What time of year do you harvest trees?

[devonpalmer]

Greetings all.

For the first time in 18 months - I HAVE NO GREEN WOOD - YAY! I've been so busy accepting logs and roughing out stuff to dry, that I haven't had any time to finish anything LOL. Woodturners just CAN'T let wood go to waste, can we? That being said, I'll be itchin' to grab the chainsaw in about a month and tear into some more blanks to be dried by fall for winter processing. (and hopefully not make the mistake of harvesting more than I can process in a coupla months - famous last words when you have two truckloads already and your neighbor calls about the 24 inch walnut they just dropped 🙄 )

I've heard that the best time to harvest is in the fall after the leaves are gone and the sap has fallen as the wood will have less tendency to check. Does it really make a "huge" difference? Would there be a season to specifically avoid?

- Devon, Columbus, Ohio

 

[Jeff Jilg]

Devon - sounds like a good position to be in, with all those roughouts. You may end up like me, with so many roughouts that my garage is packed. I am now in a wood collecting moratorium simply because there is no more space. And it's time to finish some of them.

I don't have an answer to your question though. Most of my wood was cut during the warmer months.

 

[Wilford Bickel]

The only answer I have ever found to this question was on the DIY television show on how to turn a natural edge bowl.

http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/wt_tools_techniques/article/0,2025,DIY_14436_3523402,00.html

They stated "Keep the bark on the bowl when the wood is being cut. If the tree is cut in the middle of winter, the bark stands a much greater chance of staying on. With the tree sap being down during the winter, the bark is tighter and will stay on the edge better."

I have not found anything else on this but common sense tells you there will be more liquid in the wood during the growing months and it will take more to dry it. I cut whenever time and opportunity allows and wax the ends good. I have not been able to tell a big difference in cutting in winter or summer except I sweat less in winter!

Wilford

 

[Frank Kobilsek]

Now

Devon,
Now is the time. I read somewhere that late winter is the time before the sap is pumped back up into the tree. Supposedly in spring wood is the wettest. I don't know if its true. It works for me because the city is now cutting trees while the ground is frozen as to avoid tearing up peoples yards. I go find them at lunch hour and steal logs. The crew knows to call me when they find burls because I reward them with donuts the next morning. No burl yet this winter.

But in my opinion 'now' is always a good time for free wood. I sound like Jeff, by the way Jeff when is it not the warmer months in Austin? I will be in San Antonio all next week for work and am looking forward to the thaw.
Frank

 

[underdog]

It certainly depends on the region...

While you folks up north are experiencing winter, us folks down south are seeing the leaves starting to bud. I've got daffodils blooming, and the maple is just pouring out sap where the darn woodpeckers are chewing it up...

I'm also in full swing with the respiratory allergies, which tells me that the trees are starting to bloom, since I'm allergic to tree pollen. (I'd just as soon see two feet of snow as to see spring!)

Unfortunately I've just cut down some trees.... Hopefully I didn't wait too late... I meant to cut them in the fall, but never got to it til a couple weeks ago.

 

[Jeff Jilg]

Well Frank we had a cold snap this week. It got all the way down to (are you ready???) almost 28 degrees one night. But we're out of that and it's back to 45-65. That cold night almost convinced us to move further south.

It is not warm in the summer. It is blazingly hot. It's kinda hard to cut wood or do turning when you are dripping wet from the heat, but that seems to be the time when all the tree trimmers are out whacking down trees.

 

[Brian Hahn]

If you want bark-on, then it's best to cut the tree when it is dormant. I like to remove the bark before running the wood through my bandsaw and it is virtually impossible to remove the bark from fall and winter cut trees. But with spring and early summer cut trees the bark just peels right off with a little assistance from a large screw driver.

Other than the bark issue, the best time seems to be whenever the wood is available and you have the time and energy to harvest it. 😀

 

[dkulze]

My guess would be that the season of harvest has no effect whatsoever on the heartwood but a big effect on the sapwood. The heartwood is essentially dead structural material and, by understanding, is stable in it's moisture content.

