Thread: Knott free pinus radiata

In theory, de-limb the sappling as its growing and keep doing it into its maturaty.

Originally Posted by rod1949

In theory, de-limb the sappling as its growing and keep doing it into its maturaty.

Ah so manual intervention is required? so as long as all the limbs are cut off as it grows its essentially a growing pole of timber growing?

Is there a large price difference betweren knotted and knott free? Would this be the reason behind if there is a price difference, the labour involved in cutting the limbs off?

thanks for the answer

it is possible to buy furniture grade or clear pine as it is called, may take some hunting and you will pay a premium, the grade sold in most hardwarestores is standard or better

Pretty sure I saw Clear Pine in Masters last week - it was certainly much dearer than ordinary grade.
There are also the clear pine panels from Porta made up from finger jointed sections.

Clear Pine is easy to find in Sydney timber yards, so I would think Canberra would be similar.

Im not activley looking for it was more curious as to how clear pine was created whether it wss a specific type of pine or it was radiata pine grown with manual intervention ie lopping limbs off when growing etc. Thanks for the replies so far

The clear timber would be selected during the gradeing process ans seperated from the lesser knotty stuff. Good forestery practice would give a larger pecentage of good grade wood however. I think I read on this forum a few years back that really large mature radiata trees gives much better quality wood than you can normally buy today.
Regards
John

I source mine from Masters, Pinus Sawmills or from a framing company in Hume.

The stuff from Bunnings is the worst in the entire world. I use it, but I pick those piles to death before you'll get 4 good sticks.

If you get the 6m lengths of 45x90 mpg10 they are infinitely better.

I'm going out to Hume tomorrow to get more for more Maxifigs (groan!). I'll get some prices.

I think the stuff in Masters is Deal which has very little in the way of knots,my dad used to use this for his furniture many,many years ago.
Please correct me if i'm wrong.
Cheers

I grow trees here on my farm and I prune basically all my Hoop pines up to about 20 feet. The general idea is to prune them in three stages keeping the knotty core down to about 6 inches in diameter. To get a benefit from pruning, I will need to grow the trees to a largish size to give plenty of knot free wood around the knotty core. This knot free wood is certainly my high quality product and it will be priced accordingly. My aim is to grow the trees big enough to give 12 inch wide knot free boards. Hoop pine is a quality wood of high standard at least making it theoretically worth my while doing all this pruning over the years. The old Forestry Department used to prune their select trees but I don't think there is any pruning any more. The knot free hoop pine wood that is sold is from old pruned select trees, finger jointed wood where the knots are cut out and there is also a source of knot free wood and that is from the internodes, [the knot free section between the whorls] that can have a little length in it. Not everyone realizes it but wood without knots is of a higher quality than knotty wood.

Called past Masters and the pine batons today were execrable. Went to Bunnings Fyshwick and I was knocked off my rocker. There are 90x45 MPG10's @ 5.4's and they were dead set perfect. I grabbed 6 sticks without a single knot in the entire length. The best I've seen ever, let alone the incredible, no inconceivable, miracle that BGS would sell it.