Thank you Forestry Forum!

[alan gage]

The other day a friend called up. He lives a few hours south of me. They have hickory trees. We don't (to speak of). He said he just dropped a hickory that had been standing dead for a few years and asked if he could bring the log up here so I could saw it. I promptly and unequivocally told him, "No."

Thank you Forestry Forum for educating an innocent in the ways of the

Alan

[Magicman]

Good call.  I occasionally get sorta trapped into sawing Hickory.  I had seen these couple of Hickory logs when we arrived at the location and figured that they would end up on the sawmill:  LINK  As stated, after some serious trimming on the top log, both were sawn into slabs.  Of course I was using a T7° blade and the sawing went OK, not perfect but OK.  Even so, I would never voluntarily saw the .

[goose63]

Heck I'm a dummy I might try one time

Alan I'm in N.E. S.D. might be to far for him eh

[KenMac]

I sawed a pecan the other day without any issues. I got 4 edged slabs 1 1/2" by 19" by 8' and other assorted side boards. I believe hickory and pecan are considered to be the same by NHLA. Can someone correct me if that is not true?

[Chuck White]

I have actually sawn quite a bit of Hickory (what many call Devilwood) with no issues!

It might be similar to sawing small spruce for some, I've never had much luck sawing Spruce unless it was like 20" or larger logs.

[Brad_bb]

I've only sawed a couple plus an old hickory barn beam.  Not bad sawing green (though in beam form may not move as much).  Sawing old dry hickory was the devil.  It was so hard, it was really difficult to saw and stay relatively flat even with a new 4° band.

[Magicman]

He said he just dropped a hickory that had been standing dead for a few years

Notice that his was not a fresh felled live tree.  Neither was the one that I linked to in Reply #1.  Dead/dry is a different .  Yes it can be sawed and I pictured a whack of slabs that I sawed.  That butt log was ~26" and that's pushing it when you stretch your blade out that far.  The T7° blade did it's job.  ;)  Sawing a green Hickory or Pecan is not much different from sawing any other hardwood.

[Don P]

I sawed a pecan the other day without any issues. I got 4 edged slabs 1 1/2" by 19" by 8' and other assorted side boards. I believe hickory and pecan are considered to be the same by NHLA. Can someone correct me if that is not true?

They are grouped together, pecan is slightly lower in density and usually behaves a bit better. It gets a bad rap here but like many of our woods there is a good bit of dimensional firewood and the rest is fine wood.

[woodweasel]

I cut hickory and a lot of pecan. Never had any major  issues.

[WDH]

Pecan is a hickory.  Two groups of hickories:

1).  The true hickories.  Leaf has 5 or 7 leaflets.  Nuts are round.

2).  The pecan hickories.  Leaf has 9 or more leaflets.  Nuts are elongated or flattened. 

The wood is indistinguishable except for one small structural difference.  In hickory, there are bands of  apotracheal parenchyma running through the latewood.  There are no bands of apotracheal parenchyma in the earlywood.  In pecan, there are also bands of aptracheal parenchyma in the latewood, but there are also some in the earlywood.  A very small slight technical morphological difference. 

This link illustrates the difference.  It is not 100% foolproof because Mother Nature does not like a pigeon-hole . 

http://hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/_hickory_vs_pecan.htm

[moodnacreek]

In my experience dead hickory is already starting to decay. The test is dead locust.

[barbender]

Danny, that's what I was going to say, look at the apotracheal parenchyma that gives it away every time!😂

[WDH]

 :D.   Yes Sir!   Hard to see that without your 10,000X telescope from the forwarder  ;D.  

[barbender]

My main problem is we're outside of the range of hickory,  whether true or pecan hickory. I'm not sure why, but I really have a curiosity about "outlier" populations of trees. I haven't made the effort to see if these still exist, but apparently a century back there was a stand of bitternut hickory on a large lake (Winnibigoshish) about 8 miles from my place. "Winnie" as it is known, is part of the Mississippi watershed, the river flows right through it. Also, these large lakes tend to create a microclimate that is favorable to these species whose natural range is at least 100 miles south of here (and limited there). Another one is in Cass Lake, which would be the bext large lake upstream from Winnie. My Grandpa grew up in the town of Cass Lake, I remembered him telling me when he was in shop class in school they would go out to an island where there was red cedar, harvest some, and make jewelry boxes out of it. Grandpa lived a few other places as the family moved around chasing work when he grew up, I had assumed it was somewhere in southern MN or maybe another state he had been talking about. A year ago, I got to go on a trip to NE Nebraska to demo Ponsse machines, harvesting ERC that has taken over everything that is too steep to farm. I was showing Grandpa pictures of that trip, and he got telling me about that island again, which in fact was in Cass Lake. Actually the lake was called Red Cedar Lake for many years before it w of s changed to Cass. Anyhow Grandpa said the cedar, which grew on just the one island, had long since been harvested by the time he was a boy, but they would walk out on the ice in the winter and gather wood from the stumps on Cedar Island, which was still sound and then they would make their projects with it. Again, the nearest ERC populations are probably 100-150 miles to the south. 
  As an aside, another strange feature in Cass Lake is Star Island, which has it's own lake on it. I've never been out to it, but it's on my short list. Now, I need to go find the stand of Eastern Hemlock a forester mentioned the other day😁

[cutterboy]

Danny, that's what I was going to say, look at the apotracheal parenchyma that gives it away every time!😂

:D :D :D :D :D