Spruce

COLIN LAMB wrote:
According to expert testimony in one case regarding a failed wing
spar in a
Citrabia, a compression failure can occur when the tree is felled.

I have seen some websites concerning the AD note on the Champion
aircraft
which have micro-photographs of what a compression failure looks
like. It
is very interesting and worthwhile to check out.

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Roger that. The compression fracture often occurs in the rebound when
the tree hits the ground.

For a big tree of potentially prime spruce the feller may elect to top
it first, a task not for the faint of heart. A bed of second-growth is
then prepared, into which the tree is felled. No hard strike on the
ground and no rebound. They will ten cut away the lower twenty feet or
so, which will often be used for sounding boards and the like, and be
left with a clean stick up to 80 feet long.

But rather than becoming masts, spars or aircraft wood, the odds are
the tree will end up as fast-food packaging in Japan, Taiwan or Korea.
(Sitka spruce imparts no taste to food.)

If the tree was felled in the Tongas National Forest the lumber company
will pay the American tax-payer approximately $1.70... for the entire
tree. Clearly, we Americans have the best government money can buy :-)

-R.S.Hoover