Pulpwood Specs

[g_man]

I was reading a University of Minnesota Extension Service publication and it made the following statement about pulpwood top diameter. It did not specify hard or softwood.

"Minimum DBH for pulpwood trees is 5 inches. Minimum top diameter inside bark is the larger of either 4 inches or 50 percent of tree DBH. Minimum pulpwood top diameter inside bark for a tree with a DBH of 12 inches is therefore 6 inches."

Is this typical and what is the reason ?
I don't cut much pulp but the little I do cut I take to a local log yard. Their "spec" for softwood pulp in 8' bolts is down to 3". I bring anything I can get 8' out of that is 3" or more. This includes limbs on pasture pine and the tops of sawlog trees that dont come close to meeting the 50% of DBH rule.
They have never complained or said anything. I am wondering if I have been unknowingly violating an unwritten rule ?

gg

 

[Ron Wenrich]

The university may be looking at specs and converting them to how to scale timber.  You only scale to a height where the inside diameter would be 4".  But, that doesn't make it an industry spec.

Specs are set by the guy buying the wood.  He may reject bolts due to size or shape.  A lot depends on their equipment and what the pulp is being used for.  A guy with a whole tree chipper really doesn't care what the minimum specs are. 

[g_man]

OK thanks. That makes sense about using the rule as a scaleing parameter and not a product definition. The log yard seems fair but not shy about culling stuff they dont want. They always took my softwood junk and cleanup. I was just trying to understand where Univ of Minn was coming from. Most things I learn is from making mistakes so I thought I woud ask. Thanks again.

gg

[SwampDonkey]

Our minimum dbh here has always been 4" as a 4 foot stick of pulpwood was still popular up until recently. I still think Fraser's pulp mill in Edmundston, NB will buy 4 foot. I've seen tops taken down to 2.5" on softwood thinnings. In fact, I marked trails on 150 acres of crown land one time (2004) that was thinned with brush saws 11 years before. Nothing was bigger than 8" and and a good many smaller than 4". Whoever in the company cruised it for volume was way off. They claimed 36 cords per acre total merchantable, I laughed. The height was not there to get even close to that number. Sixteen feet was about all that could be used on the trees. Might be the odd one with a bit more footage. They would barely average 35 feet total height. Rest was fertilizer material. It was more like 12-18 cord per acre, depended on where you stood. My trails were a lot closer than their cruise lines, 25 meters. And these crown cruises are suppose to be signed off by an RPF. 

[Ron Scott]

Yes, to what Ron W. said. We cruise merchantable pulpwood to a 3.5 inch (4")  inside bark top diameter.

[Tom]

What is the reasoning behind the specs?   I've heard the tree-length loggers here talk of some mills that will take a 3" top.

[SwampDonkey]

It just depends on what works well for the mill Tom. It will also depend on what it takes to fill the wood yard. In other words they can be flexible when they need to. There are many mills here that run the same specs because they have the same technology. Also, if you know their specs, it reduces the chance of hauling the load of wood back to the woods yard and telling the boss the mill don't want it. 

Specs give length, min top, max but, rot %, knot size, sweep tolerance etc.

Here is a spec sheet one of the Marketing Boards maintains with mills they have contracts with up here:

http://ysc.nb.ca/PRICELIST.html

[g_man]

The Spec Sheet and Price List is very interesting and informative. Thanks for posting that SwampDonkey. The yard I can haul softwood pulp to pays $22 a ton for 8' and $28 a ton for 20' down to 3" any species no minimum load. For me it is little better than a break even deal so I only use them when I have to. I don't sell roadside because you never know when and if they are going to come get the stuff.

[Ron Scott]

One should always check and know the specs. of the mill they are selling to. They can change from time to time depending upon their needs as Swamp said. One doesn't want to learn the specs. the hard way by having their truck load rejected.

[Tom]

It just depends on what works well for the mill Tom.

So, there is no real reasoning that the mills care to use to justify the specs, eh?

I was hoping that there was an answer like, "the maximum butt size is because...... and the miniimum butt size is because......"

Are they taking small tops because they use them for fuel, or because they make fence posts, or because their equipment is so good that they can debark a 3" stick and chip it into pulpwood?

Are they remarketing the butts as sawlogs or chipping everything into pulp.  Maybe certain species are used only for fuel, eh?

[Jamie_C]

The mills around here have various specs because they produce different pulp / paper products and have vastly different debarkers or chipper systems.

One pulp mill here wants a 3" top with sound stain allowed but no rot, minimal sweep and no crooks .. max butt is around 20"

A chipping operation here will take almost anything you can get to the side of the road in one piece but the max top size is 12"

Another chipping operation will take a max size of 20" ... any species mix.

