# Sorta logging..... or scrounging



## barry richardson (Dec 8, 2017)

Swung by my local wood dump today and got a couple of nice picks. A big chunk of Eucalyptus of some sort (so many varieties it's hard to tell when it's already cut up) and a couple of burly pieces, thought it was olive, but after scratching on it a little, it's probably African Sumac. Stuff to keep me busy for a while, the photo of the cant shows the nice curl in the eucalyptus, got a couple of big bowl blanks from the chunk, the burls will make several small turnings...

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## The100road (Dec 8, 2017)

Nice score!

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## Sprung (Dec 8, 2017)

Very cool! You find some of the best stuff at that wood dump of yours.

Reactions: Agree 4


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## Tom Smart (Dec 8, 2017)

We don't have a wood dump around here, just a dump. 

I'm jealous.

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## Nature Man (Dec 9, 2017)

What a treasure trove! Keep harvesting the wood dump as much as you can, as who knows how much longer it will be available! Chuck

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## sprucegum (Dec 9, 2017)

Just wondering are these from ornamental plantings that have been pruned or removed? Some of it sounds a little exotic even for Az. There is a stump dump near my home but access is restricted by a locked gate. If contractors or individuals want to dump they have to contact the town road foreman to get access, if they leave it unlocked people will dump old furniture, appliances, and tires. Once or twice a year a mulch supplier brings in a big tub grinder and processes the whole mess into landscaping mulch and biomass for wood burning power plants.


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## barry richardson (Dec 9, 2017)

sprucegum said:


> Just wondering are these from ornamental plantings that have been pruned or removed? Some of it sounds a little exotic even for Az. There is a stump dump near my home but access is restricted by a locked gate. If contractors or individuals want to dump they have to contact the town road foreman to get access, if they leave it unlocked people will dump old furniture, appliances, and tires. Once or twice a year a mulch supplier brings in a big tub grinder and processes the whole mess into landscaping mulch and biomass for wood burning power plants.


Yea pretty much every thing that gets dumped is from yard trees. Most trees are not native, heat loving trees that have been imported from about everywhere to make the City of Phoenix green. Here they mulch the small and green leafy stuff on an industrial scale, but usually the big pieces are put to the side to process for firewood, the rest just sits around in big piles, maybe they will chip it some day.... It is a Hispanic family owned operation And I befriend El Hefe from time to time with turnings I have made from his wood, he loves em and gives me the run of the place....

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## Mike1950 (Dec 9, 2017)

Ours is county owned. NO public access. In 96 we had an ice storm. It stripped the pines-spruces-and all others. It overwhelmed them. Some one had the bright idea to bury it. End of July 97 it started to burn underground. They dumped thousands of gallons of water on it for weeks. Made a spectacular steam cloud- when the wind was right it created a fog-steam road hazard some mornings on the freeway and some complained about the sooty mess it created in their yards. They stopped with the water. we were lucky we had a very wet winter that finally put it out. It really steamed on cold winter mornings. I look at some of the trees they chip and

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## sprucegum (Dec 14, 2017)

I believe that a substantial portion of the country's energy and building material needs could be from wood and other biomass that is wasted. I have trouble keeping on the road when I drive along any forested section of road around here because I get gawking at all of the dead and down timber that I can see within the length of my 100' winch cable. I spend half of my deer hunting time looking at what is lying on the forest floor and wondering if it has spalted. Although dirty burning stoves cause pollution wood is pretty much carbon neutral, growing trees use CO2 and emit it when they are left to rot or are burned. I guess you could say some of us are helping to save the environment when we stop the decay process of spalted wood and make something useful from it. If I were younger I think that just to prove a point that I would use my winch, chainsaw, and mill to harvest enough down and dead timber to build my house. Trouble is when I was younger all of those toys and the time to use them was just a dream. As they say the young man has the ambition but not the means, the old man has the means but not the ambition.

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## rocky1 (Dec 14, 2017)

The loss of potential building materials/energy resulting from storms such as the hurricane we recently experienced here, just asking the highways was staggering. And, rather than attempt to salvage any of it, it was sawed into short pieces loaded on dump trucks and hauled to the landfill by road crews. Made absolutely no sense whatsoever.


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## sprucegum (Dec 14, 2017)

rocky1 said:


> The loss of potential building materials/energy resulting from storms such as the hurricane we recently experienced here, just asking the highways was staggering. And, rather than attempt to salvage any of it, it was sawed into short pieces loaded on dump trucks and hauled to the landfill by road crews. Made absolutely no sense whatsoever.


