woodworkingboy
TreeHouser
Ah, thanks Joel. It's all pretty deep a subject. I generally stop where you have to be good at math. 
Murphy's Step Cut
- Thread starter bonner1040
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Porkbrick
TreeHouser
i have also heard and observed that conifers develop more compression wood while hardwoods develop more tension wood. i have seen monterey cypress limbs 20" thick top to bottom with the pith just inches from the top. i havent noticed as extreme a deviation in any of our hardwoods, but i will be looking from now on. FWIW i think that if you have a big enough tractor/winch you can rip a tree out of the ground in the direction you want
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Jed
TreeHouser
Off the topic boys, and I apologize, but I've got to add this in here. I took out a 32" Black Cottonwood lead today that threatened a house (Giant 4.5' pig). I had to whittle it from the top down, cause there wasn't room to crash it. Anyway, finally I had it down to a 15' log to fall out of the tree. I decided to face it to about one third diameter. I no sooner got the face cut finished then SMACK! That "would-be compression-wood, now uncompressed" split right up the log about three feet. Freeked me out, but no big deal. Just put in the diagonal as usual, and then torched it off. Pretty weird though. Never seen that happen before. I wouldn't have thought about a Cottonpig as being straight-grained enough for that to happen.
murphy4trees
TreeHouser
Thanks for the clarification... makes sense that the pressure in compressed wood, will cause the cells to be denser. Denser seems like it would be stronger to fight compression, but not necessarily tension. Don't know about the speed of sound thing.. but I do like watching falls in super slow motion to listen to the squeaking of the hinge... tells a lot about how the hinge held.. so if the tensioned wood is not stronger (in tension), then it must simply be the placement of the wood in the most leveraged place to fight the lean... the beauty here is the magnificence of the trees intelligence. If we can puy the saw down long enough to get quiet and really tune into the trees, they are truly amazing beings...
