What are you cutting 2024? - pics welcome

[Mooseherder]

I've done it like this before using a pipe clamp and plywood top on my trash can for lathe pieces.  I'll find the pic later and post.  Make sure everything is tightened.
The plywood has a frame and is secured with a couple of screws on the can top sides.
The clamp piece is tight and excess pipe is in the can.  Lead with tip, small bite to start.
Have some weight in the can so it's not top heavy. A nice large bandsaw would be so much better.

[nativewolf]

The white oak site we are on has some terrible wind damage, tree crowns are larger than the soil supports (sandy loam over clay).   Here is one that came down a year ago.  It's 37" at 24', too much for our old elephant.  

[aigheadish]

Thanks Doc. They don't have to be perfect at all, maybe better if they are varying lengths. The plan is to make a raised garden bed box with the Locust. Depending on how much trouble it is to saw them in half I may use the full round. We think it'll look neat to use that wood rather than like plywood or metal. Ideally, it's easy to split them, and after a few practice runs I can see how tall they'll stand against my fence, otherwise we'll stack them maybe two or three high, then line the inside with weed fabric, dump in dirt, and gittyup. Also, in regards to plywood or metal boxes, we quick and dirty'd the fence for the dog, so it's not terribly conducive to straight lines.

[nativewolf]

Not all sugar and spice, that hurt, it was a several thousand dollar tree right up until I bucked it .  Sigh.

More market related ...stave mills are indeed getting full.  We've been cut off from our favorite for a week or two.

[teakwood]

now it's an official FF Forklift! 

[KWood255]

This is the largest tree I've cut down to date. We do not grow poplar much bigger than this around here, at least not that I've seen. Over 30" across the stump. 

[SwampDonkey]

When we were measuring my old yellow birch for the great trees of NB book. About 8 paces over was a 48" dbh aspen that was just about dead. Old fire in the area, aspen seeded in. Suckered stuff around here might get 10" and die. Land across from me, the suckered aspen is all dying and falling down. None quite 10", 30 years. I've got 30 year large tooth that is 18" dbh now. I don't have many. The ones I have grow in a circle, from were one stood and was cut. Grows faster than trembling.

[cutterboy]

I went after this white pine last week. I knew this was going to be a challenge the way the tree bent at the butt and as the stem went up it curved back to the left over the butt a considerable amount. I felt it was going to fall to the left so I cut the stump high to keep the balance point as much to my advantage as possible.
It didn't quite work out the way I planned. It got hung up in another big pine.



I couldn't budge it with tractor and chains and ended up cutting three short (4') logs off the butt. Then I was able to pull it down.



Then I was able to cut 8' logs and transport them all to the barnyard.





Now the logs from this tree join the logs from the pine I cut two weeks ago and they will sit there for about a month to let the sap dry out before I saw them into lumber.


Keep on cutting.....Cutter

[Magicman]

That is a nice whack of logs.  Actually very nice. 

[aigheadish]

I went out and determined that the Locust that I cut down was going to get split in half this past Saturday. I chose not to build a splitting jig due to the top of the tree being stuck out in the woods. I figured I'd clean that up first. I cut the top off and tried running the saw down the middle of the log top to bottom. "Well, this is easier than I expected!" I thought, then I started noticing lots of dark brown sawdust and bugs squirming around. So, my first foray into attempting to make some raised bed surrounds ended with 40 or so feet worth of hollow log with a ton of ants and maybe termites. The insides were all mush. To the fire pile it goes! I'll try again, once the backhoe is back up and running, but looking at the other Locusts I have I'm no longer expecting it to go well...

[Magicman]

Apparently you are talking about Honey Locust rather than Black Locust??

[aigheadish]

Yes, MM, I believe so... The extra thorny ones. I read above (or elsewhere) that they aren't as rot resistant as black locust, but they seem not bug resistant either, so maybe a poor choice for our application. 

[Magicman]

Honey Locust is a poor choice for anything outdoors/weather exposed.


But otherwise it is amazingly pretty.

[mudfarmer]

Cutterboy can your chainsaw carving friend use the 4 footers for eagles or bear cubs or similar things or will you saw them? More clamps for the sawmill are on my list to make better use of short offcuts. Always a pleasure to see a pile of logs by your barn and what goes into it!