Fortunately fuel chips are valuable enough up here that if a large amount of material is available at one location someone will process it and haul the chips to a power plant. The wood burning power plant in Burlington VT. even takes unprocessed trees and other wood delivered to the plant in small trucks. They even do Christmas trees for a few days in Jan.


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## Mike1950 (Dec 14, 2017)

sprucegum said:


> Fortunately fuel chips are valuable enough up here that if a large amount of material is available at one location someone will process it and haul the chips to a power plant. The wood burning power plant in Burlington VT. even takes unprocessed trees and other wood delivered to the plant in small trucks. They even do Christmas trees for a few days in Jan.



We started down that path- using wood waste for power in late 60's but the treehuggers and sierra club took over timber management in PNW and we now have a much more effective timber management tool.

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## sprucegum (Dec 14, 2017)

Mike1950 said:


> We started down that path- using wood waste for power in late 60's but the treehuggers and sierra club took over timber management in PNW and we now have a much more effective timber management tool.
> 
> View attachment 138324


appears to be fully functional. For whatever reason large forest fires are rare here. Grass and brush fires are common in the spring before things turn green but they rarely burn more than a few acers. Few years back one started not far from my home and the fire chief called in a panic wanting me to bring my tractor to haul indian pumps across rough ground to the fire. When I got there he was very excited and yelled at me to hurry because if it makes it to the woods we are screwed. Not willing to destroy my tractor I slowly pick my way to the blaze that had already made it to the woods. There was still patches of snow in the woods and the fire self extinguished. One of my sons friends works fighting western wildfires and he says the same thing you do about poor forest management being the root of much of the problem.

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## Mike1950 (Dec 14, 2017)

sprucegum said:


> appears to be fully functional. For whatever reason large forest fires are rare here. Grass and brush fires are common in the spring before things turn green but they rarely burn more than a few acers. Few years back one started not far from my home and the fire chief called in a panic wanting me to bring my tractor to haul indian pumps across rough ground to the fire. When I got there he was very excited and yelled at me to hurry because if it makes it to the woods we are screwed. Not willing to destroy my tractor I slowly pick my way to the blaze that had already made it to the woods. There was still patches of snow in the woods and the fire self extinguished. One of my sons friends works fighting western wildfires and he says the same thing you do about poor forest management being the root of much of the problem.



2 million acres this yr in Wa. and Ore. alone. It is stupid- as we speak the lawsuits are starting to prevent burnt trees from being harvested. In 2 yrs the sewers ( spelling is accurate) will drop suit cause the trees will no longer be marketable....

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## rocky1 (Dec 14, 2017)

Oddly enough we have a wood mulch plant here and the yard isn't half full, but none of the trees the highway department cleaned up wound up there to help pay the expenses of clean up.


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## sprucegum (Dec 14, 2017)

Mike1950 said:


> 2 million acres this yr in Wa. and Ore. alone. It is stupid- as we speak the lawsuits are starting to prevent burnt trees from being harvested. In 2 yrs the sewers ( spelling is accurate) will drop suit cause the trees will no longer be marketable....
> 
> View attachment 138331



I guess we have our share of tree huggers but so far it has not gotten out of hand. My son just got the contract to clear cut a 100 acre tract of a town forest that is mature spruce infected with some kind of fungus that kills the trees. Of the 3 person board of town selectmen one felt it would be much better to allow the trees to die and decompose in place, as my son said what a %$#^&*# idiot. Good spruce will cut 20,000 feet /acre and is worth around $300/1000 the town will realize roughly 1/3 of the gross. It is a small rural town I expect $200,000 will make a big dent in the budget.

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## Mike1950 (Dec 14, 2017)

sprucegum said:


> I guess we have our share of tree huggers but so far it has not gotten out of hand. My son just got the contract to clear cut a 100 acre tract of a town forest that is mature spruce infected with some kind of fungus that kills the trees. Of the 3 person board of town selectmen one felt it would be much better to allow the trees to die and decompose in place, as my son said what a %$#^&*# idiot. Good spruce will cut 20,000 feet /acre and is worth around $300/1000 the town will realize roughly 1/3 of the gross. It is a small rural town I expect $200,000 will make a big dent in the budget.


Yes different there- out west feds and states have 100's of millions of acres- it is sickening to see what is happening....


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## Mike1950 (Dec 14, 2017)

It started with the spotted owl needing old growth to nest - Millions of acres for a few of them- but now you can read the truth- damn things were nesting in billboards churches- building. But the barred owl was encroaching their territory and thought they were delicious... We took a whole industry- huge industry down. But that aint all- In washington the schools were funded from logging from state lands-so our taxes went way up at the same time WWPPS happened- we were building 5 Nukes- biggest municipal bond default up to that time... We are the government and we are here to help you............................ I think I am ranting again...

