Usefullness of standing dead trees?

Usually, firewood is the best use for standing deadwood. Beware of stray limbs when felling them - not being alive they will be more prone to shedding parts as they are cut. You don't want to be under one of those parts.

What Lawrence said about limbs. The pros with their lifts can get the limbs down safely. Only thing we clods can do is risk ourselves. Though I've had a few people perform surgery on themselves with chainsaws and live, the ones who take a smack to the head/neck, even with hard hats, have a far worse survival rate and quality of life. I would hire a pro, with insurance against a twist and fall into the roof and workmen's comp.

Wood? Look to the exterior for signs of radial checks. Many mean bad lumber, very many, bad turning.

here lies another advantage of turning over flat work...

We turn firewood, so if there are usable parts, you can save them from the firewood pile..

In flat work, it's either good enough to cut into boards or it's firewood..

Mac

My experience with standing dead trees has been mostly negative. I have often had the experience of roughing out bowls or hollow forms from wood that appeared sound but was actually full of invisible cracks that opened up as the wood dried. I am confident of my drying process, so I know that wasn't the problem. Some dead standing wood is more likely to be okay, I have had fair success with cottonwood and russian olive, although the russian olive can be a bit nasty to rough out once it has partially dried. Aspen is the big success story with standing dead wood and will often dry completely without cracking, and in fact is much more pleasant to turn dry than wet. I wouldn't spend any time trying to salvage the maple and oak you mention. You are likely to spend hours harvesting and roughing, and then have to discard it anyway.

-mike paulson, fort collins, co

I got a couple of sections of a standing dead maple. It was well spalted and made beautiful objects. I wished I had gone back and gotten the whole tree after turning some.

JD,

You are likely to get some nice wood from the standing maple, and maybe from the oak(s). More so the maple. I get standing dead maples around here all the time, and actually have two of them standing right outside the window I'm typing in front of. If they're standing they're not soaking wet and rotting, so even if decay has set in in part of the wood, it's most likely to just be punky, which you can fix with CA, if it's worth saving. A good chance you'll get some spalting if the tree is shedding bark. Watch out for widow-makers when you're cuting the things, though. Those dead limbs didn't get their name as a joke. Lotta guys around here get beaned by them.

The okays are more iffy, as far as quality of the wood. Oak doesn't spalt as readily or as nicely as maple, IMO, but just because it's dead doesn't mean it isn't sound wood. I've got a 5' section of red oak that's been leaning up against my wood pile, exposed to the elements, that is as hard as a rock. Check each tree out, is all I can say. And be sure to end coat the pieces, too. Even dead wood can check.

Hi JD

The experience I have with Oak,(burr Oak, a white Oak species) is that the tree can be standing dead, lose almost al its branches, bark is gone, and the softwood start to fall off yet the heartwood is still nice and sound, we had one like that, it died because its root system was damaged to much by construction.

Also with black Cherry, I used and turned a black Cherry that had the top broken out, trying to survive it grew at small spot burls and the few branches it still had, it died and stood for several years, carpenter ants hollowed out the bottom 4 or 5 feet, had most of the softwood rotting and it finally it fell over in a winter storm, I cut the tree up and hauled it home, turned big and small bowls out of it, the wood had a very dark color, I do have some pictures of those bowls in my album, I wish there where some more dead standing Cherrie trees, love them.

And also a white Elm that succumbed to the Elm disease, it stood dead for several years and got cut down, the wood on that one was starting to get punky and had some spalting, but I was still able to turn it, so as you see the wood of those dead standing trees is probably still in good condition, provided they where not rotting before they died, and standing for way toooo looong.

As for the cutting them down, you do have to be careful, just like crossing the road.

As a general rule........living things that die...........seldom recover! :-)

Barry

OK, sounds like its a long shot, but I'll watch the stuff as I cut it up, especially the maple. I'll let folks know how it turns out

-Thanks

-_JD

There ought to be lots of good wood.

1. leave a few extra inches on the crotches and bisect them so you can get bowls with the nice Y figure in the center

1. cut at least a few test pieces through the center.. a lot of dead trees I've cut up had big cracks or rot already in the center. This will also tell you what the heartwood looks like and how big it is. If you decide to keep any full round logs, seal the ends immediately and turn them sooner than the ones that have been bisected...they won't stay crack free for very long. Since your trees have been dead a while, they might all have cracks already. If that's the case, try to bisect through the existing cracks to minimize waste.

2. Regarding the cautions above about branches: Drop big branches by first tying ropes to them, hooking over a higher limb, make sure it's wrapped a couple or three times around another branch or tree trunk close to the ground for friction and tying with a knot you can untie under tension, such as a half hitch with a loop you can just pull out. With the branch tied, it's safer to climb a ladder to cut, because you can predict where the log will swing once it's cut. Once the branch is off you can lower the limb slowly. Start by cutting small pieces before you do larger ones. You want to practice this to work out how much friction you'll get from the wrap (it's more than you think, but if you start with more wraps you can unwrap until it starts dropping.

.Probably all the wood is useable. The trees have only been dead 1 or 2 years,they are not completely dry yet. You will know as soon as you cut them down.The maple could stand dead five years and most of it would be usable.The oaks will rot faster,but two years should yield useable wood. mike

From the varied responses in the this thread, I'm guessing your results may depend on where you live. Obviously some people do not have the cracking problem we have here in the arid west, and we see little of the rot or spalt that others talk about. So, where are you located?

-mike paulson, fort collins, co

I'm in New Hampshire. All of the trees are already showing lots of surface cracks (where the bark has fallen off), and most of them seem to be twisting, so I'm assuming the grain is twisty too.....

They're scheduled to be cut in a couple of weeks (or as soon as the ground dries out enough to work without tearing it p)....

--JD

My neighbor had a standing dead maple that had been dead for about a year. It was only 4" or so in diameter - it had been planted a couple years earlier when the house was built. We think the painters had dumped their waste around the tree. I cut it down and got some spalted wood with very few checks in it.

I made some candle holders and wine stoppers with the wood. The candle holders were the first item I ever turned.