fossilized bolts

[Tam-i-am]

Kevin found these embossed bolts in our sheets of OSB.  They sure look nice all painted - I mean preserved and in the shop walls.

[beenthere]

Tammy
Interesting artifact.
Is the bolt there or just the impression of the bolt?

[Chuck White]

I have bought OSB that had depressions in the sheet as though someone put a bolt, nut, washer, etc. on the sheet then pressed it.

I've also had just the opposite where the defect would actually be raised.

Wierd as to how that could happen.

[Kevin]

The wood fibers are held together with those bolts, sometimes they show through.













:D

[SwampDonkey]

I've the got the matching sheet with the nut embedded into it down in the shop. ;D

[Larry]

Kevins quite lucky he didn't hit that bolt when he sawed that OSB log.

[Brad_bb]

Give anybody any ideas?  What could you emboss into OSB?  Just think of the interesting things they could intentionally emboss in the sheets.

[low_48]

Read on WoodWeb the other day that someone got a sheet of OSB with a Crescent wrench imbedded in it years ago.

[Brucer]

Five years ago I was sawing some Western Red Cedar timbers for my main customer. For side lumber he just wanted 1x6 & 1x8. There was no specific need for the 1x -- it was just a byproduct of the main job. I cut it, his guys stickered it, and it sat until they found a use for it.

In the summer when they had a chance to sell the 1x, the guy who was unstacking it called me over to look at something. There was a raised piece of wood right in the middle, about 3" long and 2" wide, sticking up 1-1/2" above the board and tapering to a point. It was kind of in layers. It looked weird, but all I could figure was that something had nailed the board from the other side and pushed a chunk out. So we flipped the board over. Absolutely flat. Pristine, clear wood.

I wish I'd owned a digital camera because it was totally weird. Keep in mind this was a 1" thick board with a 2-1/2" thick bump at one spot. Everyone was trying to figure out how I could have sawed around that bump on the top. Well, I couldn't. The board had two parallel faces when I cut it.

What we finally figured was this. The logs were harvested in the early winter and probably had another log tree dropped on top of it. A branch stub punched into it and crushed the sapwood (WRC being a very soft wood). When they skidded the log, the penetrating branch got pulled off and the hole got filled with snow. It was frozen and covered with snow when I sawed it. My opening cut must have been just below the hole, but right on top of the crushed fiber. Second cut was below it in undamaged wood. The flat board stayed that way until the spring when it started to thaw and the frozen moisture caused the crushed wood to expand and resume it's original shape. That's all we could think of.

I could see something like that happening to a piece of OSB or plywood, except the raised part wouldn't by any thicker than the thickness of a chip or a layer of veneer.

[Tam-i-am]

We bought 10 sheets and every one had the same bolts in the same places.

[scgargoyle]

My guess is that the OSB is pressed between two massive plates of steel. At some point, some stray hardware got in there and damaged the plates. They probably just kept running it until someone noticed, or until it his some Quality Control threshold, and they re-surfaced the plates. That would explain why Tamiam got several sheets like that.