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## sprucegum (Dec 15, 2017)

__ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=405215236600673




Hopefully this link works it is a video of my sons new loader delimbing and slashing some plantation red pine he is harvesting. He has gone almost completely automated with his operation, most days the chainsaws never get out of the tool box. On this job they are harvesting around 100,000 board feet/week red pine is pretty low value bringing only $240/1000 delivered but that is still quite a chunk of change. They use around 100 gallons of diesel every day and are running over a million $ worth of equipment so they need to produce. It is the way things are going in the industry insurance companies hate chainsaws and hand cutting.

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## David Van Asperen (Dec 15, 2017)

Our landfill is over full of. Urban trees and wasted wood from pallets and other building sites . I am positive there is more than enough lumber wasted in our area to make all the Habitat for Humanity homes that made in South Dakota. If it has a crack or a nail or screw in it it gets tossed. I wish I could have all the trees that people pay the landfill to dump them there. I wood be so happy and tired

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## barry richardson (Dec 15, 2017)

We can thank the lawyers and the people who do frivolous lawsuits for not being allowed to get wood from dumps, the operators and municipalities are advised by their legal council to say no. Afraid that someone will claim that that they were harmed by the operator's negligence..... and sue for a few million. Probably a requirement of their insurers too, the same for waste wood or dead trees on public land around here. At this point I gave up on asking for permission, I just take it, and if I ever get hassled for it I will plead ignorance lol

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## Tom Smart (Dec 15, 2017)

barry richardson said:


> We can thank the lawyers and the people who do frivolous lawsuits for not being allowed to get wood from dumps, the operators and municipalities are advised by their legal council to say no. Afraid that someone will claim that that they were harmed by the operator's negligence..... and sue for a few million. Probably a requirement of their insurers too, the same for waste wood or dead trees on public land around here. At this point I gave up on asking for permission, I just take it, and if I ever get hassled for it I will plead ignorance lol


It's the same in this area, Barry. I picked up some wood from our land fill and happened to mention it to the attendant when weighing out and he made me turn around and put it back in the dump. Just crazy. Like you I just don't say anything now.

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## sprucegum (Dec 16, 2017)

I don't feel as bad about the waste around here after hearing all of these stories. With several wood burning power plants in Me. NH. & VT. and the sale ability of ground wood for mulch a lot of our wood gets used. Waste disposal is very expensive in this part of the country so recycling heavy bulky material is pretty easy to justify . I still wish we could find a economical way to salvage more of the dead and down stuff in the forest. I have around 30 acres of woodland and can't even keep the junk wood picked up on that.


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## JR Parks (Dec 17, 2017)

rocky1 said:


> The loss of potential building materials/energy resulting from storms such as the hurricane we recently experienced here, just asking the highways was staggering. And, rather than attempt to salvage any of it, it was sawed into short pieces loaded on dump trucks and hauled to the landfill by road crews. Made absolutely no sense whatsoever.


Same thing here Rocky I have never seen so much live oak in Rockport Tx after Harvey all burned to get rid of it


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## sprucegum (Dec 18, 2017)

rocky1 said:


> The loss of potential building materials/energy resulting from storms such as the hurricane we recently experienced here, just asking the highways was staggering. And, rather than attempt to salvage any of it, it was sawed into short pieces loaded on dump trucks and hauled to the landfill by road crews. Made absolutely no sense whatsoever.


One of the main snowmobile trails in the area used to cross land owned buy my dad. A few years back one of his mature pine trees blew over and blocked the trail and some snowmobile club members in charge of trail maintenance sawed the butt log into 12" blocks and threw it out of the trail, when the old man found out about it we almost had WW3. The trail system is subject to the whims of the landowners, he called the club president and gave him an earful then fell trees across both ends of the trail and put up tail closed signs. After the dust settled and a lot of groveling and promises never to do it again the trail did reopen. The result was some new club policy, they now limb out fallen trees and use the trail groomer to move the whole tree or logs to the side for the landowner to salvage if he wishes.

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## Pharmacyguy-Jim (Sep 2, 2018)

barry richardson said:


> We can thank the lawyers and the people who do frivolous lawsuits for not being allowed to get wood from dumps, the operators and municipalities are advised by their legal council to say no. Afraid that someone will claim that that they were harmed by the operator's negligence..... and sue for a few million. Probably a requirement of their insurers too, the same for waste wood or dead trees on public land around here. At this point I gave up on asking for permission, I just take it, and if I ever get hassled for it I will plead ignorance lol


Easier to get forgiveness than permission...


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