Hardest Timber you cut with your saw?

[Fronty Owner]

Osage Orange...........Osage river is 20 min to north of me.
I have pushed a few out with dozer, the roots are covered
with a very orange paper like stuff. After it is dried the stuff
is even hard to belt sand or cut with a file.

It was on the fence......

TT

I know some traditional archers that would love to have that stuff...

hardest stuff I have ever cut isn't so much timber as it is fence row. that stuff will dull, damage, and hang up your chain by looking at it.

 

[banshee67]

Man, do them old ties ever burn good, back when RXR cut them in
3 pieces when replacing them. We would drive along the tracks
and pick them up for a friend that had a huge Auto Body shop.
He had a 300 gallon tank with 10" flue, we would fill it with ties
and it would get to puffing like a old train. I seen it many a times
blowing fire a good foot out of the ash pan damper. It would
blow the flame out and suck it back in about 4 times per second.


TT

nancy pelosi and al gore just had strokes

 

[ropensaddle]

Petrified Osage or elm

 

[jimbojango]

There isn't anyone going to convince me that anything is harder than a 100 year old hedge corner post. The wood lasts forever and doesn't rot worth a damn. I like to cut it this time of year into firewood lengths and my next fall i can split 90% of it with a maul. So i dont' konw what you guys are doing wrong, but it splits EASY after a summer to "cook" but don't try to noodle or cut it... your saw will have less teeth than it started with

Bodark, hedge, and osage orange are the same tree BTW so all of you know. Mulberry's are just a "mexican" hedge tree... and YES hedge have thorns, but not the big long bastards like honey locust, just the short little sharp thorns that hurt like hell through a glove even

 

[TMFARM 2009]

hedge.. (osage orange, bodark... Whatever) hands down.. Go try and cut a corner hedge post off with a new chain and wonder if you'll have all the teeth still on it when you get through it ... After that probably bur oak.. Which is easy cutting

a thirty inch diameter hedge tree that had laid for 10 years hard as concrete and yes melted spots on the chain....gave up and burned it in brush pile....

 

[TMFARM 2009]

Oh ya almost forgot the ash tree with the steel fence post in the center.... Had to pull over with rope and truck after completely cutting around it... It wouldnt drop the post held it and it ruined a few chains...i'll have to see if i still have pics.

 

[pastryguyhawaii]

Hah hah. Actually I think the OP was more interested in US trees but here goes...

The worst tree I ever cut down was a dead old River Box on a floodplain. It was about 36" diameter and it took three chains just to get it on the ground. I was using the 32" bar and semi chisel on one of my 7900's.
I then swapped over to my 3120 and 36" Hard Nose with .404" semi chisel and in one of the limbs about 20" I was going through a chain per cut (and I'm not talking just blunt, I'm talking severe visible damage to the cutting edge).
After a few cuts I gave up and that tree is still laying there near Dareton, New South Wales. It will still be there in 3 billion years.
My mate and I put the 3 rounds we cut in his trailer and it was by far the heaviest wood I've ever lifted. His 30 tonne splitter also wouldn't touch it.
I am still scarred and receiving therapy over that tree...

I think you win. The kiawe that's been baking in the sun for about 20 years is pretty darn hard but I'm sure it's not even close to what you cut.

 

[rmihalek]

Last summer I took down two standing dead maples about 16 inches dbh. I heard the locals refer to them as Rock maples, but they sure look like Sugar maples to me. They were probably dead for going on three years by the time I got to them.

All was going well until I got to blocking down the main stem. I was getting maybe three cuts before I had to sharpen the chain and every time the cutters were knackered. Even with a fresh edge, the Timberwolf 365BB was just throwing dust. Once split, the wood was extremely dense and burned for a long time. Now I know why this stuff is called Rock maple!

 

[MCW]

I think you win. The kiawe that's been baking in the sun for about 20 years is pretty darn hard but I'm sure it's not even close to what you cut.

I've cut some dead old hard wood before but nothing I have cut has come even remotely close to this tree. Even the hardest wood is at least cuttable, this stuff wasn't. i've even thought since it may have been hit by lightning and made even more tungsten like

 

[Scandy14]

Nice looking place you have there. Looks cold too!

