Summary The potential of 40 mm-thick, back-sawn boards of 15-year- old Eucalyptus globulus Labill, subsp. globulus to produce dried appearance products was assessed. Two samples of boards from plantation grown logs described in Washusen et al. (2000) representing (i) the cross-section through each log (Sample 1), and (ii) outer heartwood boards (Sample 2) were dried to 12% moisture content. Sample 1 was dried using sheltered air-drying followed by kiln-drying. Sample 2 was kiln-dried from green without preliminary air-drying. Dried recovery results were poor in both samples and extensive degrade substantially reduced the recovery of undried boards graded select and better that were reported by Washusen et al. (2000). The dried recovery of select grade and better represented reductions of 69% and 60% for Sample 1 and 2 respectively, and based on Sample 1 the final recovery was estimated to be less than 2% of the original log volume. Tension wood was identified as one of the causes of drying degrade in boards from the outer heartwood. The results suggest that the species has little prospect for the production of high-quality solid wood products from unpruned logs from plantations in the southern Murray-Darling Basin unless there can be significant improvement in drying performance.
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Washusen et al. (2000) studied this question.