What might cause severe checking?

[John K Jordan]

Thanks guys. Your 3 answers make sense, wind shake, hard fall, or lightning. I never experienced those, so I was thinking down the wrong path of severe checking.

From what I've read the jury is still out on the cause of common ring shake. It well may have more than one cause.

Some shake variations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakes_(timber)

In my experience a log with ring shake is best used as firewood. I've seen it several times when processing wood for turning blanks, most dramatically in walnut and chinese chestnut, once in cherry. Can be dangerous on the lathe if undetected!

Compression failures (including felling shakes, thunder, rupture, transverse shakes, cross breaks, cross fractures, and lightning) are often cross-grain fractures. Lightning can do unpredictable things! I've had trees blown apart halfway up the trunk and split all the way to the ground, compromising nearly the entire tree. One 24" poplar now has an exposed rotting interior but since the strike the tree has added 6" of healthy growth 3/4ths of the way around the circumference and has healthy upper growth! Maybe it will survive.

In one case, however, lighting hit a large yellow poplar tree and made a clean groove down one side of the log, maybe 3" deep. The surrounding wood came off the mill with unusual color. You can see a little bit in the 10/4 planks in this picture:

Dec_2020_012.jpg

JKJ

[Alan Schwabacher]

Maybe hedge your bets and embed both LEDs and firecrackers into the epoxy. That way any time you tire of the flashing lights you can turn it into kindling.