I had a forestor look at my timber

[Rod]

oldtimer,here the loggers get $130 a 1000 for cut skid and bucking,I asked my logger friend who just started on an 8500 ac beside me.

timber futures are at a 10 year high so it looks like lumber should be going up in price

http://www.housingzone.com/news2.asp?topicId=18298&docId=l:224928666

[Ron Wenrich]

$130/Mbf is a mighty high price for just cutting, skiddiing and bucking.  Around here its more $75/Mbf.  For $130, you would have to add in trucking.

As for lumber futures, yes, they were high around the time of the hurricanes.  Call it speculation.  But, you have to keep on following those prices. They change from day to day.

November lumber futures hit a high of 413 back on the day after Labor Day.  Yesterday's close was 330.5  That's about where it was before hurricane season.  Either there's too much supply or limited demand.

[Sawyerfortyish]

Lookout for the future I think after the election no matter who wins everything will go fluee. With fuel prices 2.00 a gal how can you truck very far for a better market. One of my trucker friends filled up the other day1098.00$ I asked him why he couldn't dribble a little more to make it 1100.00 even :D

[Rod]

$500 and acre has been the high bid.

[SwampDonkey]

HI Rod:

Is it small spaced out wood? That's in line with woodland here that has mixed growth of poplar, hardwood and softwood and high graded. Mature softwood ground or nice mature hardwood (rare for my area) goes for $1000-1200/acre here for stumpage.

[Rod]

hi SwampDonkey,it's 290 acres with 2000 board feet per acre at 16'' DBH.2 large timber compamies want to buy it.7 years ago when i bought it it had just had been timbered and didn't have any saw timber then

grows back fast i think.

[SwampDonkey]

Sure am curious what the diameter distribution is on that ground. What was it, cut by diameter limit back then (high grade)? 16 inch at dbh is pretty big hardwood for up this way. Most mature sized Hwd on woodlots up here run at 8 to 10 inch dbh in my area before they get logged. If it's a smaller run than that, it's usually all wacked for pulp unless it has over 96 ft^2/acre basal area. Hard to judge residual quality from the previous harvest based on diameter. Not all 16+ inch trees are sawlogs. ;)

[Rod]

just about everyone cuts high grade,mostly red oaks.And the last time they logged it it was high graded down to 12''..Saw logs around here are 12'' dbh but for some reason they are only counting to 16''dbh.the loggers say they go in the whole cutting anything less the 12''.As for the quality they didn't say.My neghbor has started and 8000 acre  logging job beside me and him and 3 other guys working for him have been taking out 2 truck loads of red oaks just about every day for the last month.

[Rod]

My logging neighbor sure does have the county road tore up too,he needs chains on the log trucks to get them in and out. :oI hope he makes some money were he can get some trucks that don't smoke so bad.

[SwampDonkey]

That leads me to wonder how long they think the woodland can stand continuous high grading. Your not long (well probably longer than most of us will live) putting yourself into a situation where it's going to be hard getting good sawlogs off those old harvest sites. Historically, that's what they do here too unfortunately. Land owners are just as much to blame as the loggers.

[Ron Wenrich]

For some reason, loggers can't make money cutting trees under 12", but won't let them grow over 16".  Something wrong with that thinking.

High grading is the norm for many areas.  Diameter limit cuts are the way 50% of the timber gets sold in PA.  That's the way they did it before, that's how they do it now.  But, in years gone by, red oak wasn't worth anything.  Breaking that high grading thinking is next to impossible.  Loggers actually think they are doing good management work in most cases.

The stuff that wasn't cut before was probably maple.  Back 7 years ago, that wasn't worth much.  Now it is.  

At $500/acre, you're gettting $250/Mbf.  Let it grow until you have some decent sawlogs, then you'll be getting a lot more.  There is no veneer value in 16" dbh trees.  

We're paying about $450-500/Mbf for timber.  But, the average dbh is around 18".  Is it worthwhile to leave your trees for another 10-20 years so that you can get a higher return?

