Why chip everything?

[Fuzly]

I went to a chainsaw safety workshop Saturday. There was an operation on county forest land where the loggers doing the job were good enough to let our class come and practice.

The rules were: cut anything you want that isn't an oak tree with a blue X on it, if you screw up, don't worry, it's all being made into chips anyway

I didn't ask Saturday because I was anxious to get in the woods and try some new stuff out. I know they would leave the oaks and open up the canopy to get new oaks to grow.

Why would they chip everything else? Are the prices that bad for sawlogs, or maybe the other stuff was poor quality?

What kind of mill would buy the chips and what would they use them to make?

It was a mixed forest, oaks, lots of white birch, some nice white pine (I hope they don't make chips out of that), and some other small hardwoods mixed in.

 

[Husky137]

Typically chips for pulp mills or biomass plants. It comes down to production. Cut the very best logs and chip the rest. Whole tree chippers can produce trailer loads of valuable chips way faster than dealing with low grade logs which require a lot of labor and low-grade returns.

 

[windthrown]

We are cutting and thinning about 2 acres of oaks here for old growth oak grove restoration. I limb and buck anything into firewood larger than 6 inches for grand fir, and down to 3 inches for doug fir. Grand fir is crappy firewood, and crappy wood to cut.

We have piles of limbs that we are yarding into huge slash piles that we will burn. We could chip them, but I sold my Bandit chipper for big bucks. I did not use it enough to justify keeping it around. Also takes time and gas to chip them, though it would be great for the forest floor area to have a deep pile of branches and wood chips. It is really a lot easier just to burn the slash here.

As for selling the chips? No one here would buy them. The road and power line crews are always looking for places to dump that stuff here. In the cities that I have lived in, the arborists had lists of addresses of people that wanted chips dumped at their locations. Saves the company money and time to dump chips at the city dumps.

 

[Lee Bradley]

Its all about global warming if you burn the wood it creates CO2 a very poor greenhouse gas but if chip the wood it creates methane a greenhouse gas 20 times more effective than CO2. Plus the chips make a great breeding ground for the insects.

 

[Rftreeman]

What kind of mill would buy the chips and what would they use them to make?

paper mills use the chips to make paper

 

[redprospector]

Before they shut down recently, the big mill around here would chip all their scrap and load it on rail cars. It was shipped to Mexico where they made it into particle board, fiber board, and the ever popular OSB.
Since they shut down we don't do nuthin with it.

Andy

 

[Sprig]

Most of the stuff chipped on this rock ends up in peoples gardens as mulch (except cedar which does make great pathway mulch tho, just not in da garden). There are lots of places here where the soil is, um, really really not (my back yard for example ) On the big Island the pulp mills don't like chips with bark in 'em but there are a number of entrepreneurial folk (thankyou Mr. spellcheck ) that use 'hog-fuel' (bark mulch) for creating some really nice soils, I guess they mix it with leaves, clay, w.h.y. etc., and keep turning it over for a year or more as it cooks, makes some decent soil from what I've seen.



Serge

 

[grandpatractor]

Typically chips for pulp mills or biomass plants. It comes down to production. Cut the very best logs and chip the rest. Whole tree chippers can produce trailer loads of valuable chips way faster than dealing with low grade logs which require a lot of labor and low-grade returns.

yup ,I have seen that being done around here too. Massive chipper that could load a semi in a matter of minutes:jawdrop:

 

[windthrown]

Its all about global warming if you burn the wood it creates CO2 a very poor greenhouse gas but if chip the wood it creates methane a greenhouse gas 20 times more effective than CO2. Plus the chips make a great breeding ground for the insects.

Nah... its C02 and water either way; burn it or let it rot.

 

[turnkey4099]

Nah... its C02 and water either way; burn it or let it rot.

Yep. A lot all at once (burn) or the same amount spread over an extended period.

Harry K

 

[Fuzly]

Typically chips for pulp mills or biomass plants. It comes down to production. Cut the very best logs and chip the rest. Whole tree chippers can produce trailer loads of valuable chips way faster than dealing with low grade logs which require a lot of labor and low-grade returns.

