I cut down a large pine that was too close to my build. I would like to peel and use a 16' section in my cabin. It has been on the ground a few weeks and these little green bark beetles have started at it. I really dont mind the little patterns they eat into it but i peeled a small section to inspect it and the next day it was totally covered over with sap.
How long will sap run like that? Is it just time needed to wait for it to stop? I am not too far away from where i will need it so im not sure if i have that much time.
Would it help if i cut it to the 16' length i need? Right now its full length laying on the ground
Where are you located CJ?
Pine takes me 8 weeks to dry enough to plane and work with etc, but will still have some sap to deal with for a long time after that in pockets.
It's best to peel right away if you can and to wax the ends of the log to help prevent checking.
South east tx. May as well be louisianna.
What do you use to wax it?
I need to get it cut to length and up on some supports off the ground but dropping it killed my chain saw and being recently unemployed buying another one isnt on my priority list untill i find work
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Think i need to get it moved. My little red headed friend there is eyeballing it i think.
You can eliminate the majority of the sap if you peel the bark down eliminating the route that it travels(bark layer)until you reach the actual wood layer. I would peel the entire thing (in your case) and then later cut to length. What bark you leave when dried will curl later. This will effect the stain or finish. You can tell when you have reached the better wood as the color lightens in comparison to the bark layer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRCTXrz1sDw&list=UUeTi-PMcRDvERThoKSowv4w&index=25
Sorry about the wax comment! I have a big 5 gallon bucket of Bailey's end sealer ;) I answered without thinking that you might not do more then one or two trees! LOL So, best bet is to NOT cut it to size until dry so you can cut off the checking on the ends.
Sorry about the saw damage! That sucks.
I'd say try to get it up to 'working' height (which may just be a foot or so) and then get a draw knife and start peeling it. It will dry faster that way.
Thanks guys. The tree is 70' long or more, the last 15' of it is laying in the neighbors woods so i cant get the whole thing off the ground. Sounds like i will cut it with a few extra feet so i can trim it to length after it dries more.
Fortunatly between this morning and now i became employed again so mabey i can buy a saw now.
Glad to hear about the employment!!!!! WhooHoo [cool] c*
As for cutting the log long, give it 6-8" and that should be fine :)
Quote from: CjAl on March 28, 2013, 01:21:14 PM
Thanks guys. The tree is 70' long or more, the last 15' of it is laying in the neighbors woods so i cant get the whole thing off the ground. Sounds like i will cut it with a few extra feet so i can trim it to length after it dries more.
Fortunatly between this morning and now i became employed again so mabey i can buy a saw now.
You really don't need to raise it up to peel the bark. just have to roll it over occassionally. But it will need to be raised up to keep it from ground contact once it is strpped of the bark. If you do peel it lying down always leave bark on it to sit on as you move down the log. Sap doesn't like to come out of clothes very well. ;D
Tell me about it, your jeans kind of get up to greet you :D
Sorry to hear about the employment situation, that really cuts into the project time. Getting it up and peeled, free of that sweet food rich cambium layer Redover mentioned before it warms up will keep it looking much brighter and bug free. You can roll logs up ramps to get them up on stuff just always be aware of where you are with a log off the ground.
What died on the saw?
I believe the motor blew up. It started by not running unless it was wide open then it started to bog out under load and wide open. After a bit i was having to feather the throttle and constantly lighten up on the psi. I cut about 5 trees that day and half way through the last one she just quit. Now when i try to start it the motor just rattles, not a good sound.
What sucks is i had two identicle saws except one was about ten yrs older.. It was just a cheap poulon. When we moved we went from a house with large storage building to a motorhome with a medium size storage building so we tossed or sold everything we didnt need. One of those things was the second chain saw
Ooh, that sort of sounds like my uneager beaver, last seen going head over heels down the mountain :D
I do like buying the same thing and keeping the old one for parts but it does take space. I've picked my ols Stihl down to about scrap keeping the "new" one running. The old one just wouldn't crank after I drove over it... ooops.
The most check free drying is going to be good airflow but shaded from direct sun, you can hear a log tearing itself open on a hot sunny day. Bluestain is a fungus that really likes fresh wood. If its above 70 and the wood is green it is there. Getting the bark off and the surface dry stops it. although not environmentally right diesel will cut pitch and stop fungus, it is an old time log builders trick for keeping the logs bright in hot weather. The smell usually dissipates after a few hot bright days. Bluestain is kind of an indicator. It is a fungi but it is eating the sugars within the cells. If you see it bloom it is not really hurting the structure of the wood till it gets pretty bad. What it is telling you is the wood is at the right condition for the bad fungi, the rotters, to move in. It's saying "you're drying too slow in warm conditions, hurry up or you'll see shrooms next".
