Massive Fir Logs - Not even good enough for firewood?

[gamjduke]

Someone told me that the logs in this photo with heavy pitch rings aren't good for anything other than the chipper.

Can anybody confirm this?  Would the parts of the logs that don't have pitch oozing be fine even if the pitchy areas aren't?  Would kilning them change the scenario?

These things average 50" on the small end and are about 20' long.  They've been down for about 2 years.  I have a swing blade mill and could take them on, but don't want to dive into something that is doomed from the start.  I have some potential uses such as beams for barns and sheds, sleepers for ground contact, barn siding, etc, where extra pitch wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.  But is the pitchyness the only problem, or does it indicate further issues?



 

[barbender]

Is it Doug Fir, or one of the others? You must be out west somewhere, because the fir we have (balsam? are lucky to get a ¼ of that size. I can't speak to the particulars of your situation, other than there's nothing I see in your pictures I can see that would discourage me from sawing them. I would open one up and see what you find.

[gamjduke]

Yes, Doug Fir.  I'm in NW WA state.  I suppose just trying one out would be worth the experiment.  I'm just so short on time lately it would be great to have a better idea of what's going on here before blowing a day or two on it. 

[Crossroads]

I milled a couple big Doug firs a few months ago that looked like that. Yes they are worth milling, but you will need to try to work around those pitch seams. If the seam runs through your board, it will most likely fall apart at the seam. 

[gamjduke]

That seems reasonable.  That the excessive pitch is, for the most part, only present in those rings that are oozing, right?  I don't think I'd have too much trouble working around it with the swing blade.  So long as I accounted for the waste when making this guy an offer. 

[gamjduke]

I guess there are a few logs in there that would be pretty low yield considering all the directions that the pitch seams run. 

Here's the only other photo I snapped:



 

[Ianab]

What Crossroads said. The pitch lines like that probably indicate some sort of "shake" and a board with that in it is probably a reject. Some sort of historical damage from a fire or disease maybe? The tree recovered and continued to grow, but there is that weak pitch filled segment. But the swing blade lets you adjust your sawing pattern to work around that sort of thing, and hopefully recover the other 75% of the log that's still useful. So I can see why those particular logs were rejected, but if they are cheap enough, there is still plenty of good wood in there. Just don't pay 1st grade dollars for 3rd grade logs.

[gamjduke]

I wonder if some of those pitch seam areas would hold together well enough to give me some 8"x10" beams or similar to use as ground wood - sleepers for stickered lumber and such. Probably just have to buy one and find out. 

[Ianab]

Possibly, but you will probably get better value cutting a selection of 2X3,4,6 etc  that avoid the defects. I'd aim to put 95% of the defect section into the firewood pile, keep the decent stuff. 

But yeah, saw a test log or 2, small investment of dollars and time, and you will soon see if it's worth it. As long as you pay firewood prices for the logs, you can at least get your money back over the winter.  

[Crossroads]

It's possible that you could get a post, but in many cases they will literally just fall apart as the pitch is the only thing holding them together. On the ones I cut recently, I set up to cut vertical grain boards from between the splits. As for the ring shake. It will probably go the length of the log and any boards that cross that line would make excellent designer firewood. Looks to me like they are in the way and you're doing them a favor by getting rid of them. So, definitely somewhere between free and cheap. 

[Brucer]

You're looking at serious shake in those logs. The amount of sap tells me the wood fibres have separated, probably due to wind action, and the wood isn't going to hold together.

The only time I sawed D-Fir logs that looked like that, they were the customer's logs and the customer ignored my advice and told me to saw them anyway. That's how I learned what's most likely to happen.

For the ring shake (circular crack) if there is just one ring (look at both ends) then you can treat the centre part as a smaller diameter log and you might get a decent timber out of it. Anywhere the shake crosses a corner of the timber, the corner will fall off with only a little bit of force. It's just like wane on a sound log. If the outer shell is thick enough, you might get a few good boards from the outside.

Where a single crack crosses the centre you might get some decent wood from it. Check both ends to make sure grain hasn't twisted. I've buried the shake in the centre of a large beam with good results (sometimes). If you're cutting a beam the crack must be vertical when it's installed, so cut accordingly. For a post it doesn't matter much. I've also cut free-of-heart beams from either side of a crack.

Where you've got star shake (multiple cracks through the centre) it makes good self-splitting firewood ;D.

Sometimes you'll see shake at the butt end of the log but not at the other end. That means the cracks might stop part way up the log. Sometimes the cracks seem to disappear, but show up after you've finished cutting.