It makes sense. They were moving fast, and we were the only ones out there with chainsaws. Everything else was being done by machines.

I don't care if they make chips out of the punky old birch trees, but those big white pines kind of bothered me. They did have one forwarder out there collecting dust. Maybe they will use it to take a few logs off of the job.

But back to production, by the time they get in and drop those few good trees and move the chip truck out of the way so a log truck can get in, would it be worth it? The logs would have to be pretty valuable I would think.

I didn't think of pulp. When I was a kid it used to be cut in sticks and actually peeled by hand in the woods. :jawdrop: I need to get with the times. They actually used to use chainsaws to cut the stick too, not a big machine.

 

[windthrown]

Here they do not use machines to cut with. Nor do they pulp chip anything. Way too steep in these mountains. I mean really hard to get your footing steep. Yarding machines, loaders, and trucks are all the machines I see here. Old fashion chain saws and sawyers for dropping them all with (clear cutting and thinning). Not much of a demand for pulp here in the past few years either. I have yet to see a big rotary chipper around here. Used to see them down in the Sierras a lot.

Basically the limbs get left scattered along with odd logs. The tops, marked culls, trash trees and yarding slash are piled up and burned several months to a year later (have to burn slash piles by law here). I have permission from several of the local timber companies to scavange their slash piles for firewood. Amazing how much madrone, bigleaf maple, and culled doug fir is in them. And in the spring and fall when they set them off, it looks like lava flowing down the mountinside.

 

[windthrown]

Before they shut down recently, the big mill around here would chip all their scrap and load it on rail cars. It was shipped to Mexico where they made it into particle board, fiber board, and the ever popular OSB.
Since they shut down we don't do nuthin with it.

Andy

Mills around here (there are several dozen) use chips for all kinds of stuff. Engineered lumber, particle board, strandboard, as well as pulp for the paper mills. They also use it to run the mills. Most mills have mountains of chips and a conveyor belt to feed a boiler to run the saws with. It keeps them from having to buy electricity. We also have some old sawdust burner dome mills here. There used to be hundreds of them in the PNW when I was a kid. Now there are only a few of them left, and none of then are still running that I have seen. Relics from the past. The local one here has converted to cutting culls and milled log ends into firewood. Seems to be more money in firewood these days. They package the split wood in shrink-wrap plastic and sell it at grocery stores in the cities. I think they also still make Pres-to-logs with sawdust.

 

[Fuzly]

Before they shut down recently, the big mill around here would chip all their scrap and load it on rail cars. It was shipped to Mexico where they made it into particle board, fiber board, and the ever popular OSB.
Since they shut down we don't do nuthin with it.

Andy

That's what I was thinking, I wasn't sure what that stuff was made of.

It used to be that popple (aspen) and softwoods were used for paper pulp. Hardwoods would never be used for that, that's why I was wondering about OSB/particle board, but times are changing.

According to a local forester, "light woods" (maple, ash, etc.), which were the major decorating trend a few years ago, are not selling at the present time. It is pretty much impossible to sell a nice ash log to a mill right now.

 

[Fuzly]

They also use it to run the mills. Most mills have mountains of chips and a conveyor belt to feed a boiler to run the saws with. It keeps them from having to buy electricity.

When my Dad retired from the Sheriff's Department he took a job at the local mill as a fireman. Really neat 100 year old boilers that eat the scrap from the mill.

At one time they used to provide electricity for the whole town. Pretty good deal for the mill owners, give the workers a paycheck, then have them buy electricity from your electric company.

Anyway, they usually just heat the kilns with them now. They can keep the mill going in case of a power outage, but DNR really keeps an eye on them-minimum temps in the boiler, maximum emissions, no visible smoke from the stacks, etc.

 

[redprospector]

We don't have enough water in Southern New Mexico for a paper mill, so you won't be writing on any of our trees.
The big mill here was a "stud mill" back when I used to cut for them. It used to break my heart to see a 48" DBH tree go down the hill and get turned into nothing but 2x4's.

Andy