Antiseptic

I agree with everything in your post. Excellent to know about your sawmill and practices. We waste far too much of everything.

Now please pick yourself up off the floor and close you mouth - a fly might buzz-in.

Severin:"I agree with everything in your post. "

Bugger! and there was me thinking i was doing something sensible...

Actually, so much is wasted that it's insane. Brisbane is expanding rapidly and a huge amount of the area that is to become housing has millable timber on it. My prediction is that nearly all of it will be chipped and that most of the chip will end up in landfill, to be tapped for methane to power co-generation plants.

At the same time, a much larger area of otherwise useful land will have to be planted with tree plantations to supply the timber needs of the housing areas, removing it from other forms of production, even grazing, since cattle damage trees.

I can economically mill logs down to about 300 mm diameter although larger is better and I can produce rustic fence posts ("split posts") out of stuff as small as 200. Logs of that size and larger make up perhaps 30%-50% of the total mass of arboreal cover in the sclerophyll forests around Brisbane where development is being done.

to put it in perspective, the average tree lopper has a chipper capable of reducing 100-odd cubic metres of logs up to 450 diameter to chip in a day. Logs of larger than 450 diameter make up perhaps 2-3% of the total mass in these forests and most will have to be carted off site for tub-grinding.

This process is encouraged by the tax system which treats such costs as coming straight off the top, not the bottom line. If an estimate of potential log value based on trunk/crown ratios was required to be accrued against such costs, then they would be much more willing to look at ways of reducing them, which includes milling. IOW, if the tax system regarded the logs as an item of value and held the developer responsible for recovering the value, there would be less incentive to waste it.

Antiseptic

I love timber, the grain of it, the feel of it, the look of it, the myriad uses to which it can be put and that we can produce more it - without destroying old forest. The fact that we do not need to woodchip a single tree as there are many plant species that fill the niche for woodchips; bamboo, papyrus, hemp.

My home is western red cedar, when I renovate I will be recycling everything I can, for example, the baltic pine floors. When I work in the garden I use the sturdy branches and trunks of trees I have either pruned or removed as edging and in retaining walls through-out the garden - depending upon the species susceptibility to termites.

We have to revalue timber as you have pointed out. The only thing that seems to work in this world is that money talks, bvllshit walks. Woodchips are the bvllshit of the timber industry.

Re-Cycling timber from trees in the urban development areas.
Yes I agree. We should be doing more with trees fallen in the wake of development or storms. I have seen some beautiful large trees fall to wood chipping, especial after severe storms, because it was quicker and easier. Often they finished up in landfill.
A country town where I was stationed, council decided to widen one road. It was lined with beautiful silky oak trees that were roughly 2-2 1/2 feet in diameter and 40 ft high. What did council do with this beautiful timber? Cut up into foot blocks and dumped at the tip.
Silky Oak is a very valuable furniture timber. If it was so necessary to widen the road, council could have recouped a large amount of money by selling them to a timber mills to be cut for furniture timber.
Recently, I attended a forum on water run by the water board. Discussions included re-cycled water. There has been and still is, some toxic feeling between the Board and the public, with the lack of community consultation, secret deals with industry and allegations of political interference.
One Board speaker claimed it collected only 30% of the water that fell in the catchment as 70% was taken up by the forest, whereas clear felling reversed this allowing 70% collection.
Well, clear felling also causes erosion of the hillsides; polluted rivers and streams. Sluggish rivers and streams are subject to blue algae, resulting in poisoned stock and humans as well as native fauna as well as removing natural cover for flora and fauna.
I would prefer 70% of our rain catchment was retained within our forests and the water we did collect was pure and clean. Also, increasing our forests would also increase our catchment areas and increase the amount of clean water that has not as much need for treatment, reducing costs in that field.
Hence I do not support the water board’s statement.

continued.

I owned a farm that had open forest land and I averaged up to 4-5-" more rainfall than my nearest neighbours who did not have timber. Stock needed to look for the post with the needed shade in the summer, whereas my stock could graze all day long in the shade if they wished.
I also had less trouble with insect pests, therefore had no need to use chemicals to spray.
I believe we have lost something like 80-90% of our forests in as many years. Let us plan a strategy that will return them. I believe we would have a better environment, cleaner streams and ultimately better water.
The national strategy should urgently address how we can bring them back.
It would also create employment immediately and for the future.
I have no objections to pine plantations. The construction needs it for construction purposes.
Our natives evolved for our climate and we should be making more use of them.
Using tunnel vision you see very little. When you look at the whole picture you will see a completely different picture.
The Board meeting was supposed to be a community consultation, yet so many of the issues that concerned the public when raised received the response that they are not on the agenda.
The public assumption was that the purpose of the meeting was so the Board could claim (in error) that it had partaken in community consultation.
A panel of seven experts were supposed to be there to answer public questions. Their presence was obvious by their absence. Board Employees and management ran the meeting. I am not sure whether there was one specialist representing the panel was there and although he spoke well he had a vested interest in supporting the Board as I understand he was employed or funded by the Board. Why were they absent?
I can understand one or perhaps two but nearly the whole panel to not turn up! Was there some political interference that decided the public should not get answers? The public wanted more information and they did not get it.

Professor-au:"council could have recouped a large amount of money by selling them to a timber mills to be cut for furniture timber."

Actually, no. I rarely pay for logs unless they're top-notch, although I will remove them for nothing once the tree's been felled. The cost of cartage, storage, milling, waste disposal and drying is such that marhins are low.

Between 40 and 85% of any log is waste, depending on the product. Flooring is the worst, because every stage drops another 25% or more of the volume, which is why select grade flooring is so expensive.

Silky oak is best quarter-sawn, with back-sawn timber not as valuable since it doesn't have the characteristic "ray figure". Quarter sawing is wasteful and time consuming and the market for Southern silky oak (Grevillea robusta)is not large since it is not as durable as the northern silky (Cardwellia Sublimis) and there is no commercial forestry. I have about 10cubic metres cut and dried if you're interested...

Having said all that, it is still good for councils to demand log recovery where possible, since it reduces green waste volumes at the tip. Unfortunately, at least in Brisbane, it is precisely because of that reduction in volume that it can't happen. The operators of the tips have contracts with Council which would be breached by allowing others, like me, to recover council logs and if council is not doing it, developers won't either.

Another pressure on the urban forest resource is methane capture from tips and cogeneration. There are small plants all over the country tapping tip gas, which green waste produces in massive quatities. As energy prices increase, these will become more attractive. If timber imports continue to hold hardwood prices artificially low, then logs may become more valuable as chip.