When trees were huge

Thank you. Tunneling through that fir log to make a custom travel trailer was quite a publicity stunt.
 
I love the angry tree huger comments under the pictures - posted on their computer (or phone more likely) from China, while sitting in their house made of industrially and mechanically harvested wood, in a city that drives the demand, and bears the responsibility for the destruction of the planet they claim to love and protect.
 
Square_peg said:
Just a collection of old-timey logging photos.

http://izismile.com/2010/12/23/when_trees_were_huge_39_pics-1.html
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Thanks for the link. There were a couple there I hadn't seen. Love logging photos, particularly the older ones.

Switching to OT mode. I've never been to that site before. Sites that upload from my computer make me a little uncommfortable. I know they are uploading, but don't know what. I have a program called BitMeter that shows uploading and downloading. The graphic in the box (lower right in the screen capture below) shows the activity . Red is downloading, green is uploading, and yellow is overlapping.



Photobucket does this as well. Long after a page is loaded, uploading continues. Uploading stops when you leave the site.

Bob
 
love it.
i have several of the Schiffer books about "Old Time Logging". can't get enough of it.
thanks for posting

buzz
 
Square,
honsetly, i don't understand why the logging companies/loggers cut down those huge trees. insane, but they did get 'em down and bucked too. it just blows my mind. the trees were so big.
oh, i know , there was a ginormous amount of board-feet in 'em.

buzz
 
markv said:
Square,
honsetly, i don't understand why the logging companies/loggers cut down those huge trees. insane, but they did get 'em down and bucked too. it just blows my mind. the trees were so big.
oh, i know , there was a ginormous amount of board-feet in 'em.

buzz
Click to expand...

One huge log without defects was equivalent to piling 2-3 truck loads of ordinary wood in the same amount of space. If I were the maker of furniture, kitchen cabinets or some such my eyes would have lit up to see such a beautiful thing headed towards the mill in town. Probably even more were this to be modern day. These beauties have to be appreciated before the saw even touches them but if you wait too long disease/rot/wind/weather/fire/lightning will beat you to it. Beholding beautiful wood is a crapshoot and haste to harvest has not helped this game, especially when you discover it takes 500-1000 years to get there.
 
yep, a friend up Oregon way sent me a small box of Manzanita. been laying around his place for awhile and he knew i'd make something with it. Manzanita not a big tree at all, more of a shrub.
here in Mudzoory we have a saying " ALL WOOD IS GOOD WOOD".
a couple a yeras ago i finally got a chance of a lifetime to visit the Redwoods. Oh man.
something, an organism that big, alive... humbled me.
buzz
i live in a treehouse
 
Square_peg said:
No. 36. Now that you got it what are you gonna do with it? If you could get it to the mill it would be too big for the saw.
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I had the good fortune of encountering a 'back to the lander' operation with a large and sturdy home-made portable sawmill (60 inch blade geared to a VW engine) cutting large timber in the Queen Charlotte Islands (now Haida Gwaii) 35 years ago. Commercial mills couldn't deal with big cedar and fir logs anymore and he was remarkably inventive and cashed in on this. He somehow reduced the logs into sizes that could be milled. I never witnessed how he dealt with truly big stuff (an 8-10 foot wide log was not unusual in the 70s-80s) but I couldn't help but notice the bed and sides on his 1 ton utility truck were made from solid 2 inch fir planks, all of which were about 3 feet wide.
 
great photos! I grew up in the shadow of the redwoods and giant sequoias. If you ever have a chance to come out to CA, definitely swing by General Sherman tree in the giant forest.
 
B34NS said:
great photos! I grew up in the shadow of the redwoods and giant sequoias. If you ever have a chance to come out to CA, definitely swing by General Sherman tree in the giant forest.
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Copy that! Back in 1979 when my work contract ended in California, and before heading back home, I specifically sought out the General Sherman tree and was suitably impressed. Some 30 feet across. Looked as if lightning or storms had taken out/broken off the top third of the tree over the years and yet it was still taller than any other tree I'd seen before. 275 feet, if I recall!
 
This was about the time Mom and Dad met (1951) - and Dad says there was no chainsaw involved in cutting the tree!

5905165663_caa74d81f6_z.jpg
 
300Six said:
Copy that! Back in 1979 when my work contract ended in California, and before heading back home, I specifically sought out the General Sherman tree and was suitably impressed. Some 30 feet across. Looked as if lightning or storms had taken out/broken off the top third of the tree over the years and yet it was still taller than any other tree I'd seen before. 275 feet, if I recall!
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Amen to that! Took this photo one morning a few years ago after having to emergency camp for two nights near it after a freak blizzard dumped about 10ft of snow in a few short hours. Back when CA had real weather ;)

FgUG7lo.jpg
 
B34NS said:
Amen to that! Took this photo one morning a few years ago after having to emergency camp for two nights near it after a freak blizzard dumped about 10ft of snow in a few short hours. Back when CA had real weather ;)
Click to expand...
You can readily become 'imparted with religion' when you stand in front of such a magnificent tree. Churches and religions are founded on mere human condition but wonderful examples from nature's repertoire are what sway me. I flew back to Ottawa after standing in awe beside ' Gen'l Sherman' and have never viewed the world same as before.
Sure, knocking that tree down and cutting it up would create temporary jobs and enough wood to trim and window a small town's worth of 'historically ephemeral' human habitations but the 'take your breath away' experience of actually viewing such a tree and being in it's presence would be lost forever. And to me that has value well beyond the human described condition called 'worth a million bucks'.
Wind, lightning, fire or disease is ultimately going to topple this old girl and rubber-neckers trampling, and compacting the soil, over the roots is not beneficial at all but at least she's still going, for now.
 
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