You never know what you will find in a tree. Many a chain has been ruined by steel and cement and hidden objects. Let's hear your stories. What strange things did YOU find?
There is a tree in Scotland that contains a bicycle. A villager hung it from a branch before he went to fight in WW1. He never returned and parts of the bike can still be seen enveloped by the tree. It now has protected status.
There´s an old willow tree whose roots partially stick out of the ground and hang into the river at the outskirts of my town. The roots fully envelop a moped (wich apparently was thrown into the river by my father and his friends when they were young).
You're both right. Here's the one Tennesseekid1234 is talking about. abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/01/bicycle-swallowed-by-tree-in-washington-state/
James Purcell I know of an apple tree not too far from where I live where the owner has filled the void in the trunk with concrete. Probably seemed like a good idea at the time.
I hit a horse chain with a shoe saw once. Not a pretty result. Get over yourself James. Answer to the original comment is that all would happen is you would feel it getting tougher with a differing noise and maybe some sparks. Inspect problem in wood, normally metal or stone. Resharpen chain and continue job, being careful. (May result in needing a new chain by the end of the job) Curse the dick that put it there to anyone who'll listen then forget about it.
I fell a big elm of about 400 cubic feet in middle 1970s near Kinver Edge in the Midlands. When it was down I saw that I'd missed a chain from a gate fastening by fractions of an inch, I'd cut just above it. Hedgerow trees are usually full of fencing wire & the like so I always cut them above the fence level. I counted the growth rings back & that fastening was fixed there in about 1820.
Keith Lloyd history in the U.K. Is so much older than where I live. My wife is a Brit so we visit every couple of years. Her father was a Yeoman Warder at the Tower!
Your father in law must have had a blameless career in the military to be invited to join them. History is a passion that runs right through my family. I come from rural Mid-Wales where change is slow, until recently anyway. After WW2 my father became forester on the local estate. The house we lived in dated from about 1650, dad showed me where the pit saw was that cut the beams, where the brickworks was, Brickyard wood not surprisingly, the quarry for the stone for the oldest part, the forge where all the iron work, including some window frames, was made, the carpenters shop. Everything from raw materials to the finished item was found locally. Some joists that my father exposed still had the bark on them. Two square sides were enough for them in those days, so they left the bark on. Nearly 400 years old now.
Thanks, every one has stories in their family backgrounds, it's just necessary to record them before the old ones go. My daughter bought a book full of questions for her grandma [my mother]. The answers were surprising for she seemed happy to talk frankly to my wife & daughter, where she wouldn't [or couldn't] with me & my siblings. A great idea. The mountains of Mid-Wales are about 500 million years old, the Black Mountains, Brecon Beacons & Cambrian Mountains. I find it mind boggling that the dinosaurs walked on them, they were there long before the dinosaurs & have long outlived them.
Traditionally, Indians did Cache & Stash in trees. And have even been discoveries of prehistoric Cache that survived in decomposition of original tree that died long ago. Only to become entombed again in new tree growing up in same spot.
The California native Americans would use a stone mortar to grind acorns into flour so it would make sense to have one at a big oak tree. An oak that size could easily be 500 years old.
Any time a tree is close to people it can likely have anything it it. nails spikes car parts wire.....I must a pounded 50 pounds a nails in trees as a kid building tree forts.....
Trav, good idea. I stopped using my hammock after falling asleep and waking to find 7 ticks on me, one later on my butt. Threw the thing away and watched the eye hook slowly disappear.
I worked in a sawmill in northern California and the mill had powerful metal detectors in the head gate and computer scanner. Environmentalists had a habit of driving railroad spikes into trees at different angles trying to destroy milling machinery. The quads at the head gate were bandsaws about 20 feet tall each run by a 300 horsepower electric motor that dropped into a room below the saw deck. During one winter the temperature dropped to 27 degrees below zero. All the water cooling lines for the saws froze as did the metal detector. One of the quads hit a couple railroad spikes and the sight was one of the most magnificent scenes I've ever witnessed in my life.The shower of sparks from the two quads slamming into and trying to mill through the spikes sent white hot shards of metal that made all of us stare in awe as it lit up the massive building. It took several hours to chainsaw the frozen cants out of the quad bay just to get the massive bandsaw blades free but their destruction was awesome.
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funny things to find in trees in the cotswolds village broadwell in the uk there was a lot of 5 to 6 foot diameter beech trees needed to be felled . in the middle of a trunk was a old glass milk bottle with a name of a long gone dairy about 3 feet up from the base. also in another tree in same church yard a 8 inch silve cross found engraved with the name robert on it .
it doesn't always work, we have wanded before milling, and ended up finding nails, and barbed wire 12-15" into the log. The wand will really only get you to 10" or less. Yea, you could wand after each pass, but if you are trying to get a stack of logs milled, that grows old quick.
