Dead white ash -- 18 year update

I live in the Michigan county where the emerald ash borer was first discovered in 2002. By 2003 / 2004 all of the ash on my property (about 20% of the forest trees) were dying or dead.

Everything I've read rates ash as perishable with little to no rot resistance. My experience has been a little better. Most of the trees that feel directly onto the ground are no longer good for firewood. Although I was still cutting some of those a year or two ago. The ones that fell onto something keeping at least some of the trunk off the ground, however, are still in good shape for the most part.

I just cut and split a big one. About half the trunk was touching the ground and half was at least a few inches off the ground. The tree was 95% rot free, and branches as small as 4" were in great shape. Some sections of the trunk were so solid I could have milled beautiful lumber from them.







This is a big branch. You can tell its branch wood because the pith is way off center. I've seen elm, basswood, and other trees that like to lean with the pith off center like that in the trunk. But not white ash.


The parts of the trunk that were touching the ground are starting to show their age -- like the round in the next photo. Still worth the effort at this point.



I'm not claiming that ash holds up like white oak. Far from it. But I am still getting lots of very solid white ash firewood from trees that died 17 or 18 years ago. I wouldn't call that perishable. I doubt that elm, maple, hickory, red oak, or basswood -- some of the other trees in my forest -- would do as well.

A few final notes...

I had white ash and green ash, and the green ash seems to rot a little quicker than the white ash.

Finally, the solid sections of the white ash are extremely hard at this point. The hardest wood I have ever cut. Today I used a Dolmar ps-7900, a saw with plenty of power for 24-30" rounds of ash. I carefully sharpened the chain before cutting and purposely didn't file the rakers since I didn't want the chain trying to take too big of "bites."

Despite having a very sharp chain, it was still a little bit jumpy in the cut. The teeth wanted to bounce off the wood rather than cut it. I usually apply a very light hand with chainsaws, but today I had do apply some pressure to get the saw to dig in and cut properly. Once I got the pressure right the ps-7900 tore through it. But it felt like cutting hickory, giving me and the saw a pretty good work out.

Anyone else in Michigan still cutting ash? It was the first wood I ever burned in a wood stove and it spoiled me. It's my favorite fire wood, and I'll be sad when it's all gone.

 

Wow, that pretty awesome information. Ash is a favorite of mine, I very gladly mix it in with my red oak.

 

Thanks! I like to mix it too, especially with white oak or elm, which are not always as dry as I'd like them to be. I just tested a split of the white ash and it read 16% moisture content straight out of the forest. Since both my stoves draft really well that's almost too dry, which is why mixing it is a good idea.

 

That’s impressive. EAB was first detected in Connecticut in 2012, and for the most part (at least in my area) I haven’t found too many worth cutting in a couple years. Under the right conditions, wood up off the ground will stay good for a long, long time. Last winter I found old American chestnut wood that was killed before the Titanic sank.

 

That's surprising. Different climate I suppose. Parts of the forest on my property were