Project for tomorrow!!-Moving Very Large Red Oak Logs With Horses

[Tim Harrigan]

Carl Russell;15597 wrote:

The butt log, being 10′ long, and probably at least 30″ will scale around 300-325bf, which at 11000#/MBF for NRO, should put it near 3500#,
Carl

Carl, with your rules-of-thumb for timber density do you allow for likely moisture of the wood? I was looking at the USFS info and they list red oak at 63 lb/cu-ft green and 46 lb air-dry. Based on your description of the butt log I figured 70 cu-ft so on the ground at 3200 to 4400 lb depending upon if it was alive when it fell and how long it had been laying there. Does the 11000#/MBF refer to sawn lumber, what is in the log, rather than the log itself?

[Carl Russell]

My numbers are pulled out of my head from years as a log buyer for a sawmill. I know I read them somewhere, probably USFS Bulletin, or a textbook, but we used to figure softwood logs at about 8000# per thousand board feet of live round logs, pine and spruce for example, hemlock at 9000#, most hwd around 10000#, and red oak at around 11000#.

I have no real data to support those figures, and I am relying on functional memory from 25 years ago. So I’m open to education on this.

Carl

[Tim Harrigan]

It is really just a minor issue for clarification on my part. Still trying to mentally calibrate that log and betting it was a good 4000 lb.

[Tim Harrigan]

Yes, that was a good conference. Were you there?

[Author]

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