It's also very common to find additional splits inside the log that don't carry on to the ends. If they don't go through the centre you might get timbers that are structurally OK but will have pitch showing.

If the wood is free, it wouldn't hurt to saw one of the logs open just so you can see where the cracks go.

The owner of a commercial mill in the area told me not to buy any Douglas-Fir from an area that was exposed to the wind because it would inevitably have shake. I've since check out a few loads of logs from windy areas and he was absolutely right (and no, I didn't buy them).

[moodnacreek]

Good post. I am waiting for someone to say wind does not cause shake.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well, you won't hear it from me. Any hemlock cut here in the Catskills above 1,200ft has a high chance of having shake and few mills will buy it. Find a stand down low in the valley and you have something. Shake shows up in the strangest of places and it dives me crazy when it shows up halfway through a log. I wasted all that time. I sometimes even see it in EWP. I have a 2x4 section in the shop that came apart as I was cutting pieces to length, from logs I milled. I should get a photo.

[gamjduke]

Thanks to everybody for the help.  Now I know what I'm looking at and it doesn't look so good anymore.  Especially considering how much work it would be to crib my mill up over top of each one of those logs etc etc.  I made a lower offer on them a few days ago and never heard back.  Don't know if I actually want them at all anymore.  A logger I've bought from before has some loads of nice, freshly felled, tight ring saw logs that will fit under my mill without drama and I think it'll make a hell of a lot more sense than messing with these at any price.  

[Brucer]

... I am waiting for someone to say wind does not cause shake.

Ah, but I didn't say it did.

I was told by a large scale sawyer, and I've confirmed it myself, that Douglas-Fir growing in a windy area will likely have shake. That doesn't mean the wind caused it. It could well be that the shake is caused by something else and the wind amplifies it by repeatedly flexing the tree.

If someone offers you a good deal, inspect the logs. If there's no shake on the either end you're probably OK.

Bruce

[longtime lurker]

I've probably cut more logs with rings, shakes, or pipes in the culvert class than the rest of you combined. (Sad but true, as a claim to fame it's a bit of a booby prize but hey nobody ever said I was smart)

You've got to saw around the ring, treat the separation line as an impermeable barrier and saw outside it like you would for pipe, and inside it as a separate log.  It's not impossible just frustrating and involves some log turning and some resawing and a lot of waste.

Problem is being able to do it fast enough with a Lucas mill that it's viable is pretty much impossible unless you're after small end sections and can be ultra flexible in your cut list.

The secret to making money with a swingmill is not to waste your time on bad logs.

[SwampDonkey]

Sapsuckers in hemlock are also a factor of shake up here. There isn't a hemlock standing around here that isn't hammered by those buzzards. I've seen some hemlock in the woods so hammered that they had the outter dead bark pretty much removed up long strips facing the sunnier side. I saw this on a couple hemlocks in the last couple of years. I said holy cow, those buzzards are doing a real number on the hemlocks. Don't tell me sapsuckers don't contribute to the death of trees. You taking that outter bark off is like you're skin in desert sun with no sun block.

sapsucker ring shake

https://www.fs.usda.gov/ne/newtown_square/publications/research_papers/pdfs/scanned/rp8.pdf

[Nealm66]

Some trees on the edge of a clearcut will have it ( wind shake) and some won't. If I had to guess it would have something to do with some of the growth rings being rigid and not flexing. Maybe a fast growth year? 

[moodnacreek]

Many who know more than me will say wind does not cause shake [in hemlock].  It's not that they are wrong but the reality is where the wind is always bad is where the shake is.

[Stephen1]

A lot of good advice. My thoughts are if those logs sat there for 2+ years and no one else bought them.... its because they aren't good logs. When I 1st got started, chainsaw mill, building my log cabin,  I purchased some pine logs that showed pine bore holes, I figured they would be okay, I was getting a good deal on them. They ended being junk, taught me a good lesson about buying junk logs. The reason they sat there was the guy never had time to saw them the 1st season and then knew they were garbage after that. He got lucky I gave him some money for his garbage. 

[JRWoodchuck]

If I got then for free I would take the time to get them and saw them. There will be good wood in them but you'll have to work for it. 

[Brucer]

If they were free I would saw 2 or 3 just to understand how shake develops in a log.

Douglas-Fir is more decay resistant than Pine, Spruce, etc. It should be sound after a year on the ground. Even after three years there will only be decay in the sapwood on the side that was in contact with the ground.

[woodrat]

I've cut a fair bit of west coast doug fir like that, and have gotten some nice lumber out of it, but it IS some extra time working around that pitch and shake. And a big downgrade in scaled volume.