Growth rings "delaminating" during seasoning?

[RyanY]

My understanding is that a shake is just a type of drying crack that occurs between the growth rings. I recall Gary Davis and Osage Outlaw having a talk about whether these happen during drying or not. Seems like some trees are more susceptible to these types of cracks compared to just typical drying checks.

Found this reference online.

"Shakes were once thought to be caused by external stress factors such as wind and temperature extremes (often called wind shakes); however, research has found that a bacterium is the true cause of shake. The bacteria that causes shake enter the trees through the roots and not through the stem. The bacterium belongs to the clostridium genus and is often accompanied by an unpleasant odor."

Dr. Gene Wengert, forum technical advisor; http://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_base/Causes_of_Shake.html

[IdahoMatt]

Strange.  I’ve never had this happen but makes sense. Did you happen to smell an odor with this batch? 

[Morgan]

Loggers here will often core drill sample trees of black walnut when deciding what price to give the landowner. I was doing a portable milling job on a mans place cutting some logs that were too big to feasibly transport when the loggers came in to drill some trees on a hillside where I was cutting lumber. They turned down ( or rather offered pallet lumber price) a whole south hillside of black walnut because shake was present in 6 of the samples they took. They took and paid top dollar for every other walnut on his place. I wound up milling the trees that they had sampled because he thought the tree would probably die from the sample. Some of the boards milled literally came apart in layers. Others appeared fine, but I don’t know how they came out when dry.

[willie]

I wound up milling the trees that they had sampled because he thought the tree would probably die from the sample.

interesting. could you describe more about the sampling you observed? what were the dimensions of the sample.

[Morgan]

I just looked, and it looks like the tool is called an increment borer. Pretty much like a T handle hand auger but with a different bit. They would bore out the core and look at the cylinder of wood to check for rot or shake, that way they didn’t buy a bad log by the premium board foot yield. The hole in those trees were close to an inch and went to the center of the tree. Log buyer said the tree would heal from it, and I believe it would, but I didn’t own the trees.

[ssrhythm]

35-40 years ago, I remember seeing Osage apples along the road walking from my house to the closest local tennis court...this was looong before I knew anything about bows or Osage.  I thought my memory was true, and last time I was home, I looked in the hedge row between the road and the new houses that were there.  Sure enough, there was one “male” tree growing in the tangle and old stumps from other long gone Osage’s were nearby.  My Bud owns the tree and said I could have it when I want to cut it.  There are a pile of bows in that tree.  Cool part...it’s in SC and in a spot where the wind doesn’t blow and the tree is protected if it ever does blow.  I’m hoping for killer rings with the long growing seasons there. 

Anyhoo...I’m cutting, splitting, sealing, and bringing it back to Wyoming in late April/early May.  I will be treating all the promising and cool character staves as well as I possibly can, as this is a special tree to me.  There will be, however, some staves that I’m willing to sacrifice with an experiment.  I will take two or three staves and I will subject them to the same heat/wind abuse for the same amount of time my 2019 staves were neglected.  We shall see if they end up seasoning into delaminating, side checking disasters and compare how they fare a year or so out to the staves from the same tree that are seasoned correctly from the get go.

I’ll also be bringing home a tree from the same Indiana pasture that my ‘19 staves came from.  I’ll mark them and do the same experiment.  So in a year, we should have some decent data to point one way or another.  Is it rapid/poor drying, wind induced, or both.  Should be good and useful data especially if all Indiana staves side check and no SC staves side check or if the IN and SC properly seasoned staves are good vs both sets of initially “abused” staves all checking/delaminating.