No pulp mills or chipping operations here sort wood out for other uses ... it all goes through the debarking / chipping sysytems and used for something. Chips that meet grade make it into the mill, fines, bark, off spec chips, etc all get used for other purposes be they biomass for the boilers or raw material for some other purpose.

[SwampDonkey]

Some mills will separate wood. And have slashers on the yard doing it. Because they also know a sawlog is value added. And if they have another facility that processes softwood logs it will be sent up there. But if a sawmill shuts down for months, their pulp mill may take everything as pulp. So in order to separate product they have to be in full production. They were always required to fully utilize the resource as a stipulation of their license agreement. But, if I as a private woodlot owner, sell a log to a mill that says "no high grading" then they will not buy the lesser grade top without the but log. Well, why should that mill get all the lower grade and the competition get the graded but while rejecting the lower grades? It might seem one sided, but depends on what side of the fence your on.

[Jamie_C]

Some mills will separate wood. And have slashers on the yard doing it. Because they also know a sawlog is value added. And if they have another facility that processes softwood logs it will be sent up there. But if a sawmill shuts down for months, their pulp mill may take everything as pulp. So in order to separate product they have to be in full production. They were always required to fully utilize the resource as a stipulation of their license agreement. But, if I as a private woodlot owner, sell a log to a mill that says "no high grading" then they will not buy the lesser grade top without the but log. Well, why should that mill get all the lower grade and the competition get the graded but while rejecting the lower grades? It might seem one sided, but depends on what side of the fence your on.

Swamp ... that used to be common practice in sussex & chipman and used to be in plaster rock as well when i last sold wood up there. Here in NS no mill that i am aware of does it ... you cant sort enough 8' wood with a $500,000 yard loader to make it cost effective ... especially when the grapple size is over 1 cord.

[SwampDonkey]

If a mill can't, than how can a logger?

[Jamie_C]

If a mill can't, than how can a logger?

It's a lot easier doing it with a harvester cutting it tree by tree than it is digging it out of a massive woodpile with a huge loader designed for feeding a mill and not running a tiny little grapple the size of one on a forwarder.

Machines that can unload tractor trailers in 10 or 12 grapple fulls at most just cant pick out individual sticks of wood.

I am sure someone has designed a fully automated system that could do something like that in a mill infeed but i don't know of any operating in this province.

[SwampDonkey]

Ah, now I see where your at. But I've seen Nackawic slash on the yards taking out the veneer hardwood, not during the truck unloading. I see operations up here where the logger doesn't buck a thing, all tree length. Someone at the mills must be bucking the logs out. I can't see DNR letting it all go into the meat grinder.

[Ron Wenrich]

I always thought of specs as a way of getting product out of the stream that is unprofitable to use.  The problem with small logs is that there is a high bark/fiber ratio.  Bark has to be filtered out of the system or you get a poorer quality of paper.  I imagine a lot of that has to do with the type of product being produced.

Our local pulp mill produces high quality book paper.  They are real fussy about bark content, especially in chips.  They do mix in some whole tree chips, but that also has a bark limit.  They limit size and sweep because it is too hard on their equipment.  I think they use a drum debarker, so crooked log will have a lot of bark left on it.

I haven't been to the operation, but as the truckers describe it, it goes through a chipper after the debarking.  Too much bark also mean too much dirt and increased downtime.  And, you get things that jam up their chippers.

They have a need of 10% softwood fiber to make their paper.  So, they do pay a premium for softwood pulp, since there is so little in PA.  With the increased utilization of softwoods in stud mills, I imagine the same problems exist in other areas.  Pieces that used to be sent to paper mills no longer are in the product stream.  Mills adapt. 

I know the local mill isn't too big on charred wood or walnut. 

[SwampDonkey]

Ron they are all fussy on bark and foreign material in the mix. And yes it's debarked before grinding if not it's now biomass for steam and power generation. The Nackawic mill uses one mighty bunch of power (32 MW/hour) and produces close to 540 tonnes/day of dissolving grade fibre for rayon. They need 1600 metric tonnes of chips per day for the pulp. They generate 22 MW/hour using 650 GMT of biomass per day in winter. The biomass boiler produces 165,000lb/hr @ 900 psi and 750 F, bunker C is added to the hog fuel burn to boost it to 400,000 lb/hr.

[MountainMan4761]

I see you have listed pulpwood prices earlier in the post, which seem to be for N.B. and northern maine with a few exceptions.  I was wondering if anyone would know where I could find pulpwood pricing for Western Maine.  It would be most helpful as I am new to selling pulpwood and wood like to know there specs for processing.   

[SwampDonkey]

Do you have a state forestry office nearby? Maybe just call the mills your going to do business with. They will give you the specs themselves. And it's a good idea to call before you cut because price and so forth can change without notice.