I'm going to be building alot of sheds, a pole barn and maybe starting a log home this year using mostly yellow poplar and virginia pine. Here are a few questions. With the sap down this time of year should I drop a bunch of trees now? If I leave the tops on and coat the butt end with roof coating, how long would the logs stay good? I would make sure the trunks were off the ground.
I built my garage out of poplar and pine sawed on a woodmizer. I cut the trees down in the winter, had them sawed in the spring and put up the garage starting in August. Even doing that, some of the poplar got some black fungus on it even though it was stickered and covered on the top of the stack only. Poplar and pine do not last long in log form with the bark on. Beetles and carpenter bees go to town on it , as well as, rot. Get them down, sawed and stickered as soon as you can.
I'm told that the moisture content is the same summer or winter. But I like to drop trees when the leaves are off just because the trash is easier to handle and burn.
Qweaver is right.
The sap doesnt' go down in the winter, as so many have thought over the years. ;)
In the spring, it does start to flow when the tree begins to grow after a winter of dormancy.
I have cut trees in winter and summer & cannot tell the difference. They all bleed. That said, I have noticed that trees I cut in "drought" seasons were pretty dang dry.
A few years ago I was cutting sugar maples in Ohio. It was early September but because of the severe lack of moisture that year, the leaves were already dying & turning brown. Sugar maple is notorious for bleeding but these trees were dry, not a drop of sap. The dust from thew mill was damp as usual but while felling there was no sap draining like there usually is. Once dried that wood was the whitest & cleanest maple I have ever seen. I have cut wood in that property before and after & never experienced the lack of sap nor the pristine clean wood except for that one time. I cannot say for sure that the drought had anything to do with the enhanced end product, but I'm pretty certain it had a lot to do with the lack of sap and I do suspect it somehow has something to do with the great lumber. The experience got me to thinking about the wives tale about winter wood being cleaner because of sap being down. There might just be some truth to that. September & October are usually pretty dry months, and if dry enough the summer before, might actually yield better lumber. I'm not a superstitious mind, but I think there's an element of truth to some of the old beliefs.
I wouldn't do that roof coating either. ;)
A mess.
There might be valid reasons for harvesting trees in the winter, but they don't have anything to do with "sap".
Cold weather means the logs last longer before you mill them (stain and bugs)
Cold weather can improve the results when air drying. Oak dries slower so it's less likely to check. Pine doesn't develop blue stain, bugs don't attack the wood etc. When the weather warms up the wood is 1/2 dry and less prone to problems
Cold weather may improve access. Snow is easier to transport logs over then mud.
But if those things don't apply, then drop the logs when you are ready to saw them. While the are standing you don't need to worry about the logs degrading in any way.
Ian
With basswood it does make a big difference, with the leaves on the logs need to be cut right away and don't dry good. Cut in the winter I've sawn year old logs that were still nice and white right out to the end. Steve
The discoloration of wood from the oxidation of the sugars or from the activity of fungi both require warmth...hotter is faster. So, winter-cut logs will give whiter wood unless they lay around until it gets warm. So, this is the reason [perhaps that people used to think that the sap was down...there was no sap staining in the wood.
The idea of sap being down has been already correctly commented on, but think about if it were true. A large oak tree would have maybe 6000 pounds of water in it, which is 3000 quarts. Can you imagine a root system that has a room that is empty in the summer that could hold that much water? Then multiply that by each tree in the forest.
Years ago when I was logging full time, I noticed that in the spring on warm days the stumps would pump sap out. During night ice would build up on top of the stumps, sometimes several inches of ice would be on top of all the stumps in the morning. Birch & maples seemed to pump more that other species. Also in the spring on the aspen & basswood logs the bark would slip off 'em like a peeling a banana.....
One advantage to cutting in the early Spring, if you are cutting live edge boards, is that the bark peels right off. Once the cambuim becomes active in the spring, bark is much easier to remove. It is the hardest to remove in the dead of winter.
All I know that if I buy pine logs in the winter they will last till aug with no blue stan or bugs in them, but if I get them in the summer two week and look out, they will turn blue, even the lumber will turn blue :D well the sap wood will, now is the time to buy logs , so I try to do that but this time of the year it's slow and money is tight, but if I want a saw mill biz I have to, In the spring things will start up and I have to be ready :D
It's a thing to see all the logs in the yard and think of all the money setting there. some times I think I should just saw them and leave them like MM, but then I would miss all the fun of it
logger once told me, for the best wood, cut trees only in months that contain an "R" I assume it's for all the reasons stated.
Most of the info that gathered on building my log cabin stated trees cut in the winter were better in that they preserved better but the bark was harder to peel off. Spring and summer bark comes right off but the logs rotted faster!
