The Official Work Pictures Thread

Stig: That last picture is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. Thanks so much.

I cut a very young 65’ Cottonwood with moderate to heavy side lean toward the fence, so I cut in a sizwill and did not compensate a single degree on the gunning site. Man, that thing stuck to the stump like it had steel cables running through it.

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Nice!

I don't cut much cottonwood, how well does it tend to hinge, generally?

Low- stump sizwells are tough to do, no? That one looks fairly low
 
Dad always said there was grey bark cottonwood out west. He also claims it doesn't burn. I know cottonwood around here needs to be drier than most hardwoods to burn well, probably because it contains more water. And I mean you can not make a relatively fresh piece burn. You can burn it, but it won't burn, kinda strange to watch.
 
J, how'd ya talk that goundie into wearing that funky hat, he looks like the Great Gazoo
 
Especially with such an open forest, but what about future growth? It hasn't even started yet.

As I wrote, the future growth was worthless birch and maple.
I don't know why the Beech chose not to reproduce, usually when you thin the last oif them out enough to let sunlight in, they will..
So we took all of that shit out, made a small clearcut, maybe 3-4 acres. Small enough to guarantee a nice microclimate for the new trees that will be planted next spring, when the area has been fenced off to keep Elk and other vermin out.

The Beech trees are some 140 years old.
A bit too old, in fact, they should have been taken out 20 years ago.
Beech sets a sort of reddish false heartwood when they are stressed or old. Since the industry only wants white wood that looks like plastic, that lowers the price of the logs considerably.
More than 30% redmarrow, as it is called here " Rødmarv" will take a log a class down, turning a class A log into a class B and turning a class C log into firewood or biomass.

So in this case, the owner lost quite a bit of money by hanging on to his trees for too long.
 
That’s crazy man. I’d kill for some Beach with a bit of rødmarv.

Cory: are you serious man, I can’t talk them boys OUT of wearing those hardhats. They are special German hats that cost $350. A guy on another crew was falling a maple, and a dead branch flew out and speared right through the plastic into his scalp. He had to have staples put in his scalp to hold it together properly. So what does he do when he is healed up and coming back to work? Order the exact same hardhat, again, for another $350. The power of culture man, scary thing.

yes man, where to place the cut on the stem for maximum holding wood steering potential, is one dead horse whipping that I will not enter into here again readily. Burnham and August Hunnike feel that it should be placed higher up in the stem in the vertical clear grain, while I have always maintained, that there are very many reasons why one would often want to cut well below that for maximum basal area, even if the grain ain’t fully straight up and down... but of course, the sizwill IS more inconvenient to cut that way.

Nuttball: Yer dad was right. Dude, very, very few people bother with Cottonwood up here. In the first place, just about everything up here is rather hard to get fully cured. In the second place, our native black Cottonwood, the stuff with your father probably thought looked gray (which it does) is, even when fully dried, really ashy, and rather low in BTU. Having said that… never turn yer nose up at bone-dry firewood... I remember when I was a pnw newbie, and I asked an old-timer what his favorite firewood was. He didn’t even miss a beat: “dry.”
 
@stig - not knowing anything about manufacturing in Denmark, can you elaborate on what does occur there? Seems like biomass is still strong (wish it was here)...are there any high end milling operations going on?
 
I don't let much of anything that hits the ground here on my PNW acreage avoid getting into my woodshed...except cottonwood. That I let rot where it lays. WAY more trouble to recover than it's worth to burn.
 
Yes, it is bad imltho :D.

I'd rather burn camel dung...not that I could actually compare the two from any experience :|:...but I have many a decade ago tried cottonwood in my woodstove, and it was next to worthless.

As with the camel dung...better than no fuel at all, but just barely :D.
 
Any fire is hotter than no fire is what I was told about cottonweed and willow by some crazy old codger. He had all the time in the world to deal with it so I did what he paid for. Left quite a few cord of nasty stuff for home to split up and burn.
 
It works for camp fires. It needs a minimum of 2-3 months of drying split before trying to burn it, and I got some hot fires in the stove with it, but had to reload every 20min. Let it season a year, and it doesn't take on moisture too easily, and like I said, makes good campfire wood. On the bright side the trees are easily found with a large diameter, so more wood.
 
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