In sawing lumber I've found a toy car, loads of barbed wire, iron hinge pins, and countless bullets. It's pretty cool how trees absorb things. They may even eventually crush that grinding stone.
Was helping a relative in Virginia clear some trees, cut one down and found a cavalry sword inside. took it to the local Civil War museum and the best we could figure was that some officer may have either left the sword against the tree, or possibly someone marked his grave, and he was later exhumed. The property is about equidistant from several minor battle fields, so anything is possible really...
I was taking a tree down on my fathers property a few years ago and when I get about half way through I run into a FULL chain link fence section. Apparently many, many years ago prior to my father owning the property, there had been a fence in that location. The tree had grown completely around it and not a single piece was visible from the outside. BUT when I got to the chain link pieces, I started seeing a fireworks show like the 4th of July! Sparks started flying everywhere!!!! I cut a v notch out just a bit higher and we could see the actual chain link pieces. The saw chain was DEAD by now and we had to get the tree out so I just motored through the fence pieces and junked the chain. That was definitely not a fun surprise to find on a job that was supposed to "take 5 minutes and you can get back home".... Thanks for sharing your "present" with us! :)
ME TOO! I was very surprised it did it but obviously the chain was trash after that. Total garbage after going through 4-6 strands of the chain link. Took it off and as soon as it cooled off, it went directly into the garbage.
Use to do this for a job , found a concrete ring (the sort you place at the base of the tree) nearly totally covered over in an old conifer it was over 3ft up the trunk . While cutting down an old Macrocarpa on a golf course found about halve a doz golf balls totally growen over in the wood
I love this stuff!!1 the grinding stone, I ould feel honored to have found that!! Im off to find your "Iron Giant" after I sub'd of course. I am always on the hunt for things like this, and if I can incorporate into my so called art, all the better. Been really into thee roots and the rocks grown in them. I almost feel like its should be a law that new construction land be inspected for this stuff and many other great archeological findings. Be well
Saw a willow tree here in the UK, 2ft diameter trunk, 2inch steel scaffold pole in the middle. Tree felled with the aid of a hack saw (metal cutting blade) . Watched with a amazement
I almost ruined a chainsaw because someone placed a clothesline hook in one tree that got sucked inside as the tree grew. It must have been when the tree was quite young because that thing was almost in the center of the tree.
Another thing that's said - you cut down an ancient tree for milling and make a walking stick from one likely branch it had and yet it still takes fifty or sixty years before that stick is considered old, while the tree was old already before Confederation.
I can remember a couple of years ago where someone overseas was burning firewood and suddenly their woodstove blew up. They examined it and found that there had been a grenade hidden inside the one piece of firewood that the tree had completely encapsulated and wasn't visible. Then when in the stove it heated up until it exploded.
My cousin has a Poinciana, Caesalpinia pulcherrima (aka Flamboyant) in his back yard, planted there by his father I guess about 1958 when the uncle's house was built at the other end of the same allotment. Someone placed a 2" pipe across two branches which has been there since the 1970s to my knowledge. One end of the pipe, now badly rusted has been enveloped by the tree but the other is free. A more sinister tale concerns the unsolved triple murder at Gatton, Australia at the end of 1898. Many years after the murders, a revolver was found partly absorbed in a tree very near the murder site. Since none of the victims were shot, it may be that the revolver was not connected to the crime and was placed there much later.
A couple of years back, I was wandering through the forestry building of a fair (I'm a professional sharpener) when I noticed a cut crotch of tree on display with a chunk of granite embedded in it. Apparently the tree had either picked up the chunk as it grew or someone had put it there. You could see the saw marks where the piece was cut with a cordwood saw, you know all hell was breaking loose when the saw hit that granite block.
I remember reading back in the early 70's where there was a tree in maybe Gettysburg or Antietam where a civil war soldier was killed and his rifle was grown into the crotch of a tree. That would be cool to find.
Around here, that kind of thing is (Sadly) fairly common. Generally, I'll either cut high, 4' or low, below 10" because anything in between in my area is either barbed wire, or spikes. This is all X-farmland, and the farmers used stone walls, and bridged the open spaces by nailing directly to trees. When we were milling lumber steady, we had to pretty much just lose the last five feet or so to keep from destroying the band saw blades. The wand was of no use at all, because some of the nails and remnants of wire were nailed to pine trees back when they were six inches across, now at 26" across the wand can't even find the buried wire unless you are lucky enough to have some still sticking out. The same with the oaks, but those don't eat as much of the wire, and are generally much easier to spot.