[SwampDonkey]

Maple and yellow birch Veneer starts at 10 inch tops and as short as 4'4" up our way. Yellow birch is favored at that smaller size because heart doesn't matter. Maple has to have less then 1/2 heart. I agree maple was considered 99 % pulpwood up until about 10 years ago in our area too. Some specialty markets would buy small quantities for more than pulp price, but you wouldn't get rich on it. Those specialty markets came along as fits and farts, sometimes smelling as bad too. ;) They were local markets for furniture or tool handles.

[ohsoloco]

This is all pretty new to me.   Could someone explain high grading  ???

[Ron Scott]

High Grading is the selection and harvest of only the best trees (high-grade trees) in the forest stand, leaving low quality and nonmerchantable trees to occupy the site and make up the future forest.

"High grading" may have both genetic implications and long-term economic or stand health implications.

[Ron Wenrich]

You want the long answer or the short one?

High grading is a "thinning" where they take the best and leave the rest.  

This can come about by 2 methods.  One is diameter limit cutting.  That's where you cut everything over a certain diameter.  I've seen down as low as 12", which is usually a nearly a clearcut.  

Most foresters use diameter limit cutting, but few will admit it.  I've seen sales where there wasn't an 18" tree left on the site.  That's because 18" trees fetch a veneer cut and are taken.  

In some instances diameter limits are OK, where there are constraints on the interest rate.  I don't like them, and prefer to leave healthy trees.

The other type of high grade is where you go in and just take the very best.  I've seen this where loggers come in and leave the "young" trees for the next forest.  The problem is that usually they are old, surpressed trees that won't release well.  Or they will leave trees of poor quality in form or species.  

The problems that arise from high grading is there is a general reduction in your good quality seed trees.  If you keep on leaving junk, that's all you'll have for seed stock for the next generations.  Eventually your seedsource is severely depleated from a genetic standpoint.

We had one logger in the area that paid a very high price for timber.  We never could figure out how he did it until we saw one of his jobs  He only took the butts and left the rest of the tree lay.  He only paid for what he took.

[ohsoloco]

Thanks Rons  

I'm always learning something new here, and it sounds like I have a lot more to learn before I were to thin any of my trees.  I really don't want to cut many of em...if at all.  I'd really like to keep my small woodlot healthy, and couldn't bear to see all of the mature trees gone.  

There are state game lands that border the back of my property, and even without the white blazes it's not hard to see where the property line is  :-/  My neighbor said the state land was formery owned by the audubon society, and they had it logged before selling it.  The loggers contacted the previous owners of my property as well, but I'm happy to say they refused any cutting  

[Ron Wenrich]

I guess the Audobon society was done looking at birds.  Typical thing to do is to gut the land of assets before turning it over to someone else.  You would think a conservation organization would act differently.

[Ron Scott]

Yes, the Audubon is usually "anti-logging" (of everyone else's timber). :

[Gunny]

I wonder if most of the people scaling our woodlots are still using the International 1/4" or Doyle systems.  I'm a former certified tree farmer--and current broker/private woodlot resource consultant-- and found those scales to be useless when calculating stacked lumber that was produced off my portable bandsaw mill.  Scale "errors" ranged from 50-300%, depending on whether we scaled logs or standing timber.

Advocating intense resource management for all private woodlot owners is essential if we are to realize the maximum potential of our primary renewal resources.  Inasmuch as we seem to have no current shortage of portable bandsaw mills which will come to our properties, I can not imagine the serious woodlot owner selling his/her logs to any third party, however they might be processed.  Just compare the price of a quality 4/4" sawn Red Oak board, in terms of BF return, to that gained in selling logs-in-a-landing or stumpage.

Also, the "by-products" of the sawn log (slabwood and sawdust, etc.) have become viable sources of additional incomes for the private owner.  A simple ad in any local Buyer's Guide will often sell all you can produce.