But the info presented here seems to contradict that. gene mentions about storage. That makes sense. Maybe it is the fact that winter cut the sap is stationary not moving. Would that be the difference? Maybe the sugars are used by the tree and no new sugars have moved up the tree as it is frozen? any thought on that Gene?
I have nothing but antecdotal 'proof' about sap in the tree and don't know why this happens............. I've no idear 8) how many black locust posts we cut from 1951 'til sometime in the late '90s (when we swapped over to metal "T" posts), but it was in the thousands.......probably tens of thousands. Those cut in the Winter months were 'good' for 40-plus years; those cut at any other time would last only a few years....5-8. We almost never cut 'em in the Spring, but occasionally wouldn't have enough 'put back' and would have to cut a few...........
A couple of posters have mentioned bark slipping. For this reason alone I hated logging in the spring. If I just touched a walnut tree while skidding a log, the walnut would loose its bark on one face, sometimes 3' in length. :-[
Stephan
QuoteSpring and summer bark comes right off but the logs rotted faster!
More to the story than what this implies. Don't think time of year of cutting the tree means the logs will rot faster. How and where logs are stored will have an effect on logs rotting however.
Do you recall the source of this info?
Regarding the logs lasting longer when winter cut, this is probably correct. I think it's just the actual reason that's different.
If they are cut in spring they are still green when exposed to the heat of summer. Means decay can get a head start while the log is still green. The winter cut logs have the chance to dry before the warm weather comes around, so it's more decay resistant.
So like I said before there may be valid reasons for cutting at a certain time of year, but it's not to do with sap being "up or down".
Also, saying "It's how the logs are stored" is also correct. Sitting around in freezing conditions is different storage to sitting around in summer heat.
Ian
I won't argue the point of the "sap being up or down" but logs cut when the 'bark slips' absolutely will suffer from extreme end splitting and sap stain quicker than logs in the same pile that were cut in the colder months when the bark was still "tight".
I suspect that it has to do with temperature. BTW, sap moves in the inner bark from the roots to the crown, not in the wood.
I know a couple of woodworking sites where one can get absolutely flamed for suggesting the tree MC is as high or higher in winter as it is in the summer.
Myth and misinformation are difficult to refute, especially when it is constantly repeated on internet forums.
Like the myth that 1" lumber takes a year to air dry! It totally depends on climate, temp, relative humidity, and air flow. That one is so oft repeated and ingrained that it will probably never die.
Quote from: Tree Feller on January 27, 2013, 10:31:07 PM
Myth and misinformation are difficult to refute, especially when it is constantly repeated on internet forums.
Don't you know that everything on the internet is true. "I'm a french model, Bonjuor" :D
The Amish around here will only take basswood cut in the winter. Steve
WDH--
I thought that the sap moves up in the wood and down in the bark (phloem). That is what I was taught and what I see in textbooks too.
Xylem up and phloem down.
WDH pointed out it wasn't in the sapwood wood. But then I don't have a PHD
Yep. That is right. My interpretation of "sap" was the sugars produced in the crown and translocated to the roots via the phloem. However, probably, most use of the term "sap" would be any liquid flow in the tree, up or down.
The confusing thing is that moisture content in the wood does not vary drastically year round, so what does "the sap is up" even mean? Maybe it means that the crown is actively calling for water to start the growth engine, and water is being actively translocated to the growing crown.
Quote from: WDH on January 29, 2013, 09:22:52 PM
...... sugars produced in the crown and translocated to the roots via the phloem.
say_what
The roots have to eat.
Up and down up and down I don't know but I can only make mayple syrup in the spring, I think something is going on in the tree :D :D :D ;)
Quote from: Peter Drouin on January 30, 2013, 07:33:58 AM
Up and down up and down I don't know but I can only make mayple syrup in the spring, I think something is going on in the tree :D :D :D ;)
Actually you can make syrup in the fall.I read an experiment years ago where they made syrup in the late fall when there were some cold nites and warm days. The issue was there not as much syrup was made. It added to many holes in the trees as they still tapped in the spring. It was hard to clean up and put things away as winter had set in. The best part was that it was easy to get around and tap without snow up to your waist 8)
Pressure built up by gases wich develope when the sap freezes and then thaws is the main reason you can tap trees in spring and fall. When the pressure inside the tree is greater than the pressure outside the tree in flows out. Whenever a low pressure system moves through the area id get lots of sap. If it stops freezing at night. You wont get sap. That is also how a vaccum pump works for increasing sap yeild. It creates slightly lower pressure just outside the tap hole.