Measure standing lumber

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firmwood

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Lots of pencil straight popular. Nice taper, alot 20+ at the stump.

Is the international scale the most accurate for clean trees selectively chosen to cut?

Next weekend id like to go for a walk about and actually add up what's decent and discuss with the mill before going hog wild with the saw.




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Tangent do you mean? rise over run.
Not if its got lean.
buy a Suunto clinometre or lazer for more accuracy.

its not high value wood here so I probably wouldn't over think it.

You could work a few straight trees out for prespective. The dom trees should have a similar height.

Establish height, convert cone shape to a cylinder by averaging ends.
find area of circle.




So if it's 20" at the base and 0 at the top
you have 10"average over length so 5" radius.

radius x3.1415 x radius again

5x 3.1415 x 5 = area of circle x length in inches = volume inches
divide by 144 for volume BF.

You can estimate a tree too or find a good representation of the average (Rep tree) and guess it standing and fall it and take a measurement.

Its not a perfect thing
 
I was wondering if there can be any accuracy before hacking...

**** needs to be logged anyways.

I'm trying to stay 24"+. Anything smaller might be a waste.


Stuff grows like weeds....

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Difficult. They're peppered everywhere with no manageable pattern.

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You're asking a loaded question there, @firmwood. Let me tell you a big secret that most foresters and log buyers don't know, but all fallers do. Brace yourself, here comes.

A graded standing log that is still part of a tree and a scaled log on the ground are not the same thing.

This is hugely important because we prepare and sell our timber as though they were the same, and then the sale administrators have to run interference between us and the buyers over the difference. The fact is that when I'm cruising standing timber, I can only tell you what I can see. I can tell you how tall, what diameter, what defect is visible, etc. I can't say anything about hidden defect, or damage during falling, or cull due to forks, or whatever else ends up being a deduction between landing and mill. Utilization is all about the skill and expertise of the faller and the rigging/landing crew.

In the end it doens't matter a lot how you grade your standing timber, so long as you pick a method and master it, and use it consistently. As far as volume per area, you're gonna want to think about variable probability sampling, which is an education in itself. If you're only talking about a hundred or so trees in a limited area, you'll probably be best off either tallying by diameter or by simply measuring all of your take trees individually. Your volumes are going to be all over the place because of the crown shape. Butt logs are easy enough to model for but topwood is a whole different ball of wax.
 
Lots of pencil straight popular. Nice taper, alot 20+ at the stump.

Is the international scale the most accurate for clean trees selectively chosen to cut?

Next weekend id like to go for a walk about and actually add up what's decent and discuss with the mill before going hog wild with the saw.




Sent from my 2PS64 using Tapatalk


There are lots of cool math tricks to calculate each and every tree or you could do sample patches and calculate to get an average.

Or do like the rest of us and just make an educated guess, but it does take some experience to get close
 
There are lots of cool math tricks to calculate each and every tree or you could do sample patches and calculate to get an average.

I actually have a tarif table memorized for +/- 20% volume estimates by inch increments from 8"-36" diameter. Between eyeballing the diameter and calling the estimated volume based on that, I can get pretty close without any extra work. On a per-acre basis, I can use the fact that my thumb represents a BAF of 15 and spin a quick plot to get an estimate. The more accuracy matters, the more expensive the tools I need to use and the longer it takes to do the work. Any cruise is a compromise between efficiency and accuracy.
 
Yellow tulip.

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There's money in that. I don't have it here but I've heard it can go for veneer and grade logs pay decent as well. It's a middle of the road species kind of like ash but a much better payday then Aspen. You're market is really the key to what you're going to make. Call around to some Mills. Get some log specs. See what they're paying etc.
 
City slickers? Wtf does that mean? Cut standing timber, lay the logs out, and have several Mills bid on them. You don't get to pick the scale they use. City slickers don't cut timber. Logs are typically 10" and larger on small end. Sometimes they only take 12" and up. Knowing how to buck for grade can be a big difference in money. You could lay them out tree length and have buyers mark where they want them cut.
 
Oh. Right. This city slicker did ask 3 questions.

How long and what species, how small is too small.

I hauled in 4 cord few days ago. $140/crd.

Maybe I should cut everything and see who buys it before it's firewood? The advantage of that is once it's cut it'll keep the same board footage....cut trees stay the same size forever

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Get a price sheet from a mill. $140/cord is about $300/mbf. If it's clean wood I bet it'll pay a lot more then and you keep em log length. Typically here we cut 8,10,12,14,16 lengths with 6-8" of trim. Your markets could be different tho. I've heard of 9'6" and 13'6" veneer and what not. Why not have a Forester take a run through it with you?
 
Oh. Right. This city slicker did ask 3 questions.

How long and what species, how small is too small.

I hauled in 4 cord few days ago. $140/crd.

Maybe I should cut everything and see who buys it before it's firewood? The advantage of that is once it's cut it'll keep the same board footage....cut trees stay the same size forever

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You can tell who’s city slicker when they write “ standing lumber” . It ain’t lumber til it’s sawn into something useful.
 
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