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Beetle kill pine

Started by zombie woods, February 20, 2013, 07:20:17 PM

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zombie woods

Looks to be a endless supply for the taking in Colorado and Wyoming alone .
Makes beautiful floors with the blue grey stain .
Seems before the realestate bust some large operations set up to salvage and mill beetle kill but have since down sized to near nothing .
Was told trees are becoming a hazard around campgrounds power lines and roads and the gov would eventually have to pay contractors to remove standing dead trees in dangerous locations .
Any small operations milling beetle kill salvage ?
What burns my butt about the save the world enviromentalist green sorts , they like to talk a good game about conservation , enviroment etc . but the moment they have to pay a little to save the world all bets are off .

ZW.

HaroldSiefke

What part of Wyoming is it that you heard this about I am only six miles from the border. I love to saw dead pine its awesome to saw. Pine is a very nice wood to saw because it does not warp and twist like the other woods around here.     
Harold

beenthere

Harold
Which 'pine' do you like to saw? Lodgepole?  Ponderosa? ?
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

zombie woods

I saw mountians red with standing dead lodgepole from Larmie north
they say Colorado has same problem .
not enough back to back cold days year after year to keep beetles in check .
Climate change is blamed they reckon 80% of the pine forrest could be killed off in Col & Wyo .

zw

hunterbuild

I milling a lot of bug ponderosa pine. I did a store interior with it. I just did a wall in our bedroom with it. I'm working on a small cabin addition. All the framing and interior will be bug pine. I'm getting all the logs for free. It cuts a little harder than green pine, but its dry in no time. It does get punkie if left standing dead to long.

JBS 181

I saw quite a bit of beetle wood and yes there is alot of it. They just reopened a sizable mill in Saratoga Wyoming which is in the heart of alot of beetle wood. The mill employs around 80 people or more and I dont think that includes any of the loggers, truckers etc. It will be good to see some of this cleaned up before it goes up in smoke. There are a couple of pellet mills in the heart of this area as well. One of the processes in involves sacking up these pellets in those large totes and they are using them in the oil fields around North Dakota. I believe they are used for clean up of some sort maybe kind of like floor dry on a larger scale.

drobertson

ZW, how deep do the bug hole go into the log?    david
only have a few chain saws I'm not suppose to use, but will at times, one dog Dolly, pretty good dog, just not sure what for yet,  working on getting the gardening back in order, and kinda thinking on maybe a small bbq bizz,  thinking about it,

GeneWengert-WoodDoc

To enhance the market opportunities and prices for lumber, if you are sawing beetle killed pine on the Front Range, consider joining the Denim Pine Marketing Association.  They have the copyright for the name of such wood; it is called DENIM PINE (TM). 
Gene - Author of articles in Sawmill & Woodlot and books: Drying Hardwood Lumber; VA Tech Solar Kiln; Sawing Edging & Trimming Hardwood Lumber. And more

Bill Gaiche

Got into Grand Lake, Co today. It seems that there must be 85% of the trees are dead all around the area from the beetles. I see new growth in places where they have been cut, but will take years to replace all the dead. Its really depressing to see all those trees dying and very, very few will ever see a saw blade. If a fire ever starts it looks like it could be bad. bg

Magicman

Bill, I have seen what you are describing.  There is just so much of it that is not economically harvestable, or maybe even uneconomically harvestable.   :-\
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HaroldSiefke

Quote from: beenthere on February 20, 2013, 07:39:59 PM
Harold
Which 'pine' do you like to saw? Lodgepole?  Ponderosa? ?
I like to saw lodgepole pine. It is easy to saw. My blades seem like they stay sharp forever until I hit foreign objects like a broad head or a rock. I have not sawed ponderosa yet. I went and cleared a coworkers new building sight and got some ponderosa pine there but have not got it to the mill yet. To slick of roads and don't want to travel that far every day to  take the mill there.
Harold

GeneWengert-WoodDoc

Actually, what will happen is that we will have a drought and then lightening will light the woods on fire.  As dry as the wood will be and the close spacing between trees and the fuel on the ground, the fire will be too hot to control for many days or weeks.  We already have seen this happen south of Denver. 

I was working with the US forest Service in 1975 and we predicted such a fire in Yellowstone, but the landowner ignored the paper and suggestions for correction prior to the big fire.
Gene - Author of articles in Sawmill & Woodlot and books: Drying Hardwood Lumber; VA Tech Solar Kiln; Sawing Edging & Trimming Hardwood Lumber. And more

ST Ranch

If the beetle killing the lodgepole pine  9and ponderosa] is a bark beetle, they only eat the live cambium under the bark and do not bore into the tree, however given time, secondary borers may move in and bore into the stem.
Agree with Gene re - fires. Up here in BC we have been dealing with the MP beetle for 10 yrs or so and there is still lots not being used - some plants now built that are using it to make wood pellets, but that will only work if it does not burn up first. We have had a few big fires, couple years ago and the old forest service just got to sit back and watch it - weather change is usually the stopping factor. We only need to look down under at the fires they had this past month or so and if we start seeing these conditions in the mid US, I feel for the folks living there.  Tom
LT40G28 with mods,  Komatsu D37E crawler,
873 Bobcat with CWS log grapple,

hunterbuild

I'm living in the Black Hills not far from Mount Rushmore. We are just waiting for the big fire. We are low on snow and rain, and thousands of dead pines. One of the ways of controlling the beetle is cut and chunk. Seem to me to add fuel to the fire? :-\ 





reride82

I was talking to a FWP ranger about this and he said that after the trees lose their needles and sap there is less fire hazzard since that is what makes for a hot forest fire. But I haven't seen any other documentation on this though. Where I am, we have been surrounded by beetle killed pine for about a decade. It really is a sad sight to drive from Butte, MT to Helena, MT for all of the dead trees, like most say a 10-15% survival rate. I have sawed both Ponderosa and Lodgepole. Some of the dense, and very dry lodgepole can be quite hard. I don't know how many cords of firewood I have cut over the years from beetle killed pine.
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waho

