Browsing by Subject "kuiva-ilmakuivatiheys"

This study is a part of the research project of uneven-aged forest stands ERIKA by Finnish Institute for Forest Research. The aim of this study was to identify the growth and quality of Norway spruce wood and sawn wood products from uneven-aged forest stands in South Finland. The properties ex-amined were fiber length, wood density, modulus of elasticity and visual grade according to Nordic standards of visual grading. 64 trees were measured for fiber length and sawn wood of 40 trees (355 pc.) was measured for density, modulus of elasticity and visual grading. The variation of fiber length was modeled in respect to distance from pith and ring width using a mixed model. The variation of density, modulus of elasticity and visual grade was analyzed in respect to the within-tree location with two-sided variance analysis. In respect to cambial age and ring width the properties were analyzed by means of regression modeling. According to the results fiber length, density and MOE did not differ significantly from those characteristic to spruce in even-aged stands: most variation was among-tree which gives a reason to think that the changes in within-tree growth rhythm do not affect these proper-ties within an individual tree. Visual grading for sawn wood gave that there was a good amount of class A (~ 20 %) but class C (> 33 %) was more common than class B (> 25 %): Timber was knotty especially near pith and loose knots were dense on lumber boards. Twisting was high near pith in timber boards but did not differ from the usual. There was remarkable amount of compression wood and decay in the material. The within-tree variation of visual grade was equal to the among-tree varia-tion. Due to the small sample size the results are not yet applicable to uneven-aged forests in general, but they give an impression that there might not be any major differences between the quality of even-aged and uneven-aged wood. First of all, the results give light to the characteristics of uneven-aged spruce wood properties that might be of interest for further research.