I finally got around to cleaning up some storm damage on my property from May. A twister had come through and knocked over and torn the tops off of several trees. There was this one hackberry that had rotted through the center from the base all the way up to the branches, so much so that it had split open on one side and had taken on a C cross-section. I would normally leave it alone, but the top had been split and laid over another tree, and there would be nothing left but the trunk after I took care of that, so I went on and cut it down. I never would have expected it to yield any staves, but after I cut it from the base I realized there was good wood in there. Most of the tree had already begun to rot under the bark because the trauma had loosened much of it, but I was able to easily split out a large section of it that will yield 2 very clean, very flat staves. They'll need a little heat correction where there is a side bend, but otherwise should be very nice to work. Long story short..... even those dead-looking trees can have hidden treasure!
