Timber Framers Guild Forums General Discussion Forestry Topics Picking Trees

hello carpenter, I think timbeal has it pegged. Sills. Your thinking I believe to be accurate. I think sapwood is fine in the right places.

I added the sapwood variable in this thread to see if there is a good way to find out what is inside the tree when it is standing.

Tolvo,
do you have a lot of trees? it sounds like a small project do you have a cut list
some times you will be surprised how few trees you need have you tried huewing?I live on 13 acers of 200 year old white pine.I have to ask my
Wife before I can cut one down.
One inportant thing about pine and other woods is bucking (cutting into logs)
you want good clear wood where your joinery is that means your log has to be cut at the correct spot. You also want to cut out defects Knot swirls dead branches and and other defect you don't want to have to deal with them in your timbers.As a rule I try to cut 10% more than what I meed for timber
A woodmizer will cut at least 10% over scale Maine log rule 20% over others
good luck on your project I hope it goes well
Just a note if you cut pine in the winter there is less sap if sawed before 70 degrees and given a chance to air dry it will not gray stain. I have used a copper based spray in summer that worked well.

Bob- we have just a couple acres on the river here. i haven't counted the trees, but it is nicely forested. curious actually- we're on a road that used to be a railroad, by which all of the timber from lake nipissing was transported over the height of land and onto the mattawa and then the ottawa, onto ottawa when it was a lumber town. so i'm consistently surprised at the old growth white pine that was left standing precisely at the origin of that rail-line. this is speculative and sentimental, but i think even those lumbermen had some reverence for the spot.

nice of you to tell your wife!

i hew what i cut on the property or what the neighbours give me (this has been a good source). also what is harvested in trail building. i have a couple friends with woodmizers, and a sawyer who will 'hotsaw' as he calls it, going into the bush to cut specifically to order. i get the timbers i can't lift with a few friends this way, or species i don't have in quality (the sawyer recently came through with big chunky cedar, solid to the core- so sweet). the hewing introduces a kind of resourcefulness to the timber selection. it's a matter of getting through the sapwood, then that's the dimension. i wonder if my process has been too in thrall to just the way the trees happen to be. i am always collecting timbers, and at a point it looks like enough to build something with. then i go hunting for the scantlings and joists to fill out what's needed, and order the tamarack sills and anything over 12 feet. this seems to work ok for small buildings. but i have a home now, and am no longer building for others, and i really like outbuildings. i can see them in my mind's eye in one view as a pile of downed trees.

thanks to all for the deep knowledges of tree and timber selection.

apologies if that post came across as smug or know-it-ally. it's not saying much that one can see a shed all in one view.

Hey. No apologies necessary. I too like outbuildings. Got em all over the place here. And most were planned and built in my head before they went up, right down to the little details. I have a Sobon-Shed ready to raise next. My wife wants to know what it's for. I don't have an answer for her, I just know I want it and it will be REALLY cool to have it. I'll bet you were a fort builder when you were a kid.

It sounds like your on the right track. I can see the whole frame in my mind as I am talking to a perspective customer . I often find logs or timbers that are different and save them for when the right idea come along.

THe one thing on this topic is the difference between trees and logs once a tree hit the ground it takes on a whole different look the dicission was made to cut it down now you have to see if your idea works .