try to guess what caused this....

[blades]

few years back one of my customers requested assitance with a big old Box Elder. He and his partner had whittled it down to the point of being a 8 ft tall 4.5ft dia stump. these guys were running 18" units Poulan and Craftsman. They knew I had large saws. They were going to pay me for my time , so why not. I found every manor of chain wrecking items in that stump, But the absolute kicker was the "t" post dead center. I went through six 115dl chains - destroyed 2 and hand sharpened rest before the end of the day and that stump was gone.

 

[Backyard Lumberjack]

my brother got a new to him but gently used stihl chainsaw. as you can imagine, he wanted to start it up and use it right away, like a kid at Christmas. so he has a basically dead mulberry stump out back by the shed and commences to cut down inside of it. he cuts for a very short time, maybe 30 seconds, and the chain starts smoking. and seemingly dull he goes ahead and takes a file to it, then tries again in the same cut and instantly starts smoking again. now he is mad and goes into town to get a new chain, thinking the chain was just bad. as you can imagine, he tries again, with the same result. he just can not cut through this dead mulberry stump to save his life, he tried so hard he ended up turning the bar blue with heat, obviously ruining the brand new chain and possibly the bar, then called me for advice..... so lets hear your ideas on what could be the cause of this, what do you suppose was the culprit??? its kinda funny, when he figured it out a week later I laughed pretty good.

i don't know about his, but i do know about mine!!!

not quite this bad, but all signs indicate... Service Soon!

 

[pdqdl]

moon doggie gets this one..... after many heated exchanges between him and the stump, he finally tore after it with his truck and pulled the bastid out of the ground, and threw it into the fire pit. after a few nights of burning he found a huge rock in the bottom of his fire pit with a chainsaw sized groove down the middle of it!! that tree sucked a piece of granite right up into the trunk right where he started cutting!! I didn't know trees could do that.. I got a kick out of him telling me what happened, thought you guys would too.

Eh. I've had lots of trees with rocks in them. My favorite was the pristine (looking) oak that had a 5" diameter column of concrete running right up the middle. We had one heck of a time getting that tree to fall.

There was not a single sign on the outside of the tree that it had ever been injured, and there was no decay whatsoever between the concrete and tree's interior. Whoever filled that tree with concrete, did it quite well.

Some idiot moron sob got a rumor started that you can fill a hollow tree with concrete to strengthen it.

Gave up, went home, sharpened the chains, went back next week. Found out that the tree was hollow and someone filled it with concrete. Learned my lesson then about trees from urban areas.

It was once considered proper arboriculture to fill voids with concrete. Thank goodness that fell out of favor. The purpose wasn't to strengthen quite so much as to allow the tree to "heal" around it and leave no open cavity. As mentioned above, I've seen it work quite effectively. I've also seen lots of other trees where it was a waste of money and otherwise good concrete.

 

[pdqdl]

That doesn’t matter.
Imagine fences nailed to young trees after 20 years.....

They only grow at the ends.
Top
Ends of branches
Ends of roots

... and EVERYWHERE on the girth. Every branch adds diameter as it grows. That is how we get tree rings.

 

[pdqdl]

My first one was a 10 penny spike right in the middle of a 2' diameter tree. It had to have been put in there when the tree wasn't much more than a sapling. Another was felling a snag in a fence row. Wire scars evident in the bark so I move a couiple inches above the top scar and hit a nail.

Many years ago, I bought a large capacity tree shear for my skid steer, in order to work a project more efficiently. I never got to use it as intended, but I did discover how marvelous it is for ripping out fence rows.

Tree shear doesn't care about nails of fence wire: it just goes in at the dirt level and snips off a tree up to 15" diameter. After that size, however, you are obliged to go back to hitting all the buried metal.

This one will do much bigger trees, but comes with a hefty price tag:

"The Marshall Tree Saw can cut a wide variety of tree sizes to meet all of your tree cutting needs. Our proprietary blades are your go-to device to remove trees of any shape and size. Even giant trees, like the large Missouri Cedar, are no match for the Marshall Tree Saw. The Marshall Tree Saw can take down a 48" tree."​