A guy contacted me to mill some ash logs. "What's the average diameter?" I asked. "Oh, about 18". he says. "How many do you have?" "Over 50." Wow, this is going to be a big job. Didn't turn out that way.
There were 57 logs, so he got that part right. The largest one was barely 18" and lots of them would yield nothing more than a 4 x 4 post. I got tired of milling those 4 x 4's after about 20 of them, and pulled out about a dozen of those toothpicks and sent them back to the firewood pile. Some of the larger logs actually had some really nice wood in them. We shared the wood 50/50. I got a little over 1100 bf from the logs I milled - and enjoyed some really nice late Summer/early Fall weather out in the beautiful farm country of Niagara County.
The EAB is decimating the ash in NYS; probably everywhere. I've had two guys in the past week ask if I'll mill hundreds of ash logs for shares. One guy has 50 acres of dead ash trees. A LT40 with full hydraulics would be just the ticket for that many logs. I might actually consider it if they were paying me by the BF, but I have no need for that much wood.
John