Impact of the Presence of Foreign Bodies on Quality and Value of Oak Timber

The paper discusses the impact of the presence of foreign bodies on the quality and value of oak timber as raw material.During the study, 109 oak bolts and logs with a total volume of 142.52 m 3 were measured and classified.The material for the study came from the Suchowice Forest District, within the Henryków Forestry Inspectorate (in the south-western part of Poland), and it was sampled from a tree stand located on the edge of the forest, where the largest concentration of rifle and artillery fire had occurred during World War II.As a result, the tree trunks contain significant amounts of shrapnel and projectiles.The length and diameter of each bolt and log were measured, and double classification was conducted: the first (I) classification took into account the presence of foreign bodies, whereas in the second (II) classification the presence of foreign bodies was disregarded.As a result of the conducted analyses, it was found that due to the presence of foreign bodies, all of the examined oak raw material was categorised as the worst quality class (D) timber.However, it was noted that during the second classification, where the presence of foreign bodies was not taken into account, a significant part of the raw material was upgraded to better quality classes, and only about 16% of wood remained in the worst, D class.Subsequently, it was calculated that the difference in the total value of the oak timber raw material classified by two methods amounted to approx.204 thousand PLN (ca.€ 43,514) -which was about 35% higher than the value calculated by the first method of classification.