Thread: Thoughts on cutting logs by Moon Phase

Something beginning with "C" that was missed; "crap spelling ability"

When did a "Hammond Electric Bridge Table" begin with a "C"?

Or was that a deliberate mistake to see if anybody actually read down that entire list!!!

As for the OP, it sounds a bit like either pseudoscience or some tradition rooted so far back in history its origins have been lost. However universities have a reputation of occasionally giving grants to research some seriously weird stuff (like why a duck's " quack" doesn't echo) so maybe someone will one day investigate if there is any advantage in milling by the moon...

Originally Posted by Marcus79

Hi All, I would like to hear your thoughts on cutting trees by the phase of the moon. A gentleman who is mentoring me on milling explained how cutting by the moon phase is quite common in the part of Europe he is from but can't find much info. Whether you think it works or not just would like to hear some thoughts on the matter. Thanks in advance

Marcus,
Very interesting topic and some interesting replies. I spent a fair bit of time over the years with Ted Keid, a sawmiller from Wondecla, around the hill from you. Sadly he has passed away, but he told me he always felled his logs by the moon cycles. He said it reduced the amount of sap in the log and reduced the tension in it when milled.
Rgds,
Crocy.

Originally Posted by BobL

I'm in the opposite camp, Local ecology, Seasonal variability, and short, medium and long term weather events are going to dominate sap movement and other biological factors related to wood. Any variability caused by the moon is going to be trivial to non-existent.

Im not in the opposite camp Bob, more that I'm open minded I guess. i can see how there might be a difference... Whether it's significant or just in people's heads I don't know. But I've seen a min min light on numerous occasions out in that Boulia country and science hasn't explained that one yet, and I've seen a ships mast lit up with St Elmos Fire, and Farradays cage notwithstanding science hasn't done much to explain that either.

science on the other hand seems to adequately explain how gravitational fluctuations enable animals to migrate vast distances,(and humans developed inertial navigation equipment from the same principal) and other mind boggling stuff. So I can sorta see how if the moon effects gravity and gravity affects everything everywhere on the planet then it could well effect trees every time the force changes. Gravity probably does affect how easy a tree takes water up the stem, or maybe how many heavier compounds like iron are in that water, who knows? Not so much on the tree level overall... but on the intracellular particle level?

too complex for a simple sawmiller, that's for sure. I'm going to continue to cut regardless of moon but I'd not rule out there being subtle differences.

There is no way of proving it.....

As an example a test would need a control group of logs and to be a meaningful result that has to be very large, let's say 2000-3000 cubic metres minimum- who here, can say that they have had two logs from the same place, of the same species behave in the same way off the saw? And also the same two logs have the same amount of sap/gum vein as each other. How do you account for individual millers sawing process to determine if its the millers sawing, the log, the equipment being used, the sizes/lengths being cut or the moon which has the effect??

No way of proving it

Originally Posted by Old Croc

Marcus,
Very interesting topic and some interesting replies. I spent a fair bit of time over the years with Ted Keid, a sawmiller from Wondecla, around the hill from you. Sadly he has passed away, but he told me he always felled his logs by the moon cycles. He said it reduced the amount of sap in the log and reduced the tension in it when milled.
Rgds,
Crocy.

I met Ted once, and knew of him a long time - mutual friends and acquaintances etc etc. I've actually got an old loader that used to be his. I didn't know he felled on a lunar cycle - that is interesting. He was a bloody good operator, with enough years and hard yards behind him that it'd not have been something he'd be doing if he thought it a waste of time. Mind - as you know - rain here tends to fall on the lunar cycle during the "dry" so statisticlly speaking you're more likely to get a good run on then too - double bonus perhaps!

I dunno, I've never kept track of this stuff. And I don't know if it would be possible to accurately measure it. Every tree is different and you can't cut a tree and measure it and generate detailed empirical data... then cut the same tree a few weeks later and measure it again to see how it compares. But its a bit like my appplication of end sealer to log practices: I can give a sensible scientifically backed reasoning for why it makes a difference, I can say with some certainty that it does make a difference... but that certainty is backed by my gut feel for the difference in the average recovery of a few years worth of logs. I never kept detailed enough records to prove anything but I can see the difference in terms of spring, and I felt the difference is big enough to be worth the hassle of changing our harvest system accordingly.

I've always tried to be open to new (or in this case old) ideas. And I've always been willing to try something different to see if it works. I run on this really simple non scientific measuring system: I trust my eyes. If I can't see the difference then any difference is that small it doesnt matter.

I'm not going to change how I operate because of this moon voodoo business - but I might just start to take notice of when a log is felled and see where it goes.

Originally Posted by doug3030

That was THEIR science! It has not withstood the test of time.

Established and accepted scientific theories are debunked every day and replaced with new ones. Einstein turned physics upside down and he still did not have all teh facts. Now they have found Higgs-Boson. What will be next to change the way we look at science and the universe?

