Minerals In Wood?

I know some species where it is very common. Hard Maple and Horse Chestnut are two. With Maple you can usually see the pockets of it, with Horse Chestnut, it can sometimes be everywhere, not clearly visible, and very hard on machinery knives and hand planes. I've been curious why some species are predictably prone to it. For some reason they are more apt to pull it up from the soil. Some exotic species, like African Wenge, are miserable to work with because the wood is so hard on steel edges. A beautiful wood, however.
 
Limbing and bucking a very (very very) dead, very dry hemlock this morning, and I could occasionally see sparks coming off the chain (MS440).
I dunno if it had anything to do with minerals though.
 
Stumps have a migh mineral content in some hardwoods, hence flushing a clean stump can still often dull your chain some.
 
I had a hard maple at my girlfriends place, cut 20 feet of log into firewood length pieces, last cut, I thought I must have nicked a rock, came back to it a week or so later with a fresh chain, same thing, dulled it very fast, in one cut, this time I was sure to be completely clear of the ground, no dice, still dulled.
 
I don't know if it is cellular or not, but with sawn boards, you can often easily see the pockets of mineral accumulation with your unaided eye.
 
"Mineral" is pretty common with oak, especially red oak.....Causes dark discoloration..... Don't know the cause.
 
In the Northwest, all of the moss that we have clinging to the lower part of our stumps, tends to pick up a ton of sediment, whether through wind dispersal or agent dispersal, (tons of squirrels flying up and down the trees) I don't know. At any rate, for the arborist, I can tell you... man, our low-cuts tend to really suck for the chain. For the timber-cutters: the Humboldt diagonals--which they are almost universally required to do--suck for them, since it requires them to snipe the opening, dang near right out of the duff. I can tell you: if you happen to nick a tiny bit of moss-caught sediment on the snipe of a really woodsy (tight ringed) Doug Fir, you'll have hell to pay just to finish the diagonal. I cut a tiny little (light suppressed) Fir today whose rings were so tight, that the late-wood diameter of the rings actually exceeded the thickness of the early-wood. Man, that pig was what a timber-cutter would call, "rock-hard".
 
Worst I've run into around here is Sumac. I'd swear it pulls chunks of metal from the ground and stores them waiting for an unsuspecting saw. :/:
 
Jack pine around here pull up a lot of sand. We've burned a LOT of jack pine, and it always results in a pile of sand.
 
Huh. That's pretty interesting. Wonder how the heck a tree "pulls up a lot of sand," but I believe you. Or what about this theory: The little saplings get bent around by Elk and deer and what not, which produces wound-wood down low in the stump, which caused sap-flow, which then catches wind-bourne sand???
 
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