WVFA Mountain State Forestry Fall 2020

I N D U S T R Y N E W S 12 West Virginia Forestry Association Mountain State Forestry  | Fall 2020 www.wvfa.org RESPONDENT DEMOGRAPHICS One-hundred ten (110) of the responding mills provided annual production levels, from which comparative statistical analyses were conducted. Respondent production ranged from 0.04 to 150 MMBF with a mean of 9.9 MMBF of production. Annual production information was classified into three groups based on natural breaks (Table 1), which resulted in a uniform distribution of responses over three production level groupings. These production groupings were used for all subsequent analyses. The survey data was statistically analyzed to determine if the size of the mill (production level) had any effect on grading, scaling, or operational decisions examined through the survey. Where a statistically significant difference was determined through testing, the results are noted and briefly explained. For the remainder of this article, the term total number of responses will refer to the number of useable responses to the survey question under discussion, not the total number of responses to the survey. While the 110 survey responses providing annual production levels were the basis for the analysis, certain questions were not answered by some respondents, therefore analyses were performed on the useable responses to those questions. Table 1 contains the breakdown of annual production level by state for survey respondents and Figure 2 illustrates this distribution of mills by size and state. SCALING PROTOCOLS Scaling of hardwood logs is arguably just as important as grading since log pricing is based on both grade and volume of a log. The two measurements required to determine log volume are scaling diameter and length. Scaling diameter for hardwood logs is determined by measuring the diameter inside the bark at the small end of the log (DIB). The total length of a log is measured in feet. Once these two measurements have been determined, the total volume, in board feet, can be calculated using an established log rule. Three log rules consistently used by the industry include the Scribner, Doyle, and International ¼ inch Log Rules. The most common log rule used by mills in this study was the Doyle log rule, with 83 of 109 mills (76.1%) reporting its use (Table 2). The second most commonly used log rule was Scribner decimal C log rule with 12 responses, while the least used rule was International ¼ log rule with 11 responses. Three mills used a combination of the log rules (in all three cases Doyle was part of the combination). The Doyle log rule was used consistently over all nine states in the sample, with Ohio and West Virginia using it exclusively. The International Log Rule saw the greatest use in Virginia and North Carolina, while the Scribner Decimal C log rule was used mostly in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Four options for measuring scaling diameter were detailed in the survey: Average – The largest and smallest measurement taken through the center of the heart added together and divided by two; Short-way only (SWO) – the shortest measurement of diameter crossing through the heart of the log; Short-way then 90 degrees to that – (SW+90) – the shortest measurement of diameter crossing through the heart of the log and then 90 degrees to that and adding those two measurements together and dividing by two; and Other including purchasing logs by weight and measuring just the small end of the log inside bark (with no further explanation). The two most common methods reported were Average and (SW+90), with a combined total of 74.3% of responses. A statistically significant relationship existed between the measurement of scaling diameter and size of production. More small mills than expected responded “Short-way only” (SWO) and more large mills than expected responded “Other.” Furthermore, fewer large mills than expected used the “Short-way only” (SWO) method. Traditionally, mills have differentiated between butt logs and upper logs when assigning prices. Of the mills sampled, 55 (50.5%) Production Level Number of Producers Percent of Producers small (>0.0 to ≤2.5 MMBF) 35 31.8% medium (>2.5 to ≤8.0 MMBF) 37 33.7% large (>8.0 MMBF) 38 34.5% Total 110 100.0% Table 1. Annual production levels (in million board feet) defined for the statistical analyses. Figure 2: Distribution of survey responses from sawmills by state and annual production category. Prod Level 1 Prod Level 2 Prod Level 3 KY MD NC NY OH PA TN VA WV NA 12 10 8 6 4 2 0