Now the sapwood would, by it's nature, change pretty drastically depending on season. But, since this is the outer wood, that would have little effect on checking.

IMHO
Dietrich

 

[Bill Boehme]

I cut down a hickory tree in early April last year at my place in south central Texas. By then everything was in full green and water was actually running out of the ends of the wood as I loaded it in the bed of my truck. I also discovered that the bark was very easy to slip at that time. I used a screwdriver to start a tear in the bark and then peeled it off several logs using nothing but my hands. The texture of the wood underneath the bark is really beautiful and not at all what I expected to see. Green hickory turns like butter. Once dry, hickory lives up to its reputation for hardness. I found that after almost a year of drying, the bark seems to be as tight as wood cut in the winter. My conclusion based on this one trial is that how tightly the bark holds onto the wood depends upon the dryness of the wood.

I turned a bowl from the hickory to final dimensions while the wood was dripping (slinging) wet and then microwave dried it. It developed a slight oval shape which was just fine with me. I turned it with the top of the bowl near the pith so the top edge was slightly distorted. I could have flattened it with a belt sander, but decided to leave it alone.

The hickory that I have left is really hard to turn.

Bill

 

[MichaelMouse]

Dormant cut wood gives you options you don't have with wood cut in foliage. It's all in the cambium, that layer just underneath the bark which is the only live and growing portion of the trunk. In the spring it's full of sugars going up, in summer going down, which means good food for bacteria and fungi as well. They feed heavily once the tree's felled, which makes the bark more likely to fall off. If the bark stays firm, it's better for bark up turnings and better for storing the log, because it's not prone to radial checking.

Of course, up here winter also means you can get to a tree growing where it's wet, though not this year. A lot of logging operations and the mills they would have supplied shut down because the earth wasn't frozen solid early enough.

 

[Sean Troy]

Fall and winter are the best times from what I've been told. Out here in Arizona, winter seems to be the only time it's most safe to rough and by summers end, rough outs are ready to finish.

 

[MichaelMouse]

Fall and winter are the best times from what I've been told. Out here in Arizona, winter seems to be the only time it's most safe to rough and by summers end, rough outs are ready to finish.

Truth. Winter is worst for roughing here, where we have to heat the house, and for the same reason that summer is bad for you - low relative humidity. I'm doing all I can, including venting the dryer through filters and into the house and leaving the shower water in the tub long enough to make a ring to get up to 40%. Less when the temperature drops below zero.

Of course the joys of roughing frozen wood are greatly missed 😀 NOT!

 

[Griesbach]

I harvest trees when ever they become available at the reasonable cost of $0.00. Prefer late fall, early winter so neither the tree or I have to sweat as much 😀 .

 

[Norm Smith]

Not covered

Hi Devon,
Here in Nova Scotia we have a lot of maple and birch. I prefer summer cut maple because it turns darker than winter cut. I dont know about other types but thought that you might consider this information the next time you are looking for maple.
Norm

 

[Mark Mandell]

Depends

I have it on fairly good authority (D. Ellsworth) that winter-cut wood will not spalt. I have noticed that summer-cut maple is more suseptable to blue stain and mold, regardless of when I buck the blank off the log. I keep my log stock in long form as much as possible rather than slicing/dicing into blanks. I Anchorseal the ends, but take bolts off as needed. Get much less checking that way.

M

 

[MichaelMouse]

I'm pretty confident what Mark means to say is that frozen wood doesn't spalt. The fungus requires a minimum temperature and moisture to do its work, and will commence doing it as soon as the temperatures reach the range. Good info here on the fungi and what they require. http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/techline/producing_spalted_wood.pdf

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who has experienced darkening in summer-cut soft maple, Norm. I've had a lot of turners give me the "yer nuts" look until I presented them with evidence. Never was able to get hard maple to work that way, and oddly enough, the process of darkening seems better on pieces that are split, but kept under near-spalting moisture conditions. Almost like fuming.

You can see from the end trim of this piece of firewood that the sapwood darkens significantly. When a piece turned from it is oiled, it really looks mellow. Almost a walnut look.