I have used modified diameter select cuts. Its logical to me, but im not a hardwood guru as i confessed above. Unlike even aged pine stands where the canopy is essentially at one level above the ground, hardwood stands usually have upper, mid, and understories you have to deal with to get sunlight on the ground. Those pesky slower growing shade tolerant species 'gum up' the space between the bottom of the dominant canopy and ground level.
Essentially, you thin from below taking out all the smaller, overtopped, shade tolerant trees. Then take out a portion of the dominants and codominants that make up the meat of the canopy. You leave the bigger, healthy intermediates and codominants (and some dominants) that will grow to the dominant class in the following decades. That takes out most of the under and midstory and some of the bigger, better trees to make the gaps and openings you want.
You have to be careful to offer enough wood volume to make the sale appeal to buyers/loggers. You can't expect them to thin through 2 or 3 acres before they have a load. The loggers have to be able to make a living and haul enough loads per day to make it profitable to them. If you fail to offer enough wood, its all academic because nobody will ever buy it. If the timber is of extreme quality with a lot of high dollar logs, you can get away with a lighter volume per acre sale.
I say again, I am no expert hdwd manager. I have done a few of what I have described above and the results more or less met the goals of the TSI action. Making a sale like that happen is not terribly hard as long as you have enough volume at the start to make the sale go and still have enough residual timber standing afterwards to meet your goals. Its really only viable in mature hardwood stands with a lot of smaller-diameter overtopped and intermediate volumes. Most buyers say they need a minimum of 1 load per acre to make everything work.. you have to make sure through careful inventory work beforehand that you have enough timber to work with before starting.