Mostly working through log piles and tearing out trees with an excavator at a building site here... Did cut some dead balsams at a camp last week. One almost crushed the outhouse and decision was made to not test luck with the other  That stuff cuts so easy I whipped up a bench for their fire pit with the 346xp. Do not have any on my land, grandparents were a bit (30min) south and had a lot. This was about 20min east. We are in a funny thumb of hardwood because of the river I guess.

[cutterboy]

Cutterboy can your chainsaw carving friend use the 4 footers for eagles or bear cubs or similar things or will you saw them? More clamps for the sawmill are on my list to make better use of short offcuts. Always a pleasure to see a pile of logs by your barn and what goes into it!

Mudfarmer, I will saw them into 4/4 boards. I have no problem selling short boards of pine. At the moment I have none left. Actually I have no 4/4 pine left.

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah them short boards would certainly sell. I rarely build furniture needing longer than 4' boards. I suppose if you were building a tall book case or cabinet, 6' would come in handy. I'd actually like to build a glassed door pine cabinet some day. A lot lighter to move than oak. But easier to ding up. Trade-offs.

[cutterboy]

Mudfarmer, seeing that balsam tree falling at the outhouse must have given you a scare. After a scare like that you may have needed to use the outhouse.

BTW, nice little bench.

[nativewolf]

Still amazed by the old erosion gullies we run into on these tracts in central VA.  It's a sandy loam soil and was abandoned between the civil war and turn of the century.  Its deeper than I am (over 6') and you shudder to think that it all ended up in the Bay.  


So in the 150 or so years since it was abandoned the backs were turned and virginia pine, a weed basically, Pinus virginiana, grew up with shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata- a super high quality hard yellow pine favored by craftsmen like @Southside) and old field WO and stream bank YP and beech seeded in amongst the pines.  

This is a picture of one of the virginia pine we dropped during our selective harvest last month.  A forum member has a request out for some good virginia pine.  It's not a super fresh cut but you can see in some spots the growth rings look like balsm from northern Canada.   At this point in the forests life the VP have almost all died away, the shortleaf are hanging on and we hope they'll reseed into the gaps.  The interesting thing on both counts is that the white oaks are over topping the shortleaf by a good margin, 30', so the shortleaf are usually doing best in the areas with more beech or hickory.  The best WO are over 120 and that is just superb.  We are assisting the VA DOF with seed collection for a seed bank experimental trial  and this site is one of our collection sites.  

The stem is basically 12" in diameter, my dbh tape is 1/10s of a foot and I didn't have it line up correctly.  I had quite a lot of trouble counting the rings when it got tight.  

[SwampDonkey]

And if you thin the fir, 2 rings will cover your index finger.   Where I am working I see a few fir this year that grew close to 30" of new height growth. Tree getting full sun. Those trees are around 10 feet tall over all. Trees half that tall have 18" of new growth. And some of the fir is garbage, suppressed too long and machine tramped during harvest. I cut them off.

[g_man]

Made a modest start on some S/F stud wood yesterday afternoon. There are 10 12'ers in the pile.




gg

[Magicman]

Yup, you gotta start somewhere and at the beginning is best.   Looking good.    

[nativewolf]

Once in a very rare while we get presented with 3-4 really nice trees clustered tightly in one spot.  Today we got to cut one, pulled a tiny bit at the base but that shouldn't hurt the price, it is all in the buttress and should be removed by the butt reducer at the veneer mill.  About time to replace the links in the tracks with the smallest link.  

[nativewolf]

@Hogdaddy - $7 straight thru FYI 

[nativewolf]

Found a market for the lower grade RO logs, boy is it hard to move some stuff.  I'm talking 2nd-3rd logs in southern red oak in soil that seems to generate quite a lot of mineral stain.  Color isn't great, growth rings are tight.  Oh well.  I move the butts up to PA where the price is $200/thousand better than in VA and they take all I can send them but the upper cuts ...not so great.  I suspect the butts are going in containers.  

[Hogdaddy]

@Hogdaddy - $7 straight thru FYI

@nativewolf   Wow! Super log with a super price. Was it 20' long?