[coffeetime]

I asked awhile back about selecting trees to cut down. A couple of guys suggested I harvest the dead falls as some have some very nice color. So I went out last weekend and found a suitable dead fall. It had fallen over another log and wedged in the "V" of another tree. This kept it off the ground and there for basically bug free. The tree is an oak, called a "post oak" or "blackjack" around here.
Here is a picture of a small bowl I turned from this tree.

Thanks for the advice guys, don't think I will ever cut a live tree for my woodworking.

Mike

 

[Daren]

Thanks for the advice guys, don't think I will ever cut a live tree for my woodworking.

That makes me happy :smile:. It's amazing what a guy can find 'laying around" . The whole deal was fun wasn't it ? Finding the wood just adds to the experience for me. Cool bowl by the way, keep it up.

 

[TexasTimbers]

great job all around coffeetime. I am certainly an afdvocate of "green harvesting" too. But be aware that the PC feelgood nature of today's climate states that cutting any live tree is bad. just the opposite is true. There are many unhelthy forests, most in fact, because they have not been thinned and managed.
If you ever have to cut a live tree pick one in a woods/forests where it is overgrown and crowded. Pick one that doesn't have many years left if you can. The nearby younger trees starving for light and competing for water will thank you, and so will your great grandchild one day when he goes to harvest that now old "young tree".

 

[Daren]

But be aware that the PC feelgood nature of today's climate states that cutting any live tree is bad. just the opposite is true. There are many unhelthy forests, most in fact, because they have not been thinned and managed.

Very true. And they learned a hard lesson about forest fires several years ago too by letting things go "natural"...they had several natural disasters on their hands that got out of control (and did alot of property damage and killed people)

I may be as guilty of spreading 1/2 the facts as anyone. I am a dyed in the wool tree hugger, no sense denying it. I love trees and everything about them, they are a marvel too me. I see a huge specimen in the timber and I will even talk to it (yea I am nuts ). But proper forest management is key to these beautiful things. I rail against clear cutting deforestation, just for the loggers profit without regard to anything else. That repulses me. But selective logging is as important to a healthy forest as sunlight and water.

I advocate the use of deadfalls,tree service removals and utilization of trees that are being cut because we are encroaching further into the timber as our population grows. Too many of these examples are being hauled off as waste. Sometimes that message can be confused with "never cut a tree for the lumber" when it is more my view "Try to find one that was cut for another reason first" they are out there going to waste right now.

 

[mdlbldrmatt135]

I agree with Daren. Soo much of the removals up here get turned into firewood. The freak snowstorm we had 60mi noth of me last year 90% of it was turned into Mulch