Firewood

[Al_Smith]

Well there ya go .Oak is a whole 'nother ball game too .

I had cut into down cull logs left over from a cut made in 1937 in about 1980 .The sap wood was rotten but the heart wood had water running out of it ,no rot ,no fungus amounst us nothing .

Split and dried it burned just as good as any other oak albiet it made a mell of a  hess packing it into the stove .

Usually on a long standing dead  oak it's the roots that give way ,then if falls .Usually if you cut up 3-4 foot from the roots you get into pretty good wood .They'll stand a long time most times before they fall .

[John Mc]

The point I was trying to make on this killed ash is the fact  they died on the vine in most cases fully leafed out .That fact alone will suck the moisture out of them .

Ah, I don't think so. The roots would die last and so still feed displaced water being transpired by the leaves. ...

Maybe not, if the EAB got it. They kill the tree by basically girdling it underneath the outer bark. Wouldn't that cut off the flow of water up from the roots?

[Al_Smith]

Yes but you have a hard time explaining that to a donkey . ;)

[SwampDonkey]

Nope, water flows up live sap wood and some heartwood, the xylem tissue. Deeper than them bugs are. The bugs are interrupting the flow of food coming from the leaves where sugars are made. Bugs like sugars and starch, that is where the energy is, not water. Water up the inner layers and food down the outer tissues closer to the bark and distributed with rays and pores to keep sapwood alive and to be stored in special cells.

Hard to explain to a chainsaw carver. ;)

[Al_Smith]

Let me reiterate ,you've never seen an EAB killed ash . :D

Now I  will admit like the big oak I tripped a week or two ago .Standing dead 5 years ,moisture but it was an oak not an ash .Solid BTW and 950 BD ft of probably F and S with a cord and half out of the top above the good saw logs .

We must have different trees than you folks in the frozen north country or something . ??? They're larger that's for sure .--Good corn,big trees ,big women .Gotta love it . :D

[Tom_Averwater]

I cut some dead Black Locust today .I used  my moisture meter on it and it read 14 percent .

[Al_Smith]

There ya go .Locust is another one that dry hard as a bone .Good firewood .Makes a good fence post too but nobody uses them any more .