Ken,
In America trees of this size were frequently used for framing, in no small part because there were so many of them around during the days of settlement.
And as I have tried to make clear, not near all of them are going to be used for framing timbers.
Later this afternoon I am going to do some figuring and find out sort of what I can expect to get out of these trees, and from there figure how many will be riven and how many will be milled.
The thing with tornado damaged trees is that they often times will have some splitting at the top, especially in cases like this where the tornado ripped off the entire top of the tree. If you are going to split them, than this is not usually a problem, and in fact can be used to your benefit, however it can be fatal to sawn boards.
If one or two trees turn out to be total junk, then you can always make some nice split rail fencing out of it. Unfortunately our white oak is not usually well suited to burn, so I can't load up on firewood. It has a tendency to just kind of sit there and never burn, all the while sucking heat from your fire.
DLB
