This Machine Erases Entire Trees in Seconds

No Christmas this year I guess.....

STOP!..........

I said Clear the North forty, not the south forty/.

THAT "Cookie Monster" loves sawdust for breakfast, lunch, dinner...and...snacks!

That's hilarious...and the comments from the tree huggers are over the top!

This happens every couple seconds in every sawmill in Canada that produces over a couple hundred thousand board feet of lumber per day. It's called a "canter line". Logs go thru at about 1 log per second and come out the other end as a river of lumber. In the basement of the mill, a river of pulp chips comes down off the log where the round parts that don't make the square lumber are chipped off. It isn't uncommon to process 30,000 logs in a couple of 8 hour shifts.

Obviously, you need pretty sophisticated machinery in the bush to keep up with the hungry sawmills. Trees come down pretty fast.

The gizmo on the excavator is just a device to clear off areas that need to be denuded of plant growth, like a powerline or gas line right-of-way. Everything gets mowed down to the ground, whether its a bigger tree or willows. Usually the wood isn't large enough or the right species to make it worth harvesting the logs....for example, Poplar grows very fast but virtually no one uses it because it is structurally weak and can twist like a pretzel when it is dried.

But it's fun to set one of these loose and watch the tree huggers have major rectal hemorrhages!

Jon.

Wonder what they would say if they saw 10,000 acres clear cut?

There's a clearcut near Prince George that apparently can be seen from space. Memory is a little foggy, but it seems to me it was done because of either cleanup from a big fire or chasing bug killed wood. It likely is larger than 10K acres.

Most normal clearcuts are in the range of 5-40 acres.

Since Northern BC has seen an infestation of bugs, killing gazillions of acres of lodgepole pine, the clearcuts in these areas are pretty darn big...no use letting the wood rot.

Jon.

Years ago, Weyerhaeuser bought out a forest company (Dierks) in the south with holdings of 1.2 million acres.

Their property surrounds our family farm. Because of the mixed hardwood trees, they clearcut thousands of acres and planted Pine trees.

It looked like hell for years.

We still have Pine beetles in Arkansas.

Nobody said (some) forest companies were smart. They have been finding that mixed forests make it harder for pests to decimate. But that makes it harder to log.

Jon.

and what happens, they pick the species that returns the most and log that out, and sacrifice the rest.

Forest companies? Around here they do a selective cutting program, as designed for them by Penn State. They leave a few trees that they want to grow (read that as black cherry in NW Pa) remaining, but to deter deer from eating the new growth, they pile all the branches and tree tops in between the remaining select trees. The idea is to create an impassible area to stop deer from entering the cut area for 10 years or so. However it also stops humans from using that area for the same length of time. No hiking - no biking - no hunting - no ATV riding. The real kicker is when the few spindly trees they leave, that have grown up protected by others trees around them, are subjected to a good gusty thunder storm. Down half of them come.

And in ten years what are we seeing? A thicket of small saplings so thick you still can't walk through the area. I hear PSU is re-thinking this process - it may not have the effect they predicted it would.

one thing about replanting with softwood instead of hardwood, is that can invite paper mills to relocate there,

"for example, Poplar grows very fast but virtually no one uses it because it is structurally weak and can twist like a pretzel when it is dried."

Then why do I see Poplar boards in the local Menards? Pre-sanded four sides and ready for woodworking.

Structurally weak? That entertainment center I build out of Poplar is holding up quite nicely, doesn't seem like a weak wood for cabinetry projects.

Build a house out of it? I'm not a Structural Engineer or Architect, so I wouldn't try building a house on my own in the first place. It'd trust the contractor to select the right materials for the job.

There are multiple species of poplar.

Our south side of the barn was sided with poplar that was at least 80+ years old and with the exception of the weathering was very sound. We resided with hemlock and sold the weathered planks, ...... the other sides that didn't get the sun pine or hemlock was used.

My brother built his house using poplar as most of the framework 30+ years ago. All of which was logged and milled from our property.

But like I said before...... it may depend on the type of poplar.

Poplar is very popular with Pattern Makers for making bulky patterns with limited use for foundries. Price is main concern vs. using mahogany or other hard woods and ease of cutting, sanding and piecing together courses or layers of wood. When sectioned and glued in layers there isn't much warping. Also the patterns are lighter and easier for the molder to handle. Sometimes they'll use poplar to build up thick sections and layer mahogany up on the outside of the pattern.

It's also pretty popular to use poplar for fish boxes.

As a hardwood, it's not as strong as say, oak, maple or hickory, but it is cheap.

I would compare poplar to a weed.... It grew very fast. When we made lumber out of it we would saw it green, because it did not keep well, and the would be so much water/sap in the wood, it would seem like it was raining when you sawed through it. But the logs were clean. We would get 20 feet easily on the log and 30" on the stump.... Anything larger, you'd have shake.

Red Green would have loved that.