Doyle Scale Measurement

   It is of the utmost importance that the plantation timber owner/grower have a complete understanding of how standing timber and harvested logs are measured.

   Appearance-grade plywood manufacturers in the Eastern United States use the “Doyle Scale Measurement” for determining the number of board feet contained in a log delivered for sale to their log yards. Since the Paulownia timber is being produced for the plywood market, the Doyle Scale method will be the standard method of measurement used in all transactions.

   Standing timber wood volumes and harvested log volumes can be, and usually are, calculated by different methods for different purposes. Scientists and foresters interested in rates of growth, water hydrology or environmental effects may include in their measurement the entire wood volume of the tree, sometimes including that of the roots. Although this can be valuable information for scientific research purposes, it does not have any relevance to the quantity of marketable wood contained in a tree. It can be very misleading and possibly disappointing for one to project timber sales volumes based on scientific measurement rather than standard, log market measurements. In such misguided cases, volume disparity can be as high as 300%. Even as you study all of the excellent research done on Paulownia, you will be hard pressed to find where data is given in standard “wood trade” volumes.

   With this understanding, Dickey Seed International relates all wood volume data (including both standing, timber volume estimates and harvested, log volumes) to the Industry's standard "Doyle Scale" form of measurement.

   There have been over a hundred log scales and variations used in the United States alone. The Doyle, which was introduced in 1825, has survived to become one of the most widely used log scales today for the buying and selling of logs. Log buyers, such as saw millers, wood processors, etc., sell lumber by volume, and the standard of measurement that they use for buying logs is “Scale” which relates to how much volume, “Board Feet”, can be processed and sold from a sawlog. There is considerable waste in the making of square lumber from round, tapered logs. The smaller the log, the greater is the percentage of waste