That's the reason why I bought a LT10.Got a few acres in Co with dead or dying trees. Decided that I would make something useful out of them. Can't have too many sheds. Unfortunately the building industry is hesitant to use beetle kill wood for framing, interior or trim use seems to be ok. How do add a picture?

thecfarm

Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

GeneWengert-WoodDoc

When pine trees die, they do not lose their sap; they lose their moisture that's in them, but not the resin.  The resin is what really likes to burn.  Also, dry wood burns hotter than green wood.  So, I do believe that the Forester's comments are not accurate.  Perhaps he was thinking that when the needles fall, the risk of a crown fire is gone.  Here is what the ColoradomFS says about beetle killed pine:

As trees weaken and fall down, logs and large branches accumulate on the ground. These heavy fuels increase the risk of hot surface fires that are hard to control. The heavy fuels likely will be in contact with lighter, flashy fuels like grasses, flowers, and seedling trees that grow more vigorously as a result of the added sunlight and moisture available in dead stands. The combined
increase in surface temperature and decrease in fuel moisture also may increase the probability of both human and natural fire ignitions. Wildfires can be intense, long, and difficult to suppress, and may cause severe soil damage.
Falling trees and large fuels on the ground threaten firefighter safety. These fuels also create special challenges for fireline construction and firefighter access.

They have an excellent article about all aspects of beetle-killed pine at
http://csfs.colostate.edu/pdfs/mpb_newspaper_insert_final.pdf
Gene - Author of articles in Sawmill & Woodlot and books: Drying Hardwood Lumber; VA Tech Solar Kiln; Sawing Edging & Trimming Hardwood Lumber. And more

Bill Gaiche

MM, you are right. Has to be a good market in order to pay for all the roads, equipment and of course those dreaded permits. I suppose that those trees will be good for just so long before they are junk. bg

BlackPR

I own 37 acres of almost pure lodgepole pine about 5 miles from the Wyoming Border.   We got an LT15 specifically because we knew the beetles were coming and we were gonna lose a lot of old growth.   We're extremely lucky because the property used to be an old logging camp.  Whether by accident or design, the trees are varying ages and not 100% old-growth that the beetles like so much.

The younger trees can resist the beetle, but we've lost most of the old trees.   We're using the beetlekill to make a cabin -- this summer I'm going to make my first attempt at live-edge siding, and rough sawn T&G for the floors.   Then we move on to attempting some furniture and other furnishings for the cabin.   All that said, and probably 100 trees into firewood so far, we still have thousands of beetle-kill trees. 

I would be very interested in any sawyers in the area who might want to grab some of them to work with.  I'm more than happy to share. :)  It is a fantastic wood to saw, and very forgiving to do any sort of wood-working with.   Attached is a table made from some of my beetle-kill.

There is a Forest Service study floating around that shows the longevity of Lodgepole in structural applications is very nearly as long as western red ceder (surprised me, if true).   


thecfarm

BlackPR,welcome to the forum. Good luck sawing your cabin out with your LT15. Did you just buy it? How are you getting the logs to the sawmill?
Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

BlackPR

Quote from: thecfarm on February 24, 2013, 11:07:53 AM
BlackPR,welcome to the forum. Good luck sawing your cabin out with your LT15. Did you just buy it? How are you getting the logs to the sawmill?

Unfortunately, it's really only the finish work (siding, interior, etc. that we were able to mill for this project).  Not so much because of a lack of desire, but a lack of cooperation from Larimer County Colorado and their building codes..   We're going on our third year with the mill and have built sheds and various other small projects. 

We have a fleet of ATV's, tractors and winches that we use to do what we need to with the logs.   I use a Massey-Furgeson MF-50 Backhoe/Front Loader to move the big logs.  I have a set of forks for that that let us set things into place as needed.   The mill rests on a bit of an uphill platform so we can drive right up to it and lower the logs down a bit easier (which I could say that was by design, but it was kind of accidental). Getting them into place usually involves winching them out of dense forest and dragging them to a staging area where we can then pick 'em up and move onto the mill.    We're lucky that we're not dealing with tons of gravel.

I was looking for a picture that kind of showed how we were set up... But we have a drive through loop that goes around the mill... with a staging area in front.  Only picture I have on this computer is one from our very first cut (two years ago!), but it shows the basic setup.  I think this was our very first cut on the mill...  Which you can tell by the gloriously crooked cant.


BlackPR

Just to get back on topic (mostly)... here's a few other things done with local Beetle-Kill.

This was my first real wood-working project with Blue Pine...  essentially just an attempt at a live edge end-table.




This is some blue pine flooring.  It's become somewhat popular around here, but it's SOFT and damages easily.  This is NOT my work... someone else did this.   I will be doing something similar in my cabin, but won't plane the tops -- I'll keep it a rougher rough-sawn look.


Schramm

I was just reading about this exact subject the other day, that is such a beautiful wood.  Here is a youtube video on a company that exclusively uses this wood.  Thought you would like to watch it.

http://youtu.be/MZIATpT0O24

POSTON WIDEHEAD

Black PR, that's some pretty stuff. Blue stain Pine is poplar popular around here. People love it.
You've done a nice job.

Where are you from? Welcome to the Forum.  smiley_thumbsup


SCHRAMM.........Loved your video. This guy has a plan and my support. Great idea he has.
                        Thanks for sharing this.
The older I get I wish my body could Re-Gen.

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