About Unfreezing Wood

[Charles Woodapple]

Good day my good Folks,

Following my ongoing inquiry and quest to understand what I need to understand on my wood endeavor, I was wondering what to expect and how to handle frozen wood.

My logs will be shipped from the northern peninsula and are already frozen there. I have no insight on how wood would unfreeze during the delivery trip. I also have no idea how to handle the unfreezing of such big logs once they reach me. Would putting them in a room temperature hangar do the trick quickly? Do I have to intervene? And if so, would it impact the wood or the moisture?

The whole getting frozen logs to their pulp is a new dilemna and I yet have to find documentation on how the wood unfreezes, how it impacts, and how quickly it can happen and whatnot...

Any leads? Thank you in advance.

 

[ATH]

You are pulping the logs?

Touch base with wood/forest products research departments at Michigan Tech, University of Minnesota, University of Maine, etc... Mills in those areas process frozen logs all the time.

 

[peakbagger]

You are pulping the logs?

Touch base with wood/forest products research departments at Michigan Tech, University of Minnesota, University of Maine, etc... Mills in those areas process frozen logs all the time.

 

[Charles Woodapple]

No, I'm not pulping wood. But I will be extracting specimens from all over the logs and I need the wood to be in green condition at regular temperature

 

[peakbagger]

I worked for a hardwood pulpmill for 17 years in a northern climate. All of our logs would be "frozen" for several months a year. Unless the logs were waterlogged, they didn't substantially freeze unless the temps are quite low. I think tree sap in the winter effectively has an antifreeze aspect to it. Free water can get into defects and split the wood and there may be ice on the logs but when we ran them through the debarking drum, It knocked off the ice and the chipper didn't seem to notice how cold the wood was. Once the wood has dried for awhile it wont freeze no matter how low it goes as the free water in the tree is long gone. I expect an incremental borer will cut right through frozen wood for extracting samples.

This article may be helpful https://northernwoodlands.org/articles/article/do-tree-stems-freeze-in-winter