Thread: Plantation grown Tassie Oak

Plantation grown forests will be the way of the future
Why?...Because there wont be any natural forests left to log!
Humans in this country have absolutely flogged our forests for timber and cattle
Atherton Tablelands in Nth Qld
Big Scrub in Nth New South Wales
These forests are now degraded and fragmented beyond repair!
Nothing to be proud of folks ...MM

Unfortunately the few plantations I have seen and worked on where cleared of native forest so they could plant the pines and blue gums (

Ubernoob, I'm sure that you are exaggerating, and if it is a bit softer, then so what? In time foresters will learn to improve that if the demand is there... Perhaps the softer wood is from trees that are cut a bit young to "make ends meet"... After all with trees the first harvest is many years after the initial investment.

The point of the original story is that there is a lot of plantation timber in Australia but most it is chipped for pulp... The Australian plantation Tassie Oak that was being used in the ABC story was reportedly set aside from trees destined for chipping. These trees were pruned and cared for slightly differently. The wood from these trees was apparently a bit softer than old growth TO but the woodie in that story said that that had benefits in terms of workability... and he managed to make some pretty nice pieces out of it.

The first step is to stop deriding the timber because it's a little different, or out of some sort of peer group pressure.

Originally Posted by code4pay

Unfortunately the few plantations I have seen and worked on where cleared of native forest so they could plant the pines and blue gums (

Originally Posted by GarciaJ

Ubernoob, I'm sure that you are exaggerating, and if it is a bit softer, then so what? In time foresters will learn to improve that if the demand is there... Perhaps the softer wood is from trees that are cut a bit young to "make ends meet"... After all with trees the first harvest is many years after the initial investment.

I was just surprised at how light and soft it was but I did a bit of reading and it seems Tassie Oak isn't a species, so I guess there will be quite a bit of variation depending on which type of tree it came from.

I have always bought Tassie Oak that was a light pink/brown, the current stuff I have is white.

I'd be happy to buy plantation timber, it's pretty hard for someone like myself who knows very little about wood to know if the timber you buy is from sustainable logging or clearing whole forests.

Originally Posted by GarciaJ

Ubernoob, I'm sure that you are exaggerating, and if it is a bit softer, then so what? In time foresters will learn to improve that if the demand is there... Perhaps the softer wood is from trees that are cut a bit young to "make ends meet"... After all with trees the first harvest is many years after the initial investment.

The point of the original story is that there is a lot of plantation timber in Australia but most it is chipped for pulp... The Australian plantation Tassie Oak that was being used in the ABC story was reportedly set aside from trees destined for chipping. These trees were pruned and cared for slightly differently. The wood from these trees was apparently a bit softer than old growth TO but the woodie in that story said that that had benefits in terms of workability... and he managed to make some pretty nice pieces out of it.

The first step is to stop deriding the timber because it's a little different, or out of some sort of peer group pressure.

I am of the understanding that being softer and less dense is NOT because the material is from plantation sourced logs, its because the trees are juvenile. Similar issues are common in younger, smaller, logs taken from a "wild" native forest resource.

When we cut a stand of native forest trees - being FSC certified and committed to a sustainable harvest etc etc - heres how we do it. Firstly we consider the relationship of the stand to any "no take" zone, such as a watercourse etc. This detrmines which if any trees may be removed in the harvest. Then we look at the trees themselves.
Certain trees are considered "habitat trees", they will usually (but not always) be large overmature specimens with hollows in them. Others might be classed as habitat trees because they have a birds nest in them or because they are a food source for a particular animal etc etc. Habitat trees are sacred... they may not be fallen and we may not disturb them, so no putting other trees down into them or knocking the bark off them with passing machinery or leaving branches piled around the foot of the bole for the next fire to damage them etc etc
With the habitat trees removed from consideration we next look at "recruitment " trees. These are larger trees that will if left undisturbed become habitat trees. There must be not less then two recruitment trees left per hectare.
Then we look at what is left. Of those stems that are left we are limited to not more then a 40% reduction in basal area. (Usually the actual number we take is more like 10% of the basal area). Harvest from these stems left available to take also takes into consideration species mix, stand improvement (take the worst trees not the best ones), fall direction to reduce environmental impact etc etc.

So what happens in a selective native forest harvest like that is that we do take a fair percentage of smaller stems as part of it - juvenile logs similar to what would be sourced from a mature age plantation. Some get taken to reduce the density of the stand... what is left behind has to be a similar mix to an untouched forest in terms of not being dominated by a whole heap of smaller logs etc etc. Some come along because they are in the way - this tree has to go to make room for this other tree to fall. Some come along because they re where the haul road has to go. What we don't do is cut trees and leave them behind, or damage trees and leave them behind. Then we look at repatriation in terms of closing off tracks etc.

At the end of the day if we do it right, given a year or two and a "normal" fire cycle - aside from the stumps it should be difficult to see that we were ever there at all. And in 40 years that section of forest should be suitable for harvest again... remove some trees and others do grow to fill the gaps. The hardwood stands we are cutting now have been harvested twice in the last 100 years... and there are more trees in them then the undisturbed old growth forests directly across the road.

Thats what FSC certification of a native forest practice is about.... long term sustainable harvesting. Not clearfelling... and not the unmanaged "take everything we can get to make a buck" approach taken by some operators on privately owned land.

But anyway... the end of this long winded explanation is that timber density and hardness has everything to do with the age of the tree and absolutely nothing to do with whether that tree came from a plantation or a native forest.

G'day JohnG
Great explanation of selective harvest in euc forest in a stand of (presumably) mixed species that is silviculturaly receptive to that harvest method. However, selective harvest doesn't work in most wet eucalypt forest eg: stands of even aged E.obliqua and/or E.regnans. I've heard it so many times from many an opinion that the old timers "knew what they were doing" by only selective harvesting, they didn't destroy the bush, etc. Having walked hundreds of kms through wet forests of NW Tassie there is a high % of areas selectively logged by the "old timers" that have failed to regenerate (those that have are almost always due to wildfires post harvest), leaving behind of a forest of mature "bags of " that are the seed source for the next generation - in effect they "mined" the forest for high quality sawlog (not sustainable forestry). Then there are the areas clearfelled, burnt and sown with euc seed in the 1970s here in NW Tassie and the regrowth is fantastic, understorey well developed and containing all the species (rainforest spp included) that are to be found in the adjoining forest.
Yes, age has almost everything to do with wood quality. Plantations with suitable silviculture can actually produce logs with less growth stress than native forest logs; if the silviculture is wrong then growth stress can be as bad or worse than native forest. With age comes increasing density and wood quality and the rate of density increase varies between trees within species but even more noticeably between species. The old growth logs processed for Tas Oak generally produce a pink / brown dense timber and younger regrowth is light in colour with lower density and strength. Plantation trees will generally produce timber with low density, strength and hardness that increases with age - again this varies between species. I've seen plantation eucs 30 yrs old sawn and dried into high quality products in NZ, unfortunately here we have a lot of catching up to do! More to say later if required