I need to borrow a Tree Farm

[Mr. Analog]

So, I see a couple of tree farms set up around the map, I want to borrow one for a while as I need a ... large amount of wood to make a very large build happen

Are there any farms I can borrow the use of for a few days?

[Thorin]

What colour of wood do you want?  The one by Frontier Hotel is birch at the moment but could easily be switched to oak.  I can bring over a nigh-unlimited amount of bonemeal to speed things up from the skelly xp farm.  In fact, if you want I'll help you chop the wood, too.  Might have a couple of diamond enchanted axes I'm willing to sacrifice to big, beautiful builds

[Mr. Analog]

I need oak, birch and jungle.

Maybe I should just build my own, i want to have an upper area I can use as scaffold so I can cut the trees from the top down (as Notch intended)

I've already started hoarding stone and bricks. When the patch comes through I'm gonna need a lot of quartz, but I'll come to that later.

[Thorin]

Where is it written that Notch intended for trees to be cut from the top down?

Birch trees are  by far the easiest to farm.  Oak trees are alright, but their big variants are a pain.  Same with spruce.  And jungle trees are just plain huge.  I prefer to limit the height of the trees to seven blocks, as this is how far you can chop upwards (well, you can chop upwards six blocks and the last block is always leaves).  I do this by placing a glass block so that there's air blocks below it, then a torch on the glass block so that nothing spawns on the leaves of trees (this is an important consideration!).

There are also redstone-powered tree farms, but I don't know how to make those yet.  I kinda like the choppy-choppy, especially with an unbreaking III efficiency IV diamond axe, it goes really quick.

[Mr. Analog]

Hmm, maybe building a redstone contraption is the answer!

SCIENCE!

Now all I gotta do is figure out where I'm gonna find the time LOL

[Mr. Analog]

Man, out of curiosity I looked for a few videos on how to do this and it was quite disappointing both in quality and imagination.

[Thorin]

The problem is that a wood block doesn't break when pushed by a piston, it just moves like other solid blocks. To be honest the easiest way to harvest wood quickly is with bonemeal and the most efficient axe you have chopping down a tree that has been limited in height.

..

Not that I've spent a lot of time thinking about this

[Mr. Analog]

It seems that at best I'd simply be moving the blocks around.

I must have spent too much time in FTB/Tekkit because I could have sworn you could use Dispensers to plant trees (you can't)

It's rather silly, you can use a Dispenser to simulate right-clicking with bonemeal but not plant seeds or saplings.

Other than finding some mod or something I'll just have to cut them down anyway. So time to craft a bunch of diamond axes

[Thorin]

Yah, kinda dumb how dispensers don't act on seeds and saplings.  And the new hoppers and droppers don't help with this.  I guess you could make it semi-automated, where you have dirt blocks surrounded by stone blocks, then run down the line holding saplings and right-click.  The saplings will only plant in the dirt.  Then have a dispenser next to each sapling and dispense bone meal at the push of a button, then come back and chop all the wood blocks.

If you're crafting diamond axes, make sure to enchant them.  Especially Efficiency will make a big difference, but even Unbreaking is useful.  A diamond axe on a wood block takes 0.4 seconds per block.  Adding Efficiency IV should reduce that by 286%, down to 0.14 seconds, or 0.7 seconds for a typical five-block tree.  With movement, this means a whole tree in 2 seconds, or about 600 trees in a Minecraft day.  I found I did about 144 trees in a Minecraft day at my birch tree farm by Frontier Hotel, but that included putting down new saplings and bonemealing them all.  That's about ten to twelve stacks of wood in a Minecraft day.  I tried the same with unenchanted stone axes, and it took three Minecraft days for eleven stacks.

And my tree farm is completely safe from mobs, so you can harvest wood day and night

[Thorin]

So I've got 6 stacks of birch and 11 stacks of oak and I'm working on more for ya.  Maybe I'll trade a full chest for three diamonds, since I'm using up my enchanted diamond axe for this...  Sound good?

[Mr. Analog]

G'gah! I'll set up an Ender Chest later so I can start transporting materials

Very cool!

[Thorin]

Did a little more chopping, made it through two diamond axes (Efficiency III on one and Efficiency IV on the other), and filled a double chest. It's the one at my tree farm that is completely filled with wood blocks. You're welcome to take all the wood out of there.

It's mostly oak, then spruce, then birch. Spruce is kind of a pain to grow in a tree farm like that because the height limit means it has to grow a small tree and it's much more likely to try and grow large trees, so you actually have to sit and hold the bonemeal on each sapling, with an average number of tries around 5 or 6 it seems. No jungle wood yet. Is there any particular type of wood that you'll need more of, or a certain amount you're looking for?

I chatted with Snowie0wl for a bit, too, and gave him some stacks of glass and lent him a scuba helmet (Respiration III Protection IV). I'm looking forward to seeing his dragon rail completed. And his fire-under-water trick is done by placing ice over the water and then the ice melts. Cool trick!

[Mr. Analog]

Very neat!

I can't wait to start my city now dammit *researches neo-classical architecture*

[Thorin]

Hey, I put some new materials in the basement of your first floating building.  Some different types of wood and some glass.  Is there anything else you need at the moment?

[Mr. Analog]

Thanks man!

I need cobblestone of all things, I guess I used up my supply making bricks and smooth stone

So  if you have cobble I'll take it!