I guess the key is to tally-in the value-added options and proceed with learned caution from there.  I once, not so long ago, wrote a major article for a national magazine which had a working title of "The Ten Tree Tally" in which I detailed that I made more income in a single year processing only ten overmature oak trees into marketable products than I would make selling my entire stumpage to a third party.  It remains true to this date.  I hear they call it "thinking outside the box" nowadays.

Happy Holidays to all.  

[beenthere]

Gunny         Welcome to the forum.
Do you have a reference to the article you wrote?

From your opening line, about Int'l and Doyle rule, I don't understand why both are 'useless' for scaling woodlots, in your opinion. Care to elaborate what people should use to 'scale our woodlots'?  

[Gunny]

Thanks much for the welcome.  

One of several written can be found within the Sept/Oct 2000 issue of Tree Farmer magazine.  It's located from pp16-20.  The editor, a fine individual, retitled this one "A Better Way: From Raw Timber to Great Returns."  As I dig through the stack, I'll be happy to locate more for your reading pleasure. )

Inasmuch as the scales simply do not even approach accuracy--when actual stacked lumber is considered--I've always wondered how it is that these particular ones mentioned--and less often the "Scribner"--are even allowed by the USDA, if they're the regulating agency.  Can you imagine your gas pump registering 10 gallons when you only got 7 in your tank?  

Woodmizer illuminated this discrepancy years ago within their published materials relative to the sawn timber recovered from "identical" logs when using a circular blade vs. a bandsaw mill.  I think they got 51% more lumber with the band blade.  And, though I owned and operated a different brand of bandsaw mill, my recoveries--actual baords taken and stickered from any log--were always far greater than any of the scales indicated--"Small end, inside bark."  The discrepancy increased significantly when the scales were used to estimate lumber in standing 2nd and 3rd generation timber.  

Even the registered forester I allowed onto my tree farm was amazed, having witnessed the anamoly.  He went back to his profs at Mich Tech to research the glaring problems.  

Essentially, if we are paid, as woodlot owners, for 100MBF of product, and the producer then converts it to 150MBF volume--plus the marketable by-products--we've encountered a major situation with the measuring device(s).  Those scales may well have worked well with the virgin and massive timber cruised a couple of centuries ago but they certainly beg for immediate modifications into this 21st century, no?

Hope you're able to locate the article.  The editorial staff was always very careful to publish only what could be considered "valid" and timely.

Happy Holidays.  Be safe out there.

[SwampDonkey]

[edited Dec 17, 2004 by SwampDonkey]

I know, I made a quick eye-ball comparison between the doyle and international, and doyle under estimates log volumes of stems under 14 inches by a wide margin. When we use Bangor rule up this way and it's much closer to the actual scale, but still favors the buyer. Our New Brunswick log rule has always been known to favor the buyer as well, and it's worse than Bangor rule. If given the chance to choose between scales, everyone uses Bangor rule on sawlogs (the local mill did not adjust price between these 2 scales) and weight on treelength wood. When cruising timber we use volume curves developed by research on form and species growth characterics averaged over the province. Site index is also incorporated. We don't cruise timber based on sawlogs, we cruise all merchantable timber down to 3.5 or 4 inches at dbh. Some mills take 4 foot down to 3.5 inches on the top and some take it down to 2.5 inches for tree length. What I found disturbing is that most cruisers only tally trees up to 48 inch DBH and anything above that is still 48 dbh. :-/ That's in conflict with those at DNR looking to find volumes and stems/acre of nesting/cavity trees isn't it? :-/ If the cruiser is careful with his prism and his measurments the volumes work out pretty close. It's not a perfect system, but it works well and folks trust it. What people don't trust are slopy cruisers, and I've found that out when doing followup on private woodlots with management plans. Some of the figures are just crazy, you can tell they never left the pick-up.Three weeks ago I was on a lot where the logger was cutting 15 year old jack pine by hand and nothing was larger than 5 inches on the stump. Now that can't be very profitable because its strictly pulp. ;)

cheers

[beenthere]

Gunny
I found this one in Sawmill & Woodlot with an article close to  your title indicated.
"The Legacy of the Ten Tree Tally"
http://www.sawmillmag.com/current_issue.html?issue_id=16

Is it similar or the same as the Tree Farmer one?

