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Man drops tree, kills wife

Started by swampwhiteoak, March 20, 2002, 10:42:49 AM

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swampwhiteoak

Short story from:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...ee_dc_1&cid=573

A German man who sawed down a tree in his garden accidentally killed his wife when the tree fell on her, a newspaper reported on Monday.
  
The man, 66, decided to cut down the birch to protect passers-by because it had become unstable after a recent storm, Bild daily said.

His wife, 66, was standing in the street to warn passing cars when the tree crashed down on her head. She died later in hospital.
____________

Here's a guy who could have used a chainsaw safety course.  Very sad.

Corley5

Very tragic indeed but was it really an accident.  He may have taken a safety course and knew just exactly what he was doing ;D
Burnt Gunpowder is the Smell Of Freedom

Frank_Pender

Reminds me of the time I have my wife, Alice running the tractor and she was pulling on a tree I was cutting.   To say the least, she refuses to do that any more.  ;) She thought I had found a younger woman. :'( Shortly after the top of the tree messed up her beautiful blond hair. :-[  I am still glad she put on a tin hat for that interlude. ::)
Frank Pender

Ron Wenrich

At a local mill, the neighbor wanted to have a tree cut down.  The mill owner and the neighbor knew each other for over 60 years.  

The mill owner goes to cut the tree, and the neighbor is watching.  The owner tells him to move back, away from where he was going to drop the tree.  Neighbor moves back, but not far enough.  The owner drops the tree and hits the neighbor. >:(

He lives, but his lawyer wanted to know how much liability insurance was being carried.  $300,000 was the reply.  The lawyer says that'll be enough, but he could get a lot more. :(

Good things they were friends!  
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Cedar Eater

I dropped a tree on my wife once. Boy, was she p|$$ed. It was just a 15' tag alder, but you would have thought it was a 100' ironwood.  :D :D :D :D
Cedar Eater

woodmills1

you got 100 foot iron wood??  their just small diameter not too tall here.
James Mills,Lovely wife,collect old tools,vacuuming fool,36 bdft/hr,oak paper cutter,ebonic yooper rapper nauga seller, Blue Ox? its not fast, 2 cat family, LT70,edger, 375 bd ft/hr, we like Bob,free heat,no oil 12 years,big splitter, baked stuffed lobster, still cuttin the logs dere IAM

Jeff

I think that was an embelishment.  I have only saw one ironwood big enough to saw in over 20 years, and I wish I never saw that
Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

woodmills1

they don't call it iron wood for nothing. :D  i think the tree we call ironwood in new england is actually hop hornbeam.
James Mills,Lovely wife,collect old tools,vacuuming fool,36 bdft/hr,oak paper cutter,ebonic yooper rapper nauga seller, Blue Ox? its not fast, 2 cat family, LT70,edger, 375 bd ft/hr, we like Bob,free heat,no oil 12 years,big splitter, baked stuffed lobster, still cuttin the logs dere IAM

John_Boisselier

To kill anybody with a tree that I felled would be a horrible experience, much less my wife.  A little kid got killed here a few years ago running over to watch his uncle cut firewood.  His parents ended up getting a divorce over it too.  However; I am interested in the local variants on ironwood.  I've seen hop hornbeam called ironwood, and a couple of others including what appears to be dogwood.  What else has anyone seen in terms of "ironwood"?
The Woodsman

John_Boisselier

By the way Jeff,
  What was the problem with the ironwood log that you sawed?  The stuff that I've cut down purported to be "ironwood" seems to cut across the grain, with a chainsaw at least, fairly well, at least green.  Is it that much worse on a big saw, or with the grain, or was it fairly seasoned and no longer green?
The Woodsman

L. Wakefield

   IIRC, you are right, hop hornbeam=ironwood. Ostrya virginiana. I always for some weird reason get it mixed up with moose maple (=striped maple, Acer pennsylvanicum) until I see them together. They both grow near the swamp in my locale.  lw :P
L. Wakefield, owner and operator of the beastly truck Heretik, that refuses to stay between the lines when parking

Don P

There was an article in Fine Woodworking some years ago. Ironwood is a local term for the hardest **** wood around, so many species on a local scale fall under the name, most sink...its hornbeam here too though. None of mine are over 6", and its always spiral grained.

Cedar Eater

 :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

That was my point. Ironwood is (I think) a generic term for a very dense and therefore heavy tree, no matter what species. When I was vacationing in OR, we bought some "ironwood" candle holders that were actually myrtlewood. I have a firewood table from Iowa State U that shows an Ironwood with the same weight and heat content per air dried cord as shagbark hickory (4100 lbs.) and only black locust (4200 lbs.) and Osage-orange (4800 lbs.) were heavier and hotter. Oak was only 3800 lbs. and alder is only 2500.

When the tag alder fell on her, she acted like I deliberately swatted her with a tall heavy tree, when actually, I hadn't noticed that she had stepped within range of the crown of a 3" X 15' "shrub" while we were brushing out a shooting zone near a deer blind. She learned a little bit about working near a feller and I learned a few new cuss words. :D :D :D :D
Cedar Eater

Corley5

I came across a couple ironwood logs and Grandpa sawed them for me.  Six inch boards out of one and fours from the other.  Now they're mixed in with some maple flooring and paneling in my house.  Not anything special about the grain or color.  It did twist and warp when it dried.  It seems that most ironwood trees, around here at least, develop heart rot before they're big enough for logs.  It does make great firewood.  I've got my eye on some that are pretty nice on Grandma's place.  I think I can get enough logs out of them to saw enough lumber to build a couple hay wagon racks.  
Burnt Gunpowder is the Smell Of Freedom

Jeff

As far as I know, here, iron wood is hornbeam, or another name, muscle wood.