 

[rattler362]

black locust is pretty rough on a chain

:agree2:

 

[Trigger-Time]

Something I didn't know; persimmon is up there on the list. It's in the ebony family and has been used in golf club heads.


You will need to look at specific gravity,
Sugar Maple .63
Mulberry (Osage's cousin) .66
Hop Hornbeam/ironwood-.70
Hickory-.72
Dogwood .73
Persimmon is .74
Osage-.82

Info taken from The Bowyers Bible # 1

======================================================

Osage Orange {Maclura pomifera} is the species of wood that produces the most heat when burned, approximately 33 million BTU's per 20% air dried moisture content cord. A cord of wood is 4 foot wide x 4 foot high x 8 foot long {128 cubic foot} and has on average 80 cubic foot of burnable wood, the rest is just air space.

Lot of wood info
http://www.morlanwoodgifts.com/MM011.ASP?pageno=210

TT

 

[mowoodchopper]

Something I didn't know; persimmon is up there on the list. It's in the ebony family and has been used in golf club heads.


You will need to look at specific gravity,
Sugar Maple .63
Mulberry (Osage's cousin) .66
Hop Hornbeam/ironwood-.70
Hickory-.72
Dogwood .73
Persimmon is .74
Osage-.82

Info taken from The Bowyers Bible # 1

======================================================

Osage Orange {Maclura pomifera} is the species of wood that produces the most heat when burned, approximately 33 million BTU's per 20% air dried moisture content cord. A cord of wood is 4 foot wide x 4 foot high x 8 foot long {128 cubic foot} and has on average 80 cubic foot of burnable wood, the rest is just air space.

Lot of wood info
http://www.morlanwoodgifts.com/MM011.ASP?pageno=210

TT

I didnt know that either never thought about persimmon wood, when we were kids we used to eat persimmons, but the best thing I remember about them was my gandpa taught us how to take a green stick about 3 ft long sharpen the tip , then you stick a green persimmon on the end and wing it , you can throw a persimmon a quarter of a mile this way! LOL

 

[Trigger-Time]

I didnt know that either never thought about persimmon wood, when we were kids we used to eat persimmons, but the best thing I remember about them was my gandpa taught us how to take a green stick about 3 ft long sharpen the tip , then you stick a green persimmon on the end and wing it , you can throw a persimmon a quarter of a mile this way! LOL

Yup, the place we camped at on the lake had persimmon trees.
We would whip them out over the water, my uncle could whip
a persimmon almost straight up in the air, it would go out of sight.
And it wasn't because of the sun that you couldn't see it, it would
seem like for ever before it would come back down and hit the water.


TT

 

[Zero Gravity]

Northern Michigan Iron wood. One cut one chain. Don't even think about chiesel chain.
ZG

 

[rob066]

At the moment frozen Shagbark Hickory. That stuff can dull saws in seconds.

 

[jimbojango]

Persimmons.. i have some of these tree's in my back yard.. i've thinned them out with my 250 stihl. Didn't seem to hurt the chains any. So i'm suprised that its so hard on a chain according to you guys. Might be, but I sure haven't noticed it, didn't try to burn it either just stuck it on the truck and sent it to the brush pile

 

[tdi-rick]

Talking densities, most of our Eucs don't float either, they sink straight to the bottom, green or dry.

Densities range from 770kg/m3 to 1120 or more kg/m3 (dry)

(1lb=0.454kg, 39.37"=1 metre )

 

[mama]

wood

Dry almond wood.

 

[Blitz]

I've cut some dead old hard wood before but nothing I have cut has come even remotely close to this tree. Even the hardest wood is at least cuttable, this stuff wasn't. i've even thought since it may have been hit by lightning and made even more tungsten like

Believe it or not, 18 months ago I took down a little Silver Birch about 18 or so metres tall. The customer advised that it had died about a year before. It was hard as concrete! When I started lopping off the small limbs around 40-50mm across, I thought the chain was blunt, so I changed to a brand new one. When I tried to lop off a small branch, I thought I'd put the new chain on backwards, it just wasn't cutting! But nope, the chain was on correctly. Took me 3 hours to get that tree down. I think it may have been struck by lightening too.