Nobody can be sure that anything we accept as absolute fact today will still be considered that in 100 years time.

Cheers

Doug

The idea that scientific theories and data are being debunked veery day is a nonsense fed by the media and the anti-science lobby and shows how poorly a job our education system has done in this regard...
The vast majority of science that is done properly with appropriate testing and proper uncertainty considerations generally stands the test of time.
The theories that are often found to be wrong are wild guesses or opinions that have not been tested.

An excellent example of this is Newtons laws of motion put forward 300 years ago.
Guess what? for you and me and the vast majority often worlds population they still apply today and will never be thrown away.
This is because Newton did a proper Scientific job on them and instead of just thinking about it like the Greeks did he used the scientific method and tested his theories.

What does happen is that small sometimes profound refinements are made at the level of fine detail of for special cases.
Einstein discovered relativity which the anti-science lobby says proves Newton laws of motion Wrong - that's Bollocks.
Einstein's stuff applies at the speed of light - engineers still use Newton to design the vast majority of things we use.like motor vehicles.
One area that affects many people everyday that Einstein contributes to is the corrections needed for GPS to operate correctly - but hardly a reason to throw Newton away.
The Higgs Boson does not prove that all Einstein's work was wrong. It opens up a new door to be able to look at the universe at finer and diner detail.

Another discovery is electro magnetic wave theory which applies very significantly to radio and TV communications.
Clerk Maxwell's theory published his theory in the late 1800's and this has also stood the test of time and is how ALL radio and TV and radio astronomy works.
There are very tiny refinements being made but no reason to thrown his theories out.
Most people have no idea who this guy was but his theories impact right across physics and engineering.

I belong to a scientific organization that started its work in the late 1800's. Not a single piece of data we have published has been found to be wrong - yes there have been many sometimes relatively large changes but all the changes have happened inside our published uncertainty boundaries.

The clearest example of stuff that stands the test of time is maths.
Most practicing engineers and scientists are using maths that is ancient, well at least couple of hundred years old or more.
Very few maths things get proved to be wrong..
Computers allow maths to be done that was impossible to do before but that does not make old maths wrong.

In terms of Physics and chemistry 90% of what these people learn at uni is around 100 years old or more, the maths is they learn is 300 years old.
They absolute HAVE to know this stuff to have the background to understand the new stuff.
Without the old stuff they would be totally lost because the new stuff is based on the older stuff.
I had many going battles with Uni Administrators about how our curriculum was so old why didn't we modernise it
Sorry but that's the way science degrees are - you can't go from high school straight into astrophysics.

If so much science and maths stuff was wrong we would make no progress as we would be running down wrong alleys all the time.
Newton said that he was able to do so much because he had some very tall shoulders to stand on.

Where theories are proven wrong is usually because they failed to adequate understand the problem and failed to test their theories adequately. Tectonic plate theory, which finally was accepted in the 1950's/60's, took such a long time to develop because that is hardly an experiment that can be done in a lab. It took many people and many ships and many labs to collate all the data and implications before that one could be. The same with the Higgs boson and many new scientific discoveries.

Originally Posted by John.G

... a ships mast lit up with St Elmos Fire, and Farradays cage notwithstanding science hasn't done much to explain that either.

"Conditions that can generate St. Elmo's fire are present during thunderstorms, when high voltage differentials are present between clouds and the ground underneath. Air molecules glow owing to the effects of such voltage, producing St. Elmo's fire.

The nitrogen and oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere cause St. Elmo's fire to fluoresce with blue or violet light; this is similar to the mechanism that causes neon lights to glow.^"


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire

Benjamin Franklin actually nailed the cause back in 1751...

Originally Posted by John.G

Im not in the opposite camp Bob, more that I'm open minded I guess. . . . . .

The question is how open minded is reasonable to make progress.

If a scientist or engineer had to work by considering every imaginable possibility including every whacky and folklore possibility they would never make much progress. Scientists are trained o be open minded and to think outside the box but they do it within a body of knowledge that is coherent and sustainable so they don't run up too many blind alleys. There are enough people doing wacky science out there and if it was as worthwhile as it is cracked up to be these people would be inventing many practical and useful things. Fact is they rarely do this and the few that do come up with something useful are far outweighed by the output of those following existing well established methods.

I think it's called theory, Bob. And you can't eat theory.

Originally Posted by rustynail

I think it's called theory, Bob. And you can't eat theory.

A theory is an idea that has been mooted, subject to peer review and withstood attempts at disproving it by providing sufficient evidence in its support.

Something like cutting timber during moon phases is an HYPOTHESIS, it is merely an idea. When sufficiently examined, reviewed and tested if it survives without being debunked it may graduate to a theory.