I found an iron rod in the middle of an 80 year old larch tree. I think it was tied to it in order to hold it upright a long time ago and then forgotten. Had to file my chain 4 times. In Hamburg I find grenade and bomb splinters from WWII all the time.
Falling a huge black poplar in a back yard in town was going good till I hit some Paige wire fence way near the middle,the tree was over 100 years old,people used to keep some livestock in their backyards back then.
IT was a fairly wide practiced habit in the UK and Europe to stuff cavities with busted pottery and household items in early Victorian times and then to seal with wax. There are still a lot of ancient trees around with fully enclosed inclusions in the canopies that are chainsaw hazards waiting to happen as a result!
Didn't cut a tree down but I'm a carpenter from the u.k. and while doing a shop refit I cut a piece of 4x2 with my chop saw and when I inspected the cut I saw something shining, turned out to be a bullet, about a 22 I think, I managed to get the bullet out of the timber and still have it now 15 years later (minus the tip I cut off with the saw)
While clearing a patch of madrone in southern Oregon, my crew found a gold ring with a green stone in the center of a log. A quarter inch in either direction, and we never would have discovered it. We left it lodged in the wood and gifted it to one of our crew because he was getting married. Best we could figure is someone slipped a ring on a sapling some 30 years prior.
Years ago I found AK 47 rounds in Honduran Mahogany. Fortunately they were copper and lead, without any steel cores. The black streaks should have been an indicator, but I thought it was just some spalting.
Ive found plenty of bullets inside timber when cutting timber in the lumber yard as an apprentice, many of them WW1, we used to keep them in small metal boxes.
At a prior house I had a pine removed. Probably a first Christmas tree planted too close to the house. Giant limb over the house had to be diced and roped down. During stump grinding, they hit a buried steel bar. Ouch. Never could figure out why it was there.
All I ever find are nails, metal fencing and concrete. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to discover those things with a freshly sharpened chain saw chain.
I haven't found any of those u mentioned. instead i have found war related stuff and a lot. like bullet's and bomb fragment's (from russian bomb's) and few flag shell. bullet's and fragment's i usually found out with my thickness planer.
When I was a young man I worked in saw mills pulling green chain and I also tail sawed for a while. It was a bit disturbing when the 10 inch ban saw @ 3500rpm 6 feet from where you stood to work, suddenly hit a large rock that a tree had grown around! Gets pretty dangerous with those saw teeth flying off and ricocheting around! I was lucky and didn't get hurt doing that job.
I bought a large cut up fir for fire wood. split into stove lenghts 4cords worth. When i burned it i would find insulators, spikes bolts and assorted steel items . The chain saw missed them all
On my parents farm we were always putting metal parts in the V of trees to watch them grow over them over the years. I know of at least 4 where we put broken farm equipment parts in that have been completely consumed.
About 3 years ago there was a terrible wind storm in the city where I live one night. My friend who is a custodian at a local church received a call from the local priest to come to the church. When he got to the church the area was being secured by the police dept. During the storm a huge tree was blown over and under the tree roots there was the skeleton of an adult and a child. The remains were removed and sent to the morgue to be examined. It was determined that there was no foul play ,they were thought to have been there well over one hundred years. I saw the area and the bodies must have been there before the tree as the roots wrapped around the remains. They were reburied .
Hmmm. Here, in the forests around Saint-Petersburg (Russia) you can find many trees with a WW2 markings. Personally I saw tree with a german machine gun in it, some trees with an unexploded mortar shells etc.
Some really old oak trees were knocked down in a storm a few years ago at the Tippecanoe battlefield and when they were later being cut up there were musket balls from the battle found inside some of the trees
Oh it's a classic to find a piece of metal in a tree right after you put a new chain on or recently sharpen it. Once making a cut on a really old maple and about halfway through found an old water hose metal spray nozzle needless to say , it was a brand new chain for a 660 42" bar " GOOD TIMES "! U will cease to be amazed with what u can find inside old trees coolest find I had was a 100$ bill all wadded up an wet in a squirrel nest inside a hollowed out log.
Yes sir, it was pretty nasty! Along with a few baby squirrels there was one on the ground crying that got dumped out when the log hit the ground, we didn't notice them till cleaning up over all the noise but I dumped the rest out an all there bedding inside an sure enough as I was uncovering them from the muck! Last thing I ever expected to find inside a tree.
I was a builders labourer 40 years ago. I sometimes laid a small coin showing the date in wet mortar. Maybe someone will find them hundreds of years from now.
I visited Kew Gardens in London and was given a behind the scene tour by the “tree gang”. They have a room of things they find in trees including stuff from the war.
