I went out this afternoon after work and measured the trees to get an idea of what I would be dealing with, and how much timber I would get. I found out 2 things.
1: I slightly overestimated the size of the trees, the average size is right at 3 feet, with the biggest being 4 1/2 feet in diameter.
2: There are more trees than I had thought. I at first said 5 or 6 dead standing, there are 9.
Overall, the grain quality seems to be excellent. There is one tree that seems like it may have a slight spiral grain to it. If so, that is not necessarily a bad thing, I can use it for siding boards or floorboards, or other such.
There are 2 trees that I am concerned may have some rot in the heart, however I do not think if there is any it would be extensive enough to cause the wood to be totally useless. There is only 1 tree that I found any signs that a squirrel might have been living in it.
One tree has branches on the ground that had been torn off by storm, one was split in half and so I measured it, it measured 3 feet across... From this particular tree, there is a ton of wood just from downed branches, which themselves are the size of very large trees.
I took some pictures as well, and here are a few of them (there are quite a bit more for my records)
The biggest one, with a girth of 14 feet at about shoulder high
The 3 foot branch, which has 3 clear 8 foot sections.
a shot of some of the branches for this big one.
half a trunk... This is what most of them look about like.
the only one that's not straight.
Most of them are in good shape, this one seems to have been dead for longer. The bark is mostly gone and the sapwood is about rotted away. Something tried to claw through it but found the heartwood to be much to tough! You can see pretty good how straight the grain is hear, since it has some cracks on the outside.
Here is one of their living neighbors. This tree has a diameter of about 4 feet. There are many more trees like this in this particular woods, but the live ones are going to stay alive, I am only taking the dead ones for now.
There is in addition to the white oak a number of red oak, ash, hickory, and some smaller sycamore and soft maple that are also dead or near to it. Most are in good shape. But I haven't even bothered with them yet...