In the 1830 census a number of my ancestors reported their occupation as "turpentine", tapping the resin of longleaf southern pine. I guess we come by the term Tarheel honest. Their clothes must have been kindling for the next winter ;D. I lit the fire in the shop today with the drawknifed bark and cambium of some timbers I sawed last week. You can light the stove without paper and just a match with a little of that resinous stuff.
BTW, way off topic, a ramble surfaced ::). That occupation does not appear after the war. There is the story down through the family of the night of the blood red sunset. One son was laying in a field outside of Petersburg, it was the breakout and he had caught canister and grape in both legs when they ended up in a 400 yard run across an open field in the crossfire of two forts. Another general was bearing down on the folks at home. The light was from him burning that turpentine forest for torchlight to march by. The war ended a week later, I cannot imagine how they must have felt, if only it had ended a week earlier. When times are a little tough here I remember they knew how to really dig in and push. I sure don't want to get to the big fishing hole and have everyone slide to the far end of the bench :).
This is logger country. The family all has stihl and with the colapse of that industry the pawn shops are full of them but i dont have enough trees left to justify spending $400 on a used saw regardless of how good it is
A bowsaw is always handy for camping, cheap, and will do a log or three. OK my ancestors will just have to understand, I've seen gay Paree, power tools :D
hahaha! Might even work off a few of these pounds im carrying around too
It's good for you, not neccessarily good to you :D
A little more bark sap stuff came to mind. I used the term cambium for that layer of slippery inner bark. That is a misnomer but is the common use, it's really inner bark and it is carrying food as well as lots of protective resin ducts. When you peel that layer off set some aside and watch it for a day or two. as it turns brown think about what else you know that turns brown after you cut it open, lots of sweet fruits. You can survive on the inner bark if you've run out of shoes to eat, don't think I'd smoke after a meal :P.
The cambium technically is one or two cells thick and is right at the interface of bark and wood. That is where growth is happening. As those cells divide one moves in to become wood and the other moves out to become bark. In the spring when that dividing is really going on the bark "slips" easily. You may be at that point down south where the loosening had begun. Enzyme triggers go off inside the tree to signal "its spring, fire it up" and it lays down new bark and that wide, light colored, low density, springwood ring of wood. It takes the entire rest of the year to lay down the dark "summerwood" ring of dense, thick walled cells. If you're looking for a strong board you're looking for a high percentage of dense rings compared to light ones. A tree that couldn't roar into the spring moisture and sun but was tempered a little bit within its stand of neighbors. A field grown tree often is largely wide low density springwood. In the winter the bark is as tightly bound as it is going to be and then a few weeks later in that spring flush it is as loose and easy to peel as it is going to be, I've gotten the bark off of a large poplar log in one piece in early june, looked like a culvert. For those of you that play in the woods, pay attention to the slip and the summer solstice and get back to me, I suspect those weeks around that time trip the tighten up trigger with the changing light. Soo, you're going to know where that tree was at in its' growing season pretty soon here :). I hope it slides off easily rather than having to be about chipped off.
Off to try to convert the 6v posi ground tractor to 12 volt... lets hope I don't let the magic blue smoke out d*
Okay this job sucks. Couple hours and only have four feet of one side done. Guess its not ready yet.
Bark comes off easy enough but that under layer sucks. And it is starting to blue stain just a bit. Its mid 70's here. I dont mind a little staining i guess
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Not real sure what you are using to peel but I found a draw-knife works best. It has to be sharp otherwise it will just skip over the slick stuff. Generally I had to go back over where the larger bark was to get the underlayer(sap layer) at the same time. Given the length you have to work with I would probably cut it into manageable lengths that you will be using. Makes moving (rolling over) a lot easier.
I've been getting sticky the past few days, this is a pic showing the outer and inner bark of some younger bark in white pine, I'm way up the tree here, much easier than what you're dealing with in several ways. I have the knife at a cutting angle to get the outer bark loose and can usually hold the drawknife about upright and scrape the inner bark off.
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Yours is as ready as its ever going to be, the only thing that will make it looser now is bugs and decay... you're in a race with them as it warms up. Blue explodes above 80 degrees.
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There is a special kind of fun when a circle mill hits a huge pocket of liquid pitch. Let's just say
it was more than good lye soap could handle, I had lamp oil in my beard before it was over :D. I gigged back and set an old jar under the strongest flow and have some resin... for something ???. The reason I'm showing this is that lumber graders look for what they call massed pitch. Fatwood, lighter knot. Look at the wood alongside the damage to the left. The wood in that area is totally saturated with pitch, there is what to keep an eye out for. It's a telltale of damage to the wood structurally, look closely for splits, cracks, insect damage... what caused it? This is essentially a wicked puss pocket in that tree, remember we can heal trees cannot they can simply encapsulate, cover, and move on. This tree filled that damaged area with antiseptic to keep wood destroyers out. If you see massed pitch find the cause. There is another board I lost track of, if I see it again I'll post a pic. A round spot of massed pitch and little balls of lead, somebody had shot my tree. Judging by the spread and depth, I think I know who did it d*.