Good video, Blair. I've hit just about anything you can think of in a tree trunk, but never a horseshoe. Coolest one...sliced a musket ball in half. It was about 230 years in. Don't know how deep a musket ball would have penetrated a young white oak, but I'm guessing it was fired a couple hundred years ago. Pretty cool. It wasn't even a real job. It was my brother's tree. Friends and family... I'm sure you get plenty of that.
Okay, I've got a story for you! In the late seventys I was in the Mobile, Alabama area doing clean up from a hurricane. Had to take down a huge pecan tree and when I cut in with the saw I started seeing yellow, bright yellow, come out with the chips and the saw got dull real fast. When we finally got to see what it was that I had hit, it turned out to be an old McCullough 1010 chainsaw !! And no, I will not say that it would still run, but it was all there except the bar and chain! Yeah, you can find the dangest things in trees! Thanks for sharing and take care.
arboristBlairGlenn Yeah, I did too, before I found the one in the tree. My first thought when I seen what it was, someone had as much trouble with theirs as I did with mine and ACCIDENTALLY left it in the tree ! 😆
When a chainsaw hits something like that, can't it break the chain? Which then comes flying off at high speed, teeth flapping, ready to cut your leg off? If that were me I think I'd bring a metal detector with me.
A little, when we split the log (big log) we found it..Black and rusty, we knew the farm existed over 100 years ago. there were nails, the barbed wire was in the center and was nailed when the tree was as big as a soft ball in diameter.
so I guess the moral of the story is, you never know what you're going to find in a tree. lol. great job shooting this video. professional quality. you spent a few dollars for the camera you're using. keep respecting the trees my friends.
arboristBlairGlenn ha. just some good natured humor. I have to admit, I thought you would just find wood in a tree. now I know better. thanks for the video and the response. you rock!
i found a full size farm plow in a tree.part of it was sticking out but it was still neat to see. also found a headstone in a stump and found out we were in a very old cemetary and that one was the only remaining headstone
When we were kids we put a melon sized rock in the crotch of a tree and rested a log on it pretending it was a canon and we never took the rock out. I remember looking at that tree years later and by then the tree had almost completely absorbed the rock. Whoever cuts that tree down is in for a surprise
I cut down a huge silver maple that was threatening my house and found an animal trap in it. The tree had to be well over 100 years old. It dulled out 2 saw blades before we even knew there was a problem.Gave my friend about 7 truckloads of wood.
Ha ha,now that must have been a shocker. I know where there is a tree that is in Flint Mi that has an old refrigerator door growing into it. It was lodged there by a massive tornado back in 1956 or around that time. Apparently it was an F 5 as to the fact it destroyed everything in its path and things ended up far away from where the tornado struck. That door was still there years later when I was growing up. My grandparents drove us there to see the damage. Apparently,the block that got hit was completely wiped off the map. My grandparents talked about it for years.
glad the cutter is ok. I wonder if you could somehow remove that with a certain amount of would attach to make it a decorative object or in the case of the stone a table that could be worth a lot of money and made very beautiful
Some tribes did yearly migration cycles, returning to an area for a period of time; berries, deer, wintering, etc. They would stash these for their return. Who wants to lug a big rock around? You may find signs of an encampment in the area. Usually blackened stone fire rings. I was once shown some Tipi rings west of Loveland. They would use rocks to hold the sides of the Tipi on the ground; when the left for the season they would just roll the rocks off, waiting for their return.
live oak was the reason why The Constitution had cannon balls bounce off her....bad ass wood . Many countries used to do raiding parties to steal these trees for the purpose of ship building...the split trunks were used in the bows due to their strength for curves in bow sections .
We found a glass coke bottle in a tree once that destroyed a few chains before we cut around it. Of course it would be the end of the day when were cleaning up and dropping the trunk. some one must have put it in a squirrel hole at some time.
there's a tree in town that had a rotten spot in it so someone decided to fill it with concrete. years later the tree was finally cut down and left. last I knew there was lines of chainsaw marks from people trying to cut it up and take it with no luck.
There's an old american wives tale that isn't too old. A guy shot at a certain tree for target practice.One dày he decidèd to cut the tree down. A bullet lodged in the tree was thrown from the tree and killed his wife. Considered an accident and is not a premeditated murder, case closed.
Makes for a bad day when you find this sort of thing with your saw you just finished sharpening. Found a small steel post inside a tree once, it was obviously the original stake they used when they planted it, not fun.
I am fine, but after being confused about the situation as i never cut hardwood (elm being the most dense in my area) i kept trying to power through it for about 30 seconds lol. I killed the chain needless to say. Managed to cut about 3/8" out of the rock though. Cheers mate.
