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  #1  
Old 01-17-2017, 10:20 AM
riverrummed riverrummed is offline
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Default How important is freezing cold to the curing of tone wood?

I've been reading a bit lately about how evergreen trees adapt to freezing temperatures in winter and was wondering if any of you builders subject your cut spruce to freezing temperatures because you think it is beneficial in some way? From what I've read about what we know, and there is much we don't know, it seems there might be benefits to this practice. I can now understand why moon spruce is cut in winter even disregarding moon phase assertions. But I've seen pictures posted by John Arnold of felling excursions for red spruce where guys are wearing shorts and sandals, which appears to disregard what others claim are benefits to winter felling.
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Old 01-17-2017, 10:45 AM
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Well, it could mean that lumberjacks are really tough and think nothing of working in shorts in freezing temperatures.
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Old 01-17-2017, 02:20 PM
Alan Carruth Alan Carruth is offline
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Ever cut down a tree, and then try to drag it home, all by hand? If you have you'll know why they do it in winter, and sometimes don't wear much. It's a LOT of work. It's usually easier to drag things across frozen ground rather than through mud, and the cold helps keep you from getting over heated. I will say I've never seen anybody cutting trees wearing flip-flops, though. Dangerous, that...

Freshly cut wood requires not only drying out, but some seasoning before it's really useful for guitars. Seasoning calls for putting the wood through moisture and temperature cycling. Traditionally this has been done in open sided sheds that keep off rain and snow, but allow for circulation of air and changes in temperature and humidity. Although the wood would naturally get frozen in northern climates I'm not sure there's any benefit for seasoning to temperatures below freezing. As someone who has used a wood stove for heat for a long time, I can say that it's usually easier to split wood when it's frozen, and that might be a benefit when you're making split billets to resaw.

Last edited by Alan Carruth; 01-17-2017 at 02:26 PM.
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Old 01-17-2017, 03:06 PM
murrmac123 murrmac123 is offline
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Then of course there is the hoary old myth that the best time to fell a tree is when the sap is at its lowest, so you should wait until winter.

The best time to fell a tree is today ... the next best time is tomorrow ... and so on and so forth.
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Old 01-17-2017, 05:52 PM
riverrummed riverrummed is offline
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As a matter of fact back in the mid 70's I once lived in a place for three years that took 13 cords of wood to heat each winter (back when winters required that we heat from mid-September to the end of May). Two of us felled all the trees ourselves (mostly Engleman spruce) with chainsaws, cut it into rounds, loaded it onto a truck, unloaded it, split it with mauls and stacked it. You can't get into the woods where I live to cut wood in the winter due to snow depth (right now we are at about 200 inches). Felling big trees in dense forest is one of the more exciting and dangerous jobs I've ever done.
But, I still wonder if the transformation trees go through to survive freezing temperatures has benefits once the wood is cut. Seems like it might.
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Old 01-17-2017, 06:28 PM
JSDenvir JSDenvir is offline
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You heated mostly with softwoods? Ive never heard of that. Of course, I've never heard of a lot of things :-)

Steve
www.denvirguitars.com

Last edited by JSDenvir; 01-17-2017 at 08:30 PM.
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Old 01-17-2017, 08:28 PM
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Tim McKnight Tim McKnight is offline
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We used to harvest Sassafrass roots. The gentleman that taught us said we should dig the roots in any month that had an "R" in it. Those were the months that had the most concentration of sap in the root system. Perhaps this is why some harvest conifers in the R months since the sap content in the tree may be at the lowest content? This is only speculation so it's worth exactly what you paid for it.
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Old 01-17-2017, 08:41 PM
printer2 printer2 is offline
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I can't see any advantage to freezing the wood after it has been dried. It is not like you would have much moisture movement as the relative humidity is generally not that low.
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Old 01-17-2017, 08:41 PM
LSemmens LSemmens is offline
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I never experience the cold like you'd have in North America, so take this FWIW, I use softwoods and hardwoods in my fireplace, whatever I can get. Softwood tends to burn hotter, but for a shorter time. I've been told that there is a lot more residue in the chimney from burning softwoods, too, but I am still relatively new to fireplaces having lived in the tropics for Half of my life.
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Old 01-17-2017, 08:54 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JSDenvir View Post
You heated mostly with softwoods? Ive never heard of that. Of course, I've never heard of a lot of things :-)

Steve
www.denvirguitars.com
I hear heating with quartered Brazilian rosewood is the best.
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Old 01-18-2017, 05:57 AM
JSDenvir JSDenvir is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rogthefrog View Post
I hear heating with quartered Brazilian rosewood is the best.
Geez, don't even JOKE :-)
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Old 01-18-2017, 01:52 PM
Alan Carruth Alan Carruth is offline
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Folks who live in boreal forest areas, where there are few hardwoods, heat with what they can get. My fire wood is mostly red and rock maple, and ash, with some beech and oak. Every once in a while I'll get some American hornbeam, although that finds it's way into the shop stash if it's long enough. Around here softwood that gets burned at all is used to boil out maple sap.

My father in law used to talk about a friend who had a boat yard. They would feed the stove with scraps of lignum vitae. The stuff is dense and has a lot of oil in it, so it's good heat wood, but pretty nearly impossible to split.
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Old 01-18-2017, 02:53 PM
Truckjohn Truckjohn is offline
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Very cold weather also slows down the growth of mold and fungus - which can stain or damage the wood. It also gives you critical time to process the wood before bugs attack... And that's an important advantage. Spruce tops processed in the cold also tends to be "whiter".... And a lot of people like that as well.

On the night logging for "moon" wood or whatever.... That's more lore and a way for poachers to sneak a log out. Professional loggers don't cut trees at night. It's just too dangerous and is a great way to get killed. On the other hand... Someone trying to sneak a tree out of the woods might do just that....
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Old 01-19-2017, 08:15 AM
riverrummed riverrummed is offline
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Moon wood is not logged at night. It is logged during a certain phase of the moon which is happening whether you can see the moon or not...day and night.
We burn softwoods where I live because that is all that grows at 9000 feet. We used to sometimes buy apple wood from orchards that cut down old trees 40 miles away and lower in elevation. We would only burn it at night, putting it into a nice bed of coals and getting it burning really well before damping down the stove and going to bed. If you were lucky it would heat the house til morning when you'd throw some kindling on the embers and re-stoke the fire with spruce.
But, returning to the original question. If you Google "how do trees survive winter" you can read forestry investigations and reports about what is happening at the cellular level in the tree. From reading that it seems to me that subjecting already cut tone wood to freezing might be beneficial to luthiers. Torrefaction is going the other direction with wood using heat, but trees don't see that kind of heat in their natural environment. And I don't see or hear much from the custom builders here embracing torrefaction,it seems to be mostly the larger builders who are using it.
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Old 01-19-2017, 07:36 PM
printer2 printer2 is offline
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Baked a couple of sets, one I put through cycles in my fridge, to the freezer, room temp, humidified, up to 170 F, room temp, cycle repeated a number of times. Drum sanded down to 0.120", put them aside, looked at them after a while and then realized I could not remember which one was which.
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