White oak down

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Sad day. Last night my brother’s 400+ year old white oak snapped and blew over in a storm. It has been in decline for awhile. We have treated and fed it but clearly it’s been rotting on the inside for quite some time

 

[lxskllr]

Bummer. Sorry for your loss :^(

In hindsight, and seeing the failure mechanism, do you see anything that could've kept it going longer with the storm you got?

 

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I don’t know if there is anything that could’ve been done to help it short of a steel structure to stabilize and prop up, which would probably look pretty unsightly. It’s sad, but there’s not but to do now but cut it up. I’m hoping there is at least some piece of it I could take a slice from to keep but it all looks pretty rotten. I’ll find out tomorrow when I clean it up

 

[lxskllr]

Looks like there may be a decent amount of good pieces. Maybe not enough to make big stuff, but there's a lot of wood for smaller pieces and mementos.

 

[Marc-Antoine]

So few sound wood is left. Damned fungi. If it wasn't this storm, it would be the next one, or even just crumbling apart from his own weight. It's so sad when these ancestors come down.

 

[Mick!]

Sad day, but circle of life and all that.

 

[Treeaddict]

You have my condolences. Always sad to see an ancient giant fall.

 

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Worked on it a bit today. Can’t believe I didn’t get a saw stuck making those tension cuts

 

[Marc-Antoine]

You make the scale, that was a monster.
Poor tree, the top is as bad as the trunk.

 

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Another pic for scale. That’s my brother

 

[lxskllr]

Looks like you're making good progress. Where's it going?

 

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Material is mostly staying on site. Small wood is getting split. Anything larger and decent I’ll put on the mill and bring back to my brother. There is a ton of junk wood though. I’m interested to see what it’s like on Monday when I start cutting into the main trunk. I’m hoping for at least one or two salvageable pieces. Either way I’m sure we can do something cool with rotten pieces and resin. I just saw another post here with another fallen oak giant that was part of the william Penn forest. This tree was also in that same forest. I’ll have to find the pic, my brother has an old book that came with the house that has an old black and white photo of this tree.

 

[Nutball]

Remnants of giant 8ft DBH oaks still exist around here, but no live trees anywhere near as big.