The Official Work Pictures Thread

We picked the 22 best trees out of that stand 3 years ago, to be made into new floors for a German castle.
Just the A grade wood in the logs sold for over 60 thousand $, then the B/C grade was sold to a danish mill and the rest for firewood. Probably around 100 grand in total, for 22 trees.
Nice deal:)

You can tell that tree in the picture was initially tagged for felling then, but crossed out because of the twisted grain once we found a better specimen..
 
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Great pics everyone......tree house just plain rules ;)

Man you got that right! Awesome work NZ and Stig. I get to supplement my pathetic tree existence through videos and pictures from the 'House!

I got to actually use my 460 yesterday, on a big nasty..........patch of weeds. :whine: Could have used a longer bar, 28 is a bit short.

I hope to get some fire action this summer.
 
Remember Bonner's OTJ pics? They chipped everything that fit in the opening
 
Stig, it amazes me the money you get for your logs!! Heres what I do with my logs when it snows... 1.jpg

and heres what I do for fun at 2am when it snows... 2.jpg
 
Stig, I was going to ask you about the twisted grain. Is it caused by wind maybe?

Genetic, I'd say.
Since it was only 2 or 3 trees in the whole stand, and they have all been subjected to the same wind forces.

A mature stand like that has been thinned maybe 8-10 times over the last 1½ century.
Every time we thin it, we aim for an even spread of trees, but we also try to take any trees with defects like twisted grain, watersprouts on the trunks and codominant tops out.

( Codominants are really hard to fall, when mature. They split easily if you dont top them first, so that makes them undesirable)

The goal is to end up with an even stand of perfect veneer grade trees.

Thinning oak is very much an art, because if you go at them too hard, they'll grow watersprouts on the logs and become worth a lot less.
Lots of sprouts will degrade a log from veneerclass AF to class C, which is one step above firewood grade: D.
If you go too soft, you get a bunch of tall trees with not enough log diameter for their age.

Bucking the tree is a science as well, since the buyer will specify which grade logs he wants, in thic case AF to B/C. So you walk along the log and count live/dead knots, scars, inclusions etc. and decide where to buck it. The goal is to have the mill accept the whole lot with maybe 2-3 logs being bucked too long.
If all the logs are accepted, the owner starts getting paranoid thought about them maybe being bucked too short, and good wood left for firewood. So we always go to C class on a couple, just to ease his mind.

That was a long answer to a short question. Hope it makes sense.
 
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Stig, thanks, it was a great well written answer.

I'm just at the point of starting to recognize which trees to take out so I'm learning plenty every day.

Most of what we work in has 2-4 species that are coming out unless we are strictly going after Walnut. I'm getting quite an education on how different species act differently when felling them. Hickory seems to have given me more problems than most so far.
 
I'm getting quite an education on how different species act differently when felling them. Hickory seems to have given me more problems than most so far.

Ha, you and the rest of the sawing world!
 
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