Your observations are not surprising, but I doubt they negate the use of the Int'l 1/4" scale to estimate the board foot volume in a log or a tree. No one has said one cannot get more, and one way is to narrow the kerf from 1/4".  The extra lumber is overrun.  Over the years there have been many, many formulas and rules to estimate the volume of wood products in a log or in a tree. None have been perfect, as the products vary as well as the processing operations vary. A better rule for whatever product will always be sought. You apparently have some ideas, but not much is gained by indicating the USDA USFS and others are erroneous in using the rules we have. They are valid rules, IMO.
Apparently not in your opinion, which is fine.
Let's hear what you have to offer.

[Phorester]

HIGHGRADING can also be described as weeding a vegetable garden by taking out the vegetables and leaving the weeds.  If that's done several times over the decades, about the only management option left is to clearcut the highgraded foest and start over with a new one.

Trying to create a more accurate log rule or trying to force the legal use of just one rule I don't think will ever work. That's trying to change the entire timber industry, and I think it would never be accepted.   There's a couple hundred log rules been developed over the centuries in the USA.  A vast majority created by timber buyers, and they generally favor them over the seller.  

But as long as the landowner knows the limitations of a particular rule, then you have an informed seller selling to an informed buyer - one definition of a fair business deal. But quite often the private landowner does not know.

The International 1/4 inch rule is more accurate than most other rules because it's one that takes into account the taper of a real log.  Doyle and Scribner, the other most common rules used in the USA, do not.  

[Gunny]

Actually, the more focused article as to what I've experienced (as opposed to any opinions I might have) would be found in the article beginning on page 30 of the June/July 1999 issue of  the Independent Sawmill & Woodlot Management magazine entitled "Fraud and Forest Councils."  As I approach those "Golden Years", I've had the good fortune to finally begin to comprehend the difference in meaning and application between the terms "opinion" and "experience."

Since we all seem to agree that there's a good deal of--often considerable--discrepancy in the application of current volume measurements, this might be a good place to begin discussing future options.  Which of us has not walked the plunder of a recent "harvest", only to shake our heads at the blatant destruction.  

"Informed Consent", as "Phorester" suggests, is a fine place to start.  The problem, experience indicates, is that that information parlayed into "consent" often fails to mention all the other timber which is removed without consent.  Timber volume and its "harvest" may be the only commodity on the planet which is so mysteriously measured--and always, as these last posts relate, to the buyer's favor.  Private woodlot owners are often subjected to the tactics industrialized countries exclusively dealt third-world nations.  

As with most things in life, the key to comprehension comes from fundamental education.  That's what I enjoy doing.  In these parts, especially with the history of absolute pillage just a little over a century ago of just about every growing thing on the landscape, it's difficult to trust outsiders to honestly care for one's own property.  It's pretty easy to demonstrate to any timber owner the basic difference in returns between marketing their own lumber vs. selling stumpage.  And that's the twist I hope to leave as a small legacy in this life and region: It just might become an owner's "edge", finally.  And when it's in the favor of the landowner, my task might be done. Besides, there's lots of public lands to continue bidding on.  

Our regional "Timberman's" handbook mentions that volume includes the "by-products" of the logs harvested.  That's a market few seem to wish to discuss.  But the landowners who personally manage their own operations will most certainly realize the benefits those elusive dollars will provide their bottom-line.  

I envision a coalition of sorts in the future, a cooperative effort which will benefit woodlot owner/operator and production specialists equally, based upon some formulaic investment share.  As it stands today, it's little more than "wham, bam, thank you ma'am" to the owners. Four generations later it happens again, maybe. That's probably going to change in the near future as word gets out.  Which it always has a way of doing.

Must fly to chores.  Be well all.