conifer for logs?

[tommer9]

You could expect a solicitors letter if you sold somebody Larch to burn on an open fire as it spits like hell.

Hehe- a LARGE proportion of firewood sold round me, and i would say 99% of the nets, are larch, usually green too. I know a local guy who wont buy anything else, and just feeds a processor into a huge hookloader skip thng for the garages and what have you to bag and sell. He also sells by the net, and he is mega busy with a constant stream in and out of his yard....

[TimberCutterDartmoor]

One last thing,can anyone tell me how well softwood thinnings will go through a processor?

I would guess quite well but I've never had the chance to use one.

Thanks for reading.

 

Flippin lovely I reckon; I was working with a mate and his processor yesterday and we both got thinking that the inclusion of softwood in firewood loads is going to be inevitable as demand rises and hardwood may struggle to keep up. There's a few hundred thousand tons of spruce near me too; all bars and rails and straight as rulers - perfect for the processor...

 

Apparently Hakki Pilki or whatever they're called were designed around softwoods anyway. That's what they told my mate when he kept bending the splitting knife with hardwood!

[Chris Sheppard]

Quite a large proportion of processors are built around softwood, and the rest are designed for decent quality hardwood. It's taken a while but as a country we seem to be realising as a country that to produce a decent log requires decent quality timber.

 

I don't have a problem with softwood - most of todays fire has been a mix of softwood slabwood left over from when I was at Birdsall.

[firewoodman]

i dont see a problem with selling softwood.

 

i bought in 75ton (3 artics)of larch this year and its all gone, some customers are even saying its the best wood they have ever had and doesnt turn the glass black.

 

all wood burns and gives off heat so whats the problem.

 

if there is no tissue paper to wipe your ar$£ with you'd use a news paper, they both do the same job and come from the same source......... just one is full of $h1t before you use it!!!

[Pine Marten]

I agree with the above posts. There's a lot of 'snob value' in hardwood and totally agree with TCD the current hardwood production can not possibly keep up with an increasing demand. In areas of low forest cover in the UK such as N.Ireland they will have no choice but to use softwood as the quantities of hardwood simply do not exist.

 

As with everything its quality that counts and as long as you are selling good softwood at low moisture content what's the problem?

[Timber terrier]

Theres nothing wrong with any kind of softwood as firewood so long as its dry. The timber industry should be doing all it can to promote it as such because of the millions of tons of the stuff thats growing in the country. It may not realise the same price as hardwood thinnings at rideside but its got to be better than biomass/pulp prices! Surely its got to be a good way of getting a decent price for timber of poor milling standard. I do get fed up of the hardwood snobbery that abounds. I was discussing the issue the other day with a customer who has had about 15t of larch top off me over the last few months and we came to the conclusion that the people who have woodburners who Only want ash or Only want sycamore etc dont actually know how to get the best out of their burners.

[Mick Stockbridge]

Hardwood vs Conifer......hmmmm cant quite make my mind up on which to buy:confused1: What would you prefer if the volume and price was the same?

[TimberCutterDartmoor]

Hardwood vs Conifer......hmmmm cant quite make my mind up on which to buy:confused1: What would you prefer if the volume and price was the same?

 

Hardwood. Balsa wood to be precise

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ochroma_pyramidale

[Mick Stockbridge]

Hardwood. Balsa wood to be precise

 

Yeah yeah yeah I'm splitting me sides.

[firewoodman]

yes yes yes

 

snob value.....and most people cant use thier stoves properly.

 

this is my personal opinion (conspiracy theory)........ my belief is that a woodland owner"" like(but not meaning)"" the FC started a rumor that softwood was no good to burn in stoves/fires as it will tar your chimney...Etc Etc......to stop people cutting down thier unfenced woods so they could be grown on for timber value and dissapear as free fuel for the layman many many years ago