pine log cut right now and left sitting all summer will do is degrade.
Once the bark tightens on, the easiest remover is rolling it in wet mud for a few months and letting the white grub worms eat all the "glue" for ya.
Barbender: I am using logs to make a small screen house. Sounds like I should just wait
If it was hemlock I would say cut em down but pine is pine. It does not rot that fast but heat damage is ugly in all the true pines. It will blue stain, get wormy, might turn black and grow mold unless you can keep it cold.
I saw a lot of EWP would not cut EWP until I can process it asap. Now I saw a lot of pine that has sat around and I have see all the stages. If you wat to use the logs in the building, winter cut EWP will last the longest. Log home builders prefer winter cut. Spring cut will peel the easiest.
Red pine, especially smaller diameter stuff say less than 12" which is mostly sapwood, can degrade very quickly. And not just blue stain and worm holes, I have seen it punky at the end of one summer. I had a log building "failure" I built a log shell that I never used. A lot of wasted effort, and one of my big takeaways from that experience was that I want those logs from standing timber into the log wall with a roof on it ASAP. In a wall is the best place to dry and season logs IMO.
Thanks all. You are confirming what I suspected.