The one I sawed was harder then rock. The only log I sawed that was harder was as a favor the boss was doing for an old farmer. A twenty inch white oak. The guy said he was meaning to have it sawed in the spring, but just stuck it in the barn, and never had gotten around to it. 15 years ago.
Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

woodman

   We have alot of iron in the wood trees here, we grow them  beside the road and hang posters on them.
Jim Cripanuk

Corley5

That super dry white oak reminds me of a white ash that I did pretty much the same thing with.  It had blown down in a Nov wind storm.  The next spring I cut the firewood out of it and drug to logs to the barn.  They laid there just inside the door for the better part of a year.  They sawed hard.  Hardest thing Grandpa said he ever sawed.  Made a real fine powderey dust and made the saw chatter if the feed was too fast.  They're two by twelve headers in our workshop now.  We had to drill them before we could get nails in them.  The ironwood we sawed was green and didn't seem to saw any different than sugar maple.
Burnt Gunpowder is the Smell Of Freedom

L. Wakefield

   Well hmm..I wuz gonna ask a question a while ago but it had seemed too dumb even for me..but now-

   What I had wondered is what happened if you dried the log as a log, and then sawed it after drying- wood you eliminate the warping and (all those other cool things that Tom illustrated and the names elude me right now- not checking but you know what I mean..)? I hadn't asked because it seemed it would take too unGodly long- and now you mention the other inconvenience of how hard it saws.. Kinda like trying to work concrete after it hardens..but did you happen to notice, did the boards lay nice n straight and not shrink or anything?   lw
L. Wakefield, owner and operator of the beastly truck Heretik, that refuses to stay between the lines when parking

Cedar Eater

Good question lw! I've heard that if you let the log dry for a long time (years) in a protected environment (like a drying barn), it will shrink and all the stresses will get worked out but sometimes the ends will check really bad. I imagine this would only work if the log was sound to begin with. It would be hard to saw though.
Cedar Eater

Bud Man

My dendro book says Ironwood -  good for posts, tool handles, and mallets.  Cedar Eater if the wife can take a 15' of any kind of tree on the head you better settle on the cussin and say Yes Mam !!  :D
The groves were God's first temples.. " A Forest Hymn"  by.. William Cullen Bryant

L. Wakefield

   Hey Budman- your tagline By William Cullen Bryant reminded me of the work of a turn of the century artist I saw by chance last fall at the Hyde Museum in Glens Falls, NY.

   Just on a tour, didn't know this place was there, stopped in on a whim cuz it was mentioned in a tourist brochure at the motel. Well worth my time. The fella was Arthur B. Davies, and I bought a book  based on the exhibit which discusses him and his work at length. He lived 1862-1928; reacting to the Civil War and the oncoming industrial giants. A lot of his stuff is misty-romantic, more or less clothed people in the woods and by the waters etc.. but 2 of his pieces strongly hit the theme of your tagline. 'Hosanna of the Mountains' (1905) shows a parcel of people (clothed in this case) before some highly romanticized but HUGE and lovely redwoods- has to be redwoods. 'Silence, waterfall, and Forest' (no date) also depicts a redwod and a waterfall (hence the title :D ) with a woman listening intently for one knows not what (perhaps for the legendary tree to fall?)

   Some of his works have a wonderful luminous quality to them, as if there is an inner light or a backlight for the half-hidden faces of the figures. Others are disturbing, quite a few have a pagan theme that some of the museum-goers had made pointed negative comments concerning (oh well..)- and some of his work is just downright weird! It was a fluke that I caught up to the exhibit- it was a lot of works on loan and was due to go back in early September. I was there 9/9, and down in the Catskills 9/10. I might have gone down to the bronx on 9/11 but I'd thought i was supposed to work, so i was at Maine Med watching it all happen on television instead of getting a somewhat closer view. Strange.  lw
L. Wakefield, owner and operator of the beastly truck Heretik, that refuses to stay between the lines when parking

DanG

I've had the good fortune to never drop one on my wife, but I did give her truck a hard way to go, once.  I was felling a big loblolly that had grown on open ground, so it had a major limb spread. I gained a lot of experience in a very short time, relating to what happens when a really big branch is the first thing to hit the ground. I had cleared the truck by the expected 30' or so, but the limb caused the tree to roll violently, and a branch on the opposite side rammed the pore little truck right in the door, almost turning it over. I was the recipient of a rather enlightened vocabulary lesson, shortly afterwards, and things were sorta chilly around the house for a couple of days.
"I don't feel like an old man.  I feel like a young man who has something wrong with him."  Dick Cavett
"Beat not thy sword into a plowshare, rather beat the sword of thine enemy into a plowshare."

Ron Wenrich

In wood utilization class, we had to id all types of wood.  They wanted us to take a section and look at it under a microscope.  

It didn't take long before we knew you couldn't get a section off of ironwood.  It was too hard to cut with a scalpel.

Some areas used to use ironwood as a pin in post and beam construction.  
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Corley5

That ash stayed straight but I can't say it was any different from a green log
Burnt Gunpowder is the Smell Of Freedom

Gordon

Thats one good thing about the Mrs. Whenever I fire up the chainsaw or the tractor she makes a b---line way far away from my work area. Unless I can talk her into helping. Guess it might be from past experiences, can't really say.  ;D

I wonder what the insurance man thought?

Around these parts ironwood has a very criss cross grain and is about impossible to split for firewood. Sound familiar?

Gordon

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