Measurement advice please

[Lillywhite Timber]

Hi everyone . A friend of mine who has a bit of land recently mentioned he was probably going to clear an old softwood plantation . It has never been thinned and is around 20 yrs planted . Id say around 7 - 10 inches in dia , fairly tall .

Its not the most accessible site , (fairly steep) .

It would be got fairly reasonable if not for free and i was going to try and work out if it was viable .

I know this is very little to go on but i wonder would anyone suggest how much stuff might be on this in terms of tonnes ?

[openspaceman]

Hi everyone . A friend of mine who has a bit of land recently mentioned he was probably going to clear an old softwood plantation . It has never been thinned and is around 20 yrs planted . Id say around 7 - 10 inches in dia , fairly tall .

Its not the most accessible site , (fairly steep) .

It would be got fairly reasonable if not for free and i was going to try and work out if it was viable .

I know this is very little to go on but i wonder would anyone suggest how much stuff might be on this in terms of tonnes ?

 

At 20 years and not thinned nearly all the trees should still be living, so if you can fell one average height one and measure the length and if they are all one species you can deduce the yield class. Multiply the yield class by age gives standing volume of timber over 7.5 cms.

[Lillywhite Timber]

At 20 years and not thinned nearly all the trees should still be living, so if you can fell one average height one and measure the length and if they are all one species you can deduce the yield class. Multiply the yield class by age gives standing volume of timber over 7.5 cms.

Thanks very much for getting back to me id be reasonably sure the average is around 6 inches with 4 no 2.4ms in each tree .

As you say a fair amount of it is living , and the spots that have died (approx 1/5th id guess) has nice size sized sycamore and ash stems which would be ideal firewood .

[TimberCutterDartmoor]

Are we talking 2x2 metre planting matrix? What area in ha? Work out an average vol per stick x the # of sticks. Will work out just as accurate as basal area which ime is often 20% over. There's a thread on here somewhere about single tree volume assessment. Uniform crop of drawn timber with little suppression; less anomalies.

[Lillywhite Timber]

Yeah , its 2 x 2 and id imagine around one hectare ..

[openspaceman]

Thanks very much for getting back to me id be reasonably sure the average is around 6 inches with 4 no 2.4ms in each tree .

As you say a fair amount of it is living , and the spots that have died (approx 1/5th id guess) has nice size sized sycamore and ash stems which would be ideal firewood .

 

Which species? What planting date? What top height?

[matelot]

what will you do with the timber? tbh, I don't see 20 year old spruce being worth much...

[TimberCutterDartmoor]

what will you do with the timber? tbh, I don't see 20 year old spruce being worth much...

 

Chip / Fencing / possible bar... / Pallet

[openspaceman]

Chip / Fencing / possible bar... / Pallet

 

In my day, mid 70s, first thinnings at 20 years wouldn't yield bars because the planting in the 50s had been done at 5' by 5' and bars had to be 6" mtdub. However there was an anomaly in the price size curve which meant first thinnings were more valuable per tonne than second thinnings if you could get decent Post, Stake and Rail (PSR) material out of it.

 

At this early stage in the crop's development you could get away with eclectic thinning for the rails as by next thinning they would be worth less and coarser neighbouring trees would have bulked up to overgrow early defects.

[slack ma girdle]

what will you do with the timber? tbh, I don't see 20 year old spruce being worth much...

 

£35 per cube for firewood