Did pretty good with this tree till I got to the butt log, it's my first honker in over a year. Michelle helped with the first two turns and I didn't want to pull her down from the garden for the third. She calls it testoterone poisoning :D. A direct conversation with some body parts said "that ain't bright".
A friend of mine is sending me a set of draw knifes. I was actually just real bored yesterday so i went at it using a machetie to get the main bark off and as much of the under layer as i could. Then i went at it with a hand plane. Got that far before i figured i would wait for the knifes to get here.
There is a lot of small beetles under the bark. They are not into the wood just that under layer. Its 80 here now. Any way to stop that blue stain or does just getting the bark off stop it? Right now its not deep and a lot of it i was able to plane off.
I am not milling this log, i will use it whole as a ceter support for ridge beam. More decrotive then anything.
There is a wound at the bottom of that log. Yhats why its not peeled all the way to the end. I was cutting that end off before my saw died half way through it. My neighbor has a nice stihl, mabey if i bring him some gumbo he will let me use it.
Sap Sap. Funny you should mention it. I started framing the bathroom in the garage apartment a few weeks ago. The other day I was measuring for flooring and noticed a long line of sap maybe 1/4"X1/8" X 14" long running down the surface of one of the 2X4's. It all originated from a very small defect in the 2X4 maybe 1/16" X 1". I guess it waited until I turned it verticle to run.
This morning I had to clean a watergap out and rid up in the pasture from a large white pine that lost several limbs in the last wet snow we got. I would say the limbs were about 5-7" diam and were a busted where they split off. Talking about sap. I have learned the hard way to wear gloves but occassionally they have to come off to sharpen the saw. That reminds me "where is the WD40"? Best that I have found to remove most of it.
WD, good idea, never thought of it, those petro solvents are not good for your hide that's for sure. We have a big bonfire pile from that snow, it took a lot of field edge pine branches down where they were big and reaching out for the light. I'll wait for it to green up around here before torching them, we're still under the spring burning ban till things leaf out. That snow Thursday dumped 5" real quick and was gone by the next day, 70 today. Just got the honker done and in the truck, 3 6x8's and some nice 1x16's ;D (eye candy for the sawyer, I'll probably bust them in half)
The bark beetles are wearing spores of various fungi on them as they move around. As well, the bark, soil, and air are always full of spores. The sooner you get up out of the splash, peeled, under shelter and drying the better.
Fungi need air, temperature, moisture and food
The ways to stop blue are to deny it air, that is the reason for ponding or sprinkling logs, a sheet of water keeps the fungi from getting oxygen.
Below about 50 degrees it is inactive, so cold works
Deny it moisture, it cannot grow if the wood is below about 25% moisture content
And finally, poison the food. The log home stores sell some products that will do the trick. Clorox will do some but it is not great for the wood and is gone pretty quick. Borate is low tox but is only somewhat effective with blue.
In the back yard I'm trying to grow fungi on some oak logs and having a hard time getting it established. So far I'm good with blue mold and not so good with useful ones. The shiitake mushrooms bring good money so we're playing with them this year. It looks alot like my gardening efforts, I can grow killer weeds ;D
I always wondered whybi see the log mills around here watering all the logs.
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Today the bark peeled like butter. I did four times as much in 1/4 the time. Of course i havent planed it off yet.
But the reason the bark just about fell off is that therd is a ton of bug activity under the bark. I hit huge patcbes of larve.
Now i just need to cut it and flip it to do the other sode and get it off the ground. Waiting for my neighbor to gdt home to barrow his saw
My new to me toy. It cost me a .357 magnum (not full cost) but i am back to work
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Sitting here sharpening the chain, this baby cuts like butter.
Much more effective on trees :)
I am partial to that color.
I got my bar back at 10:53 Friday nite. I heard the tree finally drop after 2 days thinking "how long do I have to wait".
Quote from: Don_P on April 21, 2013, 07:22:25 PM
Much more effective on trees :)
I am partial to that color.
I got my bar back at 10:53 Friday nite. I heard the tree finally drop after 2 days thinking "how long do I have to wait".
Surely didn't get it stuck. Does anyone ever use wedges anymore?
Umm, one of my plastic ones is stuck in a log at the mill, the other is in the truck, but even so I've made them with the saw in the woods. So yup, et up with the dumb butt d*. I took the backstrap out and it sat basswards on the saw , doh, read that one wrong, against all logic it kept looking like it wanted to go uphill. It didn't ::).
