Compete with this.

[Sixacresand]

I heard that a pig slaughter house packages everything except the squeal.  Lumber mills probably still cut lumber first and send scraps, defects and warps to the chipper, some which goes to the OSB plant.  Hopefully, if OSB is the goal, they are not using the large diameter logs.
On the porch that I am adding, I plan to floor the roof with 1" pine. I don't want roofing tacks protruding out the bottom side.  My goal is not buy/use any engineered material.  I'm probably on the border line of being bull headed.  .

[beenthere]

Hopefully, if OSB is the goal, they are not using the large diameter logs.

Be it for OSB, pulp wood, bioenergy fuel...... when an operation gets set up and running to process small  wood, then the bigger saw logs are just as easy to toss in the chipper/grinder system (to get them out of the way if nothing else) as to sort them out for another market. Becomes all about production, be danged about best end use.

The nature of the beast, and a beast it is.

[Banjo picker]

OSB prices have went up and down wildly for as long as they have made it...I have build three houses in recent years...When it was $6.00 a sheet, thats what I used for sheathing...when it was $20.00 , as it was when the oldest son built...not a sheet went it that house other than a few pieces of plywood....thats when I got turned on to bandsaws...we bought 1 by decking from a local mill...As to price they are already selling 2 x 4 's cheeper than most of us can mess with them any way....If you take the material it would take to make a sheet of osb, you would get maybe a little over 3   2 x 4's ...I am sure someone out there can give us the 100% accurate figure, but that would b close...So my point is that anytime osb is selling for maybe $12 a sheet or more the company will make more selling the sheets than making 2 by material....Its all about the Benjamines.....Banjo

[SwampDonkey]

It isn't the norm to chip good logs, but it does happen. Seen it happen here with crown timber that according to the Crown Lands and Forest Act is in violation, but the Minister of Natural Resources has the power to make 'exceptions' when necessary. One instance may be that the log market is over supplied. I do know that mills do sort. Take a tree length spruce log, a sawmill can use up to a certain min top diameter. They sheer off the top and it goes to their pulp mill. In fact, when private wood was sold to one saw mill as 'tree length', if they saw the but log was removed they would reject the load. They would still have a log there, but a smaller log. But no dice. We had a spruce veneer market, so that large but log would be worth 3 times as much as a sawlog. The ironic thing was, the same mill ran a veneer mill in Maine, to which they themselves would buck the larger buts and export to their Maine mill.  See what we deal with? :

[Bandmill Bandit]

2 of the Weyerhaeuser plants up here have shut down the lines that were making those dimensions. the gal that runs that section of the plant says they have not even made a small gain into that market.

But with beams and large, long spans they cant keep up to the demand.