As an example; Evolution is a THEORY. Creationism is an HYPOTHESIS. One was developed through observation of multiple species of flora and fauna and then ruthlessly pulled apart and examined minutely making minor amendments where required until it got to the part where it has been used to accurately forecast development; the other is the result of a collection of ideas based on a few old stories and promulgated by a sector who deliberately ignore all the evidence to the contrary. They each contradict each other but only one has provided any supporting evidence.

Sorry for the rant but I feel way too many people use the word without realising the processes required for an idea to progress that title. When you think about it, this thread is a bit like the first steps in peer review where opinions are being bounced around by some with experience of cutting timber, some with some plausably sounding scientific rationale for and against, and some with simply "I do/don't believe regardless". But it has got a loooong way to go before it comes even close to a theory.

As for it being useful, if it is proved that timber felled during a specific set of lunar conditions has differing qualities to timber felled during totally opposite conditions.... would that difference be worth the effort of a: limiting the cutting season to specific times, or b: the time and resources expended in investigating, researching and testing the hypothesis?

For what it's worth...I lean towards the scientifically sounding reasons why it probably isn't plausable but I support the right for anyone to gather empirical evidence proving I'm wrong. A bit like a real scientist really

I did not expect there to be so much interest in the topic! Thank you all very much for your input so far. I gathered the cutting of the tree by the moon phase reduced the sap in the wood and reduced tension. Whether or not it is worthwhile on a commercial basis is yet to be established, I believe it is plausible to think it is of a benefit, but how much, is the unknown? The economics may not make sense, but trying to get the best out of the timber without regard of economic consequence is what I am interested in. I figure if you have the luxury to do so then there may be nothing to lose.I guess with anything I want to learn about, I try to ask people who know more about these things than I do, and take bits and pieces from here and there to suit my way of thinking. The guy teaching me about milling timber is unique...but that's what I like about him.
Old croc,
I have actually been getting shown how to mill out at Wondecla. I am pretty keen on getting to meet some guys up around the Atherton Tablelands who are willing to share their knowledge on milling. I don't have a commercial interest in milling as such, I am happy with my current profession. It is my interest though, as I am about to build my own unique pole home out of timber from my block. I've been tailing out on my days off work in exchange for learning the process of milling and am thankful for the amount of knowledge I have gained so far. I am trying to get knowledge about local trees which occur on my block and knowledge about milling timber in general. If you are still around up here would be good to bump into you and have a chat sometime.

Originally Posted by Chief Tiff

A theory is an idea that has been mooted, subject to peer review and withstood attempts at disproving it by providing sufficient evidence in its support.

Something like cutting timber during moon phases is an HYPOTHESIS, it is merely an idea. When sufficiently examined, reviewed and tested if it survives without being debunked it may graduate to a theory.

As an example; Evolution is a THEORY. Creationism is an HYPOTHESIS. One was developed through observation of multiple species of flora and fauna and then ruthlessly pulled apart and examined minutely making minor amendments where required until it got to the part where it has been used to accurately forecast development; the other is the result of a collection of ideas based on a few old stories and promulgated by a sector who deliberately ignore all the evidence to the contrary. They each contradict each other but only one has provided any supporting evidence.

Sorry for the rant but I feel way too many people use the word without realising the processes required for an idea to progress that title. When you think about it, this thread is a bit like the first steps in peer review where opinions are being bounced around by some with experience of cutting timber, some with some plausably sounding scientific rationale for and against, and some with simply "I do/don't believe regardless". But it has got a loooong way to go before it comes even close to a theory.

As for it being useful, if it is proved that timber felled during a specific set of lunar conditions has differing qualities to timber felled during totally opposite conditions.... would that difference be worth the effort of a: limiting the cutting season to specific times, or b: the time and resources expended in investigating, researching and testing the hypothesis?

For what it's worth...I lean towards the scientifically sounding reasons why it probably isn't plausable but I support the right for anyone to gather empirical evidence proving I'm wrong. A bit like a real scientist really

I wasn't referring to logging to moon phases, I was referring to BobL post.
So I guess that means we have Theory, Hypothesis, followed closely by Jumping to Conclusion.

This tree seduces insects with nectar during the full moon:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...g-insects.html

Originally Posted by BobL

The idea that scientific theories and data are being debunked veery day is a nonsense fed by the media and the anti-science lobby and shows how poorly a job our education system has done in this regard...
The vast majority of science that is done properly with appropriate testing and proper uncertainty considerations generally stands the test of time.
The theories that are often found to be wrong are wild guesses or opinions that have not been tested.

....

Well put. Interesting to note that Euclid's Elements (of geometry) which was written in the 4th C BC was still used in schools in the 19th C and is still valid today.

As for the original question it may very well be proven to be valid after scientific research, it is unwise to say unless it is properly researched. Stranger things have been proven and less strange thing dis proven.

John