I recently was told that a lightning struck tree is harder to cut. it breaks the chains on chainsaws?
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12 Responses to “I recently was told that a lightning struck tree is harder to cut. it breaks the chains on chainsaws?”-
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Sounds to me like the guy wanting to cut up your tree is looking for more money.
The only thing which would break chainsaw chains is 1) Trying to saw something other than wood, or 2) Real cheap chainsaw chains.
Wrong
so that would mean the wood turns into metal from the electic ……..
I think that isn’t true
sounds like an urban myth.
Actually the heat and force from the impact would make it weaker… but i don’t know for sure that’s just what I would think.
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Sounds like ‘An old husbands tale" to me.
It doesnt…
Actually, if its been struck, and bark is off, or its busted in half, then there is only half the work to do
I wish you well..
Jesse
It is actually quite the opposite. Due to the impact and the extreme heat of the lightning strike the tree should have become more brittle. Therefore, it would be much easier to cut, which would make this another false urban myth.
Although being struck by lightning would not automatically make the wood harder, the *exact* effects of the strike could make cutting harder in one of two ways.
First, if the strike partially burned the wood, you would have charcoal, which is harder than wood. People used to stick the ends of poles that had been sharpened into fire to harden the points and make spears. So any lightning strike that actually burned the wood *would* make it harder. It *might* be hard enough to break the chain on a chainsaw, but, again, that would depend on a lot of factors.
Second, if the strike split the wood, it might leave tangled, twisted sections of mangled wood which would be a lot more likely to ‘snag’ on the chain of a chainsaw, or any other saw for that matter, than a solid trunk of wood.
In either case, the solution (if possible) would seem to be to make the cuts away from any visibly burned sections of the tree, and in a place where the wood was not tangled and twisted.
The only way it should cost more is if the tree was dead a long time. It would cost more because limbs could be brittle making it more dangerous for the crew.