elm lumber

roger 4400 · February 02, 2015, 09:53:40 AM

The log that is split looks like box elder ( acer negundo) to me. Over here elm will never split that nice . The leaves are from an oak but yours are not like ours.

Baron · February 02, 2015, 12:49:13 PM

Neither are White Oak.

Baron · February 02, 2015, 12:52:14 PM

Magician that is how my buds sit too.

WDH · February 02, 2015, 08:22:30 PM

The buds in the twig pic are alternate. Box elder is opposite branched, not alternate, so it cannot be box elder.

MM

I see how he is sitting on his bud. He has made a skill out of it.

Buffer · February 03, 2015, 07:39:43 PM

just to put my 2 cents in, I've had two neighbors give me the wood from downed elm trees. I was told one was an American Elm, I had to rent a splitter for it and just about blew it up. The other a Siberian Elm, it split easy with my axe.

mart · February 04, 2015, 03:55:54 AM

My grand dad always liked elm for horse stalls. He said it was easier on their legs than concrete. He claimed it had some natural springiness to it that helped to keep the horse's legs from laming up. Don't know if this is true or not but he was pretty adamant that his horse stalled be floored with elm.

crowhill · February 04, 2015, 10:45:24 PM

Mart, my grandfather did and said the same to the point I think he believed you were doing a horse injustice if you put anything other than elm in the stall. That was up here in Vermont.

mart · February 05, 2015, 03:43:48 AM

crowhill,

This was in the North Country of New York State. Very similar country to yours. Both my grandfathers used draft horses much of their lives. My paternal grandfather was adamant about the elm. I never heard my maternal grandfather say but I'm sure he would have wanted the same. He ran a road grader with his team of white Belgians and dairy farmed. They both dairy farmed all their lives and depended on their horses being sound and ready. It wasn't until the last couple of decades of their lives that they went to tractors. My mom's dad always seemed extremely saddened not to be farming with horses. He often logged with his horses, mostly firewood. He was fond of telling the story of cutting firewood logs by himself in the winter. He'd just throw the reins up over their backs and send the horses up the trail to the farm yard with some logs. Grandma would unhook the logs and turn the horses around and send them back to Grandpa. He said they would do that all day long and never wander from the trail. Try that with a log skidder.

Ron Wenrich · February 05, 2015, 05:08:21 AM

My dad used to tell me the same about firewood, but they used mules. They said every so often they had to go look for the mule, as the mule decided it was break time.

Horses went out of style for many farmers after WWII. We had an aggressive tractor salesman in the area. There was no need to have the cash, as he would gladly allow them to use their farm for collateral. When the farmers couldn't pay, he simply took their farm. In later life, he said it was a business practice that he regretted.

SwampDonkey · February 05, 2015, 05:36:04 AM

Elm was also used here on horse stalls. A horse treads, and elm was most resistant to wear compared to using spruce or other native wood up this way. I have had elm sawed, I had 20" incher, clear all the way up the log. And it wasn't the but log, I had no way to handle a 36" hardwood. :D Just a come-along winch and pick-up bed. Twisty stuff when dried. It was open grown.

The twig symmetry and bark looks like elm, but that split way too easy for a native elm. Elm buds on the tips cant a little because they are not really a terminal bud, the tip withers away and it's actually a lateral bud. A lot of them buds in the original post are possibly flower buds, more round and plump.

They've kind of become weeds, growing in road corridors near the river valley. They get to be 8" and have seed, then the dutch elm takes them out.

reubenT · February 05, 2015, 11:43:21 PM

sometimes tree names get applied a but different in different places. But to my best knowledge red elm and slippery elm are the same tree. The inner bark is edible and medicinal, the tree grows to good size, splits fairly easily. We also have american elm. hydraulic splitter has to work it's way all the way through. And it's dieing. I'm cutting dry dead ones for firewood. I've heard it is a preferred wood for the lath under metal roofing because it hangs onto nails. And It's also the preferred wood for wagon hubs, because it's tough and yet not too hard, the wood will give a bit as the hickory spokes are driven in and hold good without loosening. (I know, wood wheel wagon building is almost a lost art. One of those essential skills of the past that got completely replaced by steel and rubber, only retained by a few for pleasure use)