Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Thursday Trivia
Dale Lenz
This morning, will be going to a "retirement" village where a bur oak was struck by lighting a few months ago, tree died, leaves browned out. There are a few woodworker at this village and wants me to tell them if this tree is any good for lumber. Tree is reportly 40" across, several logs in height. How will I make the determination of how sound the wood is?
Re: Thursday Trivia
John Veerkamp
I'm not superstitious But I do Knock On Wood at times.
Re: Thursday Trivia
Thomas Skaggs, Foothills of Mount Level
I cannot knock John's answer...even with the butt of an axe head.
T.
Re: Thursday Trivia
Don Orr
I think getting to the middle of the tree is the core issue.
Knock, knock.
Who's there ?
Burr.
Burr who?
Brrrrr, it's finally DOWN to 75 deg last night. 
Some good answers so far. Hint
DaleLenz
When lighting hits a tree it sometime will fracture the wood inside the trunk.
Re: Some good answers so far. Hint
Don Orr
Is there some kind of electrical conductivity test that is used? Never heard of any, but that doesn't mean there isn't one.
Answer
DaleLenz
Well the bur oak turned out to be a post oak, maybe one 16' log, 40" dbh was pretty close. When lighting strikes a tree it can fracture the wood inside, but not always. Hitting the tree and listen for the tone(?), of fracture wood in a 40" tree, I'm not trained for that one if it does infact have a different tone, hollow trees yes. It would be dicey to core a tree and hit a crack, if infact the tree wood was fractured. My adviced was to cut the tree down and see what you got, nothing high tech about this question. They probably do have tree x-ray machines but not for this poor dirt-forester, :"). The bottom 4' of the trunk was full of nails and screws. I advised to remove the bottom six foot of the tree and saw up the 10' chunk to avoid(?) the metal in the tree. It's to be seen if anything happens to this tree for awhile. This tree is on "public property" in the retirement village, and it's difficult to please Everyone all the time.
Thanks to all that played, enjoy your weekend.