Thread: Log Weights

The weight charts are informative, but they could be more useful with some further number crunching and layout.

For instance, a commercial treeguy who produces commercial firewood doesn't really much care how much a 12" (30.5 cm) length of wood weighs because he's shooting for 16" (40.6 cm) Twelve inches would be an oddball size.

Smaller diameters, weight is never really considered when bucking firewood. Its the bigger diameters that weight becomes an increasingly bigger issue. A 16" block of 16" diameter hardwood weighs what? A 24" (61 cm) diameter firewood-length block weighs what? The biggest tree diameter the pro-bucker would likely get into would be, say 4 feet (122 cm), so what does a 16" cookie, 4 feet across weigh. This matters, as the round often needs to be either lifted onto a truck, or rolled up an incline.

For commercial firewood makers, a chart of the species, offering the weights in standard firewood length would be interesting to know. The loaders could guess the weight of the round, then check their guesses against the chart, keep the mood light during the heavy lifting.

well i have a 48" +/- white oak and i'll be cutting 18" rounds off it then splitting it. after seeing this chart i'm not looking forward to man handling a vw bug

Yikes!!! That will be some heavy lifting indeed. Calculating at 62 lbs/cu ft, for white oak, a 48 inch diameter disk, 18 inches long, will hold 18.8 cu ft of wood, and weigh 1169 pounds.

To be well laid out and comprehensive, you would almost need a weight table for each species, or lump species together which fall into a certain weight range per cubic foot.

Anybody think this would be handy enough to want more tables, or is it easier to just do the calculations off the lbs/cu ft weight?

I think taking the tables and making 3-4 groups would suffice.

I allways tought it would be nice to have a slip card weight per dia/ft (or woould dia:ft be more acurate?)

Hvae it on a lanyard gromit and you can get an accurate estimate by d=taping the log.

If anyone remembers the crazy man from Oz who does euk removals with det cord, he has a book of tables and D-tape on his belt for calculating loads in the tree. It's in one of his vids.

Originally Posted by John Paul Sanborn

I allways tought it would be nice to have a slip card weight per dia/ft (or woould dia:ft be more acurate?)

and diameter per 16" firewood-length as one of the columns.

Originally Posted by JP S

Have it on a lanyard gromit and you can get an accurate estimate by d=taping the log.

How bout a digital tape measure? They make em for carpentry and construction. Ours would need to calculate weights based on LxD x specie factor, calculate distances, act as a protractor to give us angles and have a green laser built into it. Modern day's answer to a cruising stick.

Originally Posted by DDM

http://gear.sherrilltree.com/pdf/weightchart.pdf
Calculator
http://www.woodweb.com/cgi-bin/calcu...tor=log_weight

Dang thats a prety nifty tool. Where did you find it?
Is that just for logs or can that take in account of the whole tree with the branches and what not.

Originally Posted by DDM

http://gear.sherrilltree.com/pdf/weightchart.pdf
Calculator
http://www.woodweb.com/cgi-bin/calcu...tor=log_weight

give higher quote

Originally Posted by DDM

http://gear.sherrilltree.com/pdf/weightchart.pdf
Calculator
http://www.woodweb.com/cgi-bin/calcu...tor=log_weight

would it work for estimating the weight of a palm. I had to order a crain and I wanted to get the whole thing at once and just lay it in the street.
I may end up renting a crain thats as tall as the palm and take it down in sections. What do you think. Its a canarry date palm. fat and tall

damn.........if that chart is correct i have been overloading my truck by 1500 lbs every day! no wonder i have been using a lot of oil in the engine...

Here is a smaller simpler chart from Yale

I used the Woodweb calculator yesterday to calculate a log that we had to pick with a crane today and it was off by about 1000 pounds. That suprised me a bit. The crane operator basically said he wasn't suprised at all because those charts usually are more for estimating.

Originally Posted by younggun

any one notice the chart and the calculator give different estimates for the same peace of wood?

and ...

Originally Posted by Ekka

I think the woodweb link is for dried log ...

Turns out the woodweb link assumes 75% moisture (buried in the documentation). Taking into consideration the fact that the difference between the two sources is inconsistent (Sherrill heavier for some woods, lighter for others), it would appear that the real explanation is simply that these tools use base data (lb/cu ft of wood) from different sources.

Anyone have a feel for which is more accurate?

Also, I wonder if anyone uses a "Palm Pilot" or similar handheld device. This would be a pretty simple thing to code in basic for the Palm, and I might consider doing so if there was enough interest.

No chart available when I looked today.

The pdf link in the first post

Found it in their pdf listing.
http://gear.sherrilltree.com/pdf/Log_WeightChart.pdf

You folks might appreciate this story. Last week I was cutting down a 30" dia. red oak tree (green). There were three of us working, and I was handling the big saw. The last trunk section was about 72" long. I told my buddy, "We need to make three cuts and make four billets for splitting."

My buddy asked, "Why not two cuts and three 24" logs. Our stoves can both take 24" logs."

To which I replied, "There are only three of us here working. We will be lucky to move 18" billets to the log splitter."

In fact, we could hardly roll the 18" billets, even on flat ground. I firmly believe that the 24" lengths would have been impossible for three men to move by hand.

BTW, I also notice a typo in the posted log weight table, The 32" dia. red oak log should read 351 lb per foot rather than 251 lb per foot as shown.