I had cut the really nice white oak and it fell as planned, the big ones I'll look at for days or more before actually taking a saw to them. This one was a relatively small but tall locust I was just getting out of the way before dropping a big chestnut oak... that does a full 180 in about 20 feet. I think that'll clear the path to the tower on the next mountain. The old farm use skidder truck decided it had had enough by this afternoon so I sawed up some of the locust logs this afternoon, 2 construction grade 6x6x12' ( very small defects, very little wane), 4 fencepost 6x6x12 and 4 raised bed timbers (6x6's with rotten patches). I also had a couple of short but large maple chunks. Made some live edge thick planks for benches if they dry nice... or stair treads... or dimensional firewood ;D.
My saw is still "new" to me but it is an old 032, before that I had an 028 that was a nice light saw and an 040 Farm Boss that would massage parts of you you didn't know you had :D
I have no idea how i am going to get that log stood up in the middle of my cabin. Its heavier then i expected. I cut it and rolled it over to peel the last bark off the very bottom side and the sap was just pouring out of it.
rofl Been there and done that. After a couple times I learned to take along an axe with the saw. If worse comes to worse I can cut a wedge or start wacking on the tree. d*
Quote from: CjAl on April 21, 2013, 09:34:12 PM
I have no idea how i am going to get that log stood up in the middle of my cabin. Its heavier then i expected. I cut it and rolled it over to peel the last bark off the very bottom side and the sap was just pouring out of it.
Once it dries it will be a lot less weight and more managable.
Yes i thought it was much drier. The top side was dry, aparantly all the sap ran to the bottom. I think i will end up burning my pants from today and i only had a little bit of bark i had already done 2/3 before i cut it off the rest of the tree.
I can winch it up in the house with the jeep but getting it stood up will be interesting. Hope my walls are strong. I also thought about cutting it to the height of my floor joists, builting the loft floor on top of it then putting the top section on to hold the ridge beam. I could notch it so it would just look like the floor joist is notched into the front of the log.
Once the roof is framed and sheathed you can harden up the surrounding framing, put some temporary posts under the ridge, set them over joists not just ply, and wrap a strap around the ridge for a pick point.
On my locust friend, after the pinch I started with the buck saw but it was now a leaner and was looking like a barber chair, I'm getting too old to fly. Got the pole saw and had it cut to where I thought it was just hanging on a little shear wood, but there was actually about a 1x4 of hinge and no open faced notch on the back where it had leaned to. The wind would surely get it, it was those gusts before the rain the other night. Soo, a tension failure, it had to pull that 1x4 apart.
Different barks and the attachment are neat. The maple if you get the knife under the edge btween bark and wood just pops off right now. A little sweet water left on the smooth rippled wood surface, none of that sticky slimy inner pine bark. Then there's the locust inner bark. One homeowner said "it smells like death!", and she wasn't far wrong. The sweet birch is a favorite, wintergreen smell.
I've saved a couple of neat pitch pockets while playing recently, need to scan them. One is a resin pocket in eastern redcedar, the other is in the wood of a red spruce, nearly clear resin. I need to figure out how they are making counterfeit amber :D.
Spring is popping here,
Apples bloomed today, pears and cherries are full bloom, the poplars are leafing.
Problem is i planned to use this to support my ridge beam so i could use two 16' built up beams instead of having to find a 32' beam. So i konda need to get it up before i frame the roof. I think i have a method that will work.
I didn't see any mention in this discussion between the differences of sap and resin.....
There are some good uses for resin----incense is one. Saving a jar of really clear stuff is great for deeper cuts---you glue yourself back together with it (I uses a tongue depressor applicator) it's designed to kill germs---never got an infection. I understand you can make a pretty decent glue by grinding ashes and dried pines needles into a flour and mixing it with the resin
Quote from: Don_P on April 21, 2013, 07:22:25 PM
I got my bar back at 10:53 Friday nite. I heard the tree finally drop after 2 days thinking "how long do I have to wait".
I just left a standing dead pine and an aspen all caught up in neighboring branches this morning. The pine was too skinny for a wedge and the old dead aspen "broke" and set back before I could get deep enough for a wedge. I left the bar and chain there, but have a spare bar for that reason. ;D Hate it when that happens. I'm hoping for lots of winds over the next two weeks.
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Half way there. At least its up on the house off the grou d and under a cover. I put my 12' canopy over it.
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Hey guys. I decided to take the other sections of log in had on the ground and cut them into 4x6 beams for loft floor joists using my chainsaw mill. Turned out better then I expected but the logs I pushed to get as many beams as possible I got a bit closer tothe bark and there is pockets in them with bBeatles large and bugs. I am finding little piles of sawdust around them. How much do I have to worry about this and how do I kill them? I work at Lowes and looked for some borax but can't find any. Is there anything else I can do?
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Btw I went through with a small drill but and cleaned out as much of the holes as I could. Dug out lots of larve. But I want to make certain I didn't miss any and there is also a lot of small pin holes in a few of them and have no idea what's in there