Tree Weight

[Pstuffel]

Derail, Yes.
But reading that made my day.

 

[lumberjackson]

Glenn, you should check out the rigging software 1.0. its in 'spotlight articles' on the buzz. I dont know anything about it other than what I read about it, but it seems like it has some of the stuff you may want...

 

[lumberjackson]

sorry to derail your derail....

 

[Roger_Barnett]

We recently removed about 18 cottonwoods, over 3.75 days

Dbh ranges: 5 trees: 32-44", 5 trees: 22-30, 4 trees, 14-21, 4 trees 6-13" heights, up to 110 feet.

We removed 3.5 40 yard debris trucks of wood, calculated at 80 tons, and about 95 yards of chips, or 25 tons.

And, on another job, felled the last 86 feet of a 52" dbh cottonwood. The log truck loaded 3 20.5 foot logs, which scaled out to 2600 board feet.....but weighed 25,000 pounds! After allowing for the big butt swell, trim, and bark, I estimated that there was about 320-340 cubic feet of wood in the logs. Assuming his scales were accurate, that's about 80 pounds per cubic foot!!

Cottonwood butt logs are heavy!

Further, yesterday I felled two biggies that were in a moist area. I'm headed back in a couple days, and will cut a cubic foot piece out of the butt and carry it to my bathroom scale.

Conclusions: Do not trust the wood weights chart.

Main variables are:

Time of year the tree is cut

How low down in the tree is the wood? Butt wood is not only denser, but carries more water.

I've weighed young, green redwood at about 80 pounds per cubic foot as well!!

For reference, both redwood and cottonwood are shown at as light as 34 pounds cubic foot on some calculators......

With both those woods, there is a huge variation, both from wet to dry, and seasonally....plus where the tree is growing must be taken into account..both in geographical area, and soil/local topography.....