What Kind of Tree did I Mill

[pezrock]

What I know about the tree:

This was a very heavy hardwood and so far the toughest yet on my mill. 
It was pulled from a yard in lower Westchester County, NY.
The one very yellow/orange piece was cut a day earlier then the others so its coloring was inconsistent with the rest. 

 

 

 

  

[mike_belben]

The bark theyre propped on looks like ash or hickory.  Same type?

[WDH]

Hickory from what I can see. 

[caveman]

My first thought was hickory also.  

[pezrock]

My thought was also hickory. That said they are propped up on 2 walnut logs. The bark was similar in outside appearance to the walnut but it was much easier to peel than walnut also some stringier layers underneath if that makes sense. Again my gut was telling me hickory.  

[mike_belben]

Live hickory in summer thats peeled immediately will zip right off like a wet cigar wrapper.  Once it sets that bark is on there like a son of a gum until bugs get in and break things up.  Hardened dry hickory bark is a really tough shell. 


Debarked hickory will be slick and wet underneath with some really sharp little pin point knots just waiting for a bear hug.  


In humid summer conditions youll get black spores breaking out pretty quick in the southeast anyway. 

[WDH]

In my industrial days, many chipmills would not take hickory in the Sping because that steel like bark would come off in long ropes or in a single rolled up sheet, like fresh cinnamon.  It would jam up the tail sprockets on the conveyors and shut the chip mill down. Even when the steel like bark was tight and most steel-like, the number of hickory stems that could be included in a truckload was limited.  
As a result of the processing issues with hickory, many times it was not harvested and left on many harvest sites as non-merchantable, leaving it as a shade tolerant dominant tree, often poor quality and limby, contributing to a low value, low quality future stand.  Except for a few large dominant better formed hickory stems per acre, I always targeted hickory for removal in hack-n-squirt TSI.  This is the Deep South where much of the hickory is low grade pallet wood.  I know that it can be much higher quality in the Appalachian region, the Midwest, and the Northeast.  

[mike_belben]

Fresh cinnamon rolls is the perfect analogy.