By far, the most important decision any timberland owner can make is whether to harvest the timber on their property. There is no other decision that will have a greater affect on the present and future of their forest and the returns (financial, recreational, or otherwise) it will provide. Unfortunately, there is no easy answer…
If you are looking to buy timberland or are analyzing the potential return on a timber harvest, a prime question is how much wood there is on an acre of land. While there is a tremendous amount of variation, the average acre of forest land in the United States contains 15.7 cords (or 39.3 tons)…
I don’t need to tell you that trees are massive. Towering above all else, these behemoths can really pack some serious heft. In fact, by mass, trees are the largest organisms in the world. But just how much does a tree weigh? Most “average” sized full-grown trees weigh about one ton, with larger trees weighing…
To many in the modern world, “logging” is a dirty word. It conjures up imagery of men with chainsaws deforesting a landscape and destroying the environment. Nothing can be farther from the truth. While both chainsaws and clearcuts are still tools used in modern forestry, in reality, foresters, loggers, and landowners use a large toolbox…
A timber harvest is perhaps the most exciting part of being a timberland owner. In many cases, landowners have waited years to reap the rewards of their acreage, and it may have been their entire reason for buying the property to begin with. There are many aspects of harvesting that are crucial to understand and…
If you’ve been interested in sawmills for any length of time, you have likely seen the term “kerf” floating around. Did you ever wonder what that term meant? Simply put, kerf is the term for the width of the saw cut and the associated volume loss that occurs from sawing or milling. It is the…
In much of the deciduous forests of northeastern United States and eastern Canada, hardwood trees dominate. Oak, maple, birch, hickory, and cherry dot the forested landscape with green leaves in the summer and orange, yellow, and red foliage in the fall. Unlike softwoods, which are used mostly for structural lumber, the wood of these hardwoods…
Heating your home with firewood can be incredibly rewarding. It’s cheaper, arguably more effective, and more comfortable than any other method of heating a home. More than anything, however, it is simply more satisfying, particularly if you grow, harvest, and process your own firewood. Unfortunately, the benefits come at the cost of increased planning and…
Like the spear that can pierce any shield and the shield that can deflect any spear, a chainsaw chain that will never dull has been the unobtainable, paradoxical jewel sought by mankind for millennia–or at least the 70 or so years since the chainsaw was invented. In this noble quest, many have looked to carbide…
Spark arrestor screens can be a great annoyance to chainsaw operators everywhere. Spark arrestors are the mesh screens on the exhaust of virtually all modern chainsaws, and they can occasionally get clogged with carbon, greatly affecting chainsaw performance. Predictably, many are tempted to simply throw these easily-removable screens away, but is that really a good…