oak thinning

[Log-ologist]

No, well nearly, but I worked for one ( Robin B'stard ) as a cutter, and I had a job interview with Euroforest once( I lost the job due to a pint of Guinness , but thats another story).

 

Why is it OK to drive down other priced goods in shops but not wood. If you dont like the standing price then try and buy in what you need and see what it costs then.

 

I have seen too many small forestry gangs close down in the last 20 years, and too many blokes with immense skill go to other jobs .

[David oakman]

You try selling large oak trees 3-400 years old timber merchants come and they give you a sob story about the cost of labour and the cost of diesel and offer you next to nothing for it. They say the machine to pick the trunck up the lorry to cart it away ect ect its a hard life:001_smile:

[logger]

I do feel sorry for people who deal with timber or try to sell it,timber merchants are robbing b@stards, you wernt one in a former life ollie?? you do make it very clear how they think!

 

Or perhaps looking at it from the other side people that are selling think its worth more than theyre getting-- quite often because they dont know enough about timber and expect more-- small quantities/ single trees are always a problem because of collection costs and certainly with some hardwood mills its a long term turnaround on their money

[MattyF]

Or perhaps looking at it from the other side people that are selling think its worth more than theyre getting-- quite often because they dont know enough about timber and expect more-- small quantities/ single trees are always a problem because of collection costs and certainly with some hardwood mills its a long term turnaround on their money

 

sorry i have yet to deal with a merchant that is not a shark yet... i have yet to have sold a large parcel and walk away with out been taken advantage of,more than often it could of been worth more than treble in fire wood.

I have had to many bad encounters to list !all my timber will now go as my own fire wood if they dont offer what i want for it!

[logger]

sorry i have yet to deal with a merchant that is not a shark yet... i have yet to have sold a large parcel and walk away with out been taken advantage of,more than often it could of been worth more than treble in fire wood.

I have had to many bad encounters to list !all my timber will now go as my own fire wood if they dont offer what i want for it!

 

The truth of the matter is that a lot of lower grade timber has very little value

and for a number of years now has been competing with imports.Since the closure of most of the pits the outlets for lower grade hardwood have been limited -- I came into this industry in 1973 and have seen a lot of changes through the years ive dealt with both good and bad over the years but i can honestly say that there are some good merchants/sawmills in this country.What i have found over the years -- i started my career as a roundwood buyer/ measurer is that because someone has big timber they automatically think its good in the case of oak mentioned in another post just because its 3-400 years olddoesnt automatically make it worth a lot because of problems with shake etc.The other thing that ive noticed and ive seen lots of photos on this site along with timber offered out of yards is very badly presented timber. The final point i will make is that a lot of merchants/ sawmills are very reluctant to push the boat out on timber offered to them from arbwork because of contamination from metal.If you do have what you consider to be a good parcel of timber - particularly hardwood in the future then p.m me and i will do my best to place it for you

[MattyF]

cheers mate i will keep you in mind.

not meaning to keep banging on and if you can tell from the crap pic im just curious how much do you recon this butt was worth?... i would of thought £250 -300

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[David oakman]

The other problem with timber growing in this country is that landowners will not cut trees at the right age and leave them as amenity trees then when they fall over as you say expect big money for big trees. But when the trunk gets to the mill you find shakes and pockets of rot then you have bought firewood.

[John Shutler]

its difficult selling butts i onlly go 100 quid for this lot and still got a call complaining that there was pockets of decay. to which i said "why did you think it was coming down"(http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=4274) though they paid for the pickup. it was worth it so i didnt have to process it

[logger]

cheers mate i will keep you in mind.

not meaning to keep banging on and if you can tell from the crap pic im just curious how much do you recon this butt was worth?... i would of thought £250 -300

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Its difficult to say without seeing the end because Elm can also have a lot of problems with shake, it also is a relativeley short butt and some of the problems from the fork/ side branch will run back into the tree. There is also considerable fluting to the butt which at best would decrease the volume of boardfeet recovered from the butt and at the worst could be an indication of shake but as ive said cant comment on that without seeing the tree end on.Regardless of that i will stick my neck out and say that its worth a lot more than firewood and that potentially there are a couple of second lengths that will also make the grade . I know this may make me sound like some of the merchants that have been described earlier but im just trying to illustrate the points any buyer would be looking at when buying this tree. If the tree was sound and there was either more to go with it or you would store untill haulage was in the area then you could be looking in excess of your quoted figure.Just out of interest do you have a vlume in hoppus for the butt?

[MattyF]

It had no shake amazingly! i thought around 50 cubes....any way i was offered £100 for it ..straight away this was the one he went straight up 2 and measured saying it would go as verneer it all looked quite hopefull untill he offered me £300 for the lot! there was 3 butts like that and 6 second lengths like the top peice of that tree all by the road side on route about 5 miles to one of his yards he kept timber .

considering the rarity of elm i thought that was pretty poor but he seemed to think there was loads of it up north!

I didnt really care as i wasnt getting any money from the timber and was only getting paid when the site was cleared.