We have some land in Sth Gippsland where we're growing trees with the intention of eventual harvest. I also do a bit of salvage milling with logs from urban tree management. I sold some timber the other day to a woodworker from an exotic. The tree was heavily branched so lots of knots. To a conventional forester this reduces the value of the timber. The woodworker loved all the extra feature! And she took what might otherwise have been scrap from the facecut to make bowls, some rounds and so on.
See:
https://www.facebook.com/Thingsofclayandwood1?fref=nf
for some details. I've had some other chats with the woodworker about what they like from timber. For example, we have a large blackwood that's blown over on our farm. It might be all full of large borer holes from various grubs - not the little wood beetle stuff - which would reduce its value as boards and slabs. The woodworker said that this could add feature.
I'm keen to identify higher-value markets for what we grow. I can possibly pick species, use silvicultural techniques and so on to produce higher value products. Luthiers will pay a lot for wood but they are very particular about what they want. I've heard there's a few builders around Daylesford using bluegum rounds a la Ben Law with chestnut. Bluegum coppices well so that's a species that could be used to grow roundwood stems in SE Australia.
I would be very interested to hear from anyone who is selling high value timber from farm forestry to different markets. Lessons learnt, what's been successful and what hasn't worked and so on.
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