White Pine out West

[JVK]

This entire forum has White Pine topics from day one. I'm out here on the west coast of Vancouver Island surrounded by WRC, Doug-Fir, well pretty much soft wood heaven. There is some White Pine, not much, but nice fine grain and comes in all the sizes. In my area there is no market for it, so the loggers are told to leave it behind. The odd one makes it to the dryland sort, so I've been buying some of it to saw up.

Is this the same White Pine that grows all over the country? It is beautiful wood with the classic pine smell and all.
Is there a down side to western white pine? Everyone is spoiled here, so marketing could be a tough sell.  Jim

[Okrafarmer]

I believe it is a different species, and I can not tell you anything about the qualities of it or how to market it, but I will say, there is always a market for good lumber-- it's just that sometimes you have to develop the market, and it may not be very near where you live.

Eastern White pine is a lightweight, fairly brittle wood, known for its aesthetic qualities as well as the ease of shaping it with most any wood working tool. It is often used for trimwork and cabinetry, but usually not in cases where it must support a lot of weight. However, if it is thick enough it can be used as structural wood, too. The fact that it makes its limbs in parallel whorls all in one spot means that the strength of any given board, beam, log, etc. is likely to have weak spots where there is a cluster of knots, followed by short clear sections that are relatively strong. Of course there are sections without knots that can be found on high quality logs, especially the butt logs of better specimens, and stronger wood can be found there, but it is still not a particularly strong wood.

You can always tell a member of the white pine family because its needles come in clusters of 5, wheras other pines have needles in clumps of two or three, or in the case of Pinyons, I believe the needles are solitary, if I remember right.

If you mill some of it and it is beautiful, then my advice for marketing it is to have some out where people can see it when they come to buy other stuff. Try not to mill up too much of it at once until you see you can sell it. There may be some overseas or out of province markets you could sell it to, if you can just figure out how.

[WDH]

There are several species of white pine in the West.  There is Western White Pine and Sugar Pine.  The old growth was used as a preferred wood for clear trim and mouldings.  You might think about sawing out shelving boards. 

[JVK]

I looked in my tree books and there are a lot of pine species. Much of the White Pine that I see is long dead with the sapwood
completely rotten. The heart wood is sound, so would this be a fairly rot resistant wood that could be used for exterior purposes such as decks and such? There is a few 48" diameter Pines at the sort now and the "what can I do with with these" ideas are going thru my head.

It seems when I see any log these days, I imagine it sitting on the mill and how I should make the opening cut.  Jim

[Overlength]

Sounds like that heart pine would make beautiful wide plank T&G flooring. I would maybe be running that day and night.  Should be good enough for exterior siding. But sounds like it has plenty competition with the DF and WRC for exterior in your immediate area. Generally makes good interior millwork and S4S 1x6,1x8,1x12 boards for shelving,paneling,retail lumber yards. Often some gets mixed in with Pondesrosa Pine.  Look at cutting and drying and marketing to regional distributors if you have more than local market can absorb.

[Brucer]

Western White Pine --> Pinus Monticola

Up to 1 metre (40") in diameter.

"The non-resinous, straight-grained wood has good dimensional stability, which makes it suitable for mouldings, sashes, frames, doors, interior panelling, and furniture."

A great many years ago the company I worked for had its own foundry -- a very large one. They used Western White Pine almost exclusively for making patterns, mainly because it was so easy to carve.

Western White Pine is not nearly as decay resistant as Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus).

Whitebark Pine & Limber Pine also have needles in clusters of 5 but you only find these trees at higher elevations and the needles are much shorter than White Pine needles.

[SwampDonkey]

Eastern white pine will stand for decades after being fire killed. Talking about the old growth ones here. I've seen whole new spruce-fir forest grow up in dead standing eastern white pine. The upper Mirimachi River drainage area is full of such sites from many fires. My old brook trout fishing grounds.  8)

I don't think there is a lot of difference in the two white pine, both pines have a resinous odor. However, the wood of western white pine is resinous just as eastern white pine, it has resin canals like eastern white pine. The wood can be separated by chromotaxonomy, with compounds specific to each tree. But can't be separated visually with the lumber.

[JVK]

Ok; so I learned that White Pine has resin canals which is quite evident by the end grain. Is this the reason they can stand for decades and still have sound heartwood? If so, then wouldn't the lumber make a good exterior product? Our coastal Hemlock and Balsam doesn't last much more than five minutes in the bush after being cut down without the whole log starting the decay proccess.

[WDH]

Resin canals are designed to bring resin to the outside (bark) of the tree in case of injury or insect attack.  All pines have them.   Not all softwoods do, though.  It is a diagnostic feature.

[JVK]

Would the resin in the some of resinous softwoods be a natuarl wood preservative? Take a D-fir or Pine 2x8 deck plank, apply a good deck paint to it and the inside should stay sound. Right? They pressure treat Balsam and Hemlock here because it is non-resinous and takes the treatment well. The inside of the wood where the treatment didn't penetrate to will rot eventually.

Just trying to come up with alternatives to Red Cedar for some projects. Cedar sawlogs are very spendy for me to purchase. I have some of these White Pine logs, so I'm going to git cuttin!

[Okrafarmer]

I helped my dad put Eastern White Pine siding on our house about 20-25 years ago. It was rough cut, 1X boards. It's still there. It seems to hold up well as long as it's off the ground. If it's on or in the ground, seems like it will still rot.

[Left Coast Chris]

If it is at all like Sugar Pine really watch out for mold when you try to air dry.  It really likes to mold.  I put a fan on for three days and it molded in a large shed but was close to one wall and other sides open.   I do the same with English and black walnut, cedar and sycamore with no problems.

[Brucer]

Wood will not decay if the moisture content is below 19%. That's why the standard for "Kiln Dried" softwood lumber is 19% or less.

The trick to keeping wood from decaying is to make sure there is no place that water can get trapped and retained against the wood. Two boards nailed together and exposed to rain or snow can get moisture trapped between them. If it can't evaporate quickly enough the wood will start to rot. Decayed wood holds moisture even better so you get a cycle set up.

A crack in a timber that's exposed to the weather can have the same problem. I've seen unprotected boxed heart timbers decay from the inside out when a check was facing up.

Rain falling on wood isn't a problem if the wood can shed it right away and not trap and hold moisture.

On the other hand, I've seen WRC decay where two boards were nailed together and left exposed to the rain. Stain and paint-on wood preservative didn't help. Under similar conditions I've seen Spruce and Western White Pine start to decay in a couple of years -- resin channels didn't help them a bit.

[SwampDonkey]

In true balsam fir there are resin canals but mostly traumatic ones and the normal ones are very sparse and rare. Most pitch is in resin bubbles under the bark. If you see the canals in the wood they are darker streaks in other wise almost white wood as they are often chained. And for wood lickers, the wood is slightly salty.  Just add cheese. ;D ;)