Anyone have guesses on what kind of tree this might be from?
- Thread starter Coralillo Lo Pro
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. That one was over 7' ! 
I was going to second Coralillo's guess. Has bipinnate compound leaves, bark looks about right and it gets really big.
Hey Coralillo, weren't you looking for a slab from a tree like that?
Hey Coralillo, weren't you looking for a slab from a tree like that?
Yeah, but walnut wasn't quite what she wanted and even if it was, I think I'd need to take out a bank loan to buy a black walnut slab that size in California lol. Definitely "money is no object" slabs coming off that trunk!
According to my son, that tree was one of the biggest, if not the biggest known black walnut trees in our neck of the woods! It was located on the Sacramento river in a little town appropriately named Walnut Grove. I think it was a three day job to get it down and cleaned up, with a crane and a crew of workers involved
Yeah, that's a monster! That's next level cost removal, with all the heavy equipment and skill involved for something that big. I see, just off the 5 there south of Sac. I used to live in Tahoe on and off all through the 90's in my snow bum days, been up and down 80 past Auburn countless times.
This son lives in Grass Valley, my other son lives outside of Truckee at Boca Lake.
For a bunch of chainsaw hacks, some of you guys are pretty educated
I, sir, am an arborist.
I'm the guy the hacks call when they cannot do a tree or otherwise get into trouble.
Eh. I went to California a couple of times and could hardly identify anything, from the grasses to the big trees. Quite frankly, I was surprised at how completely different the flora was from the Midwest.
Where's the cross section photo of that butt?
I'd like to imagine turning that one in as an accessory profit item. Generally, by the time they get that big, they are ruined for veneer or timber value. That tree was so big, even the branches might have made veneer logs.
EDIT: the stump cuts look like the large tree was significantly hollow at the ground level. Some of those branches, however, look plenty big enough to make the desired slab.
I sent all the pics that were available to me. My son is an certified arborist here in California, so believe he knows his craft. YMMV
Is he in any of the pics? That climber had some pretty nice hardware in his kit.
Not sure what the carabiner on the top of his foot was for, though.
Not sure what the carabiner on the top of his foot was for, though.
I had to learn all that stuff in botany 101. The lab was very comprehensive and it finished up with a practical/lab exam. Had about 50 stations and you had to identify what was shown at each one. Leaves, microscopes set up with slides of plant cells/tissues, cell physiology/identifying cell components/organelles, stages of mitosis and meosis......
Taught by a Professor Emeritus, Dr Schuster.
I'm late to this show. From the leaves I'd know it was from Family Juglandaceae. Would have went from there with leaning what ones are in N. Cal.
Ones my woods, we have black walnut, butternut, and a few types of hickories.
That's my #2 son, he's also the one dangling from the crane over the tree before the cutting started.
benz66
Used to sell firewood for $5 a face cord, deliverd
I think cottonwood is undervalued. My grandpa sided a new barn with it in 1920. It lasted 50 years, and was replaced with lumberyard 1x12 pine. Some of that did not make it as long. The neat thing about the cottonwood was that it was 1x36 to 1x24 boards. Didn't take many boards to cover a side of the barn. It weathers to a silver. And it had cattle rubbing against it too, and that is a rough life for 1x lumber.
I used random width 1x cottonwood to side my garage in 1982. I replaced a few boards where they went clear to the ground, but the gable ends, where they are up above the grass are still good after 42 years. I think I paid 30¢ a bd ft for it. Much cheaper than any alternative covering.
Unless it is where grass keeps it wet, it holds up as well as pine boards. I consider it as good as lumberyard junk lumber. lumberyard pine does not stand up well in the grass either.
It seems like a good lumber substitute for pine as it's light but harder. May have no better durability when it comes to moisture, but one turns to cypress, cedar, or redwood when you're really looking for that. I would guess because it's not as uniform and straight a tree as pine it's not seen as viable to commercially harvest as much. In Europe they have a bunch of different tall straight poplars, while in the US poplar is often used interchangeably with Eastern cottonwood. Then there's western black cottonwood too, which I'm less familiar with. I'm curious where they do sell poplar as lumber in the US, what it is. My guess is probably one of the Canadian poplars. You rarely ever see any lumber being sold commercially as cottonwood. This is a great piece on the undervaluing of cottonwood. https://www.mortiseandtenonmag.com/blogs/blog/misunderstood-maligned-rethinking-the-cottonwood
I'm loving the tangents this thread has taken. Some of the most fun, informative, thoughtful posts I've seen on a thread in awhile. Like pdqdl reminds us, he is an arborist. Many folks on here are. It's arboristsite after all. Shouldn't be a surprise that we're not all chainsaw hacks and that there are a lot of educated people on here with serious tree knowledge. But doesn't always show itself. "Educated" has become a bad word in some circles that people associate with elitism or academia, but it just means you've learned information and processed it, it doesn't have to be from school. When I was living in Mexico, I was telling a Mexican friend I couldn't believe one of our "educated" neighbors believed the myth that if you put a full plastic water bottle on a lawn, dogs wouldn't poo there. My friend corrected me - "Rafa went to university, but he's not educated."
Good information, but the article tended a bit more than I would prefer into the artistic side of communications. I liked the story about releasing the stars into the heavens, however.
Kinda short on detailed pictures of the wood grain the author claimed was attractive.
Kinda short on detailed pictures of the wood grain the author claimed was attractive.
Agreed some practical demonstrations in pictures would have gone a bit further than all the waxing poetic in words about it. Here's the grain from the slabs I've planed so far that I like. These mantel slabs may all be from limbs rather than the main trunk, so won't guarantee the large table slabs will look like this.
Yes, and there's all sorts of education as well. I've known people with advanced degrees that wouldn't know when to come in out of the rain.
When I worked at a research facility near here, we were getting quoted an outlandish price for a pump to transfer gasoline out of a storage tank down to our boats at the dock. When I quoted a far cheaper price for readily available gas transfer pumps and asked why the quote for ours was so much higher, the PhD who ran our facility said it was because it was a 200 foot run down the dock. I said yes, but it is all downhill, about a 12-15 foot drop from the tank - once you get the gas out of the tank gravity will take care of the rest. His response was "well, in theory"
Temporary, or permanent downhill?
I can see a need for some sophisticated pressure-limiting check valves all the way down the hill. An accidentally perforated line at the bottom of a 200 foot long gasoline siphon could get ugly. Especially when connected to a body of water.
Of course, a vacuum breaker at the top would kill the siphon, too.
I can see a need for some sophisticated pressure-limiting check valves all the way down the hill. An accidentally perforated line at the bottom of a 200 foot long gasoline siphon could get ugly. Especially when connected to a body of water.
Of course, a vacuum breaker at the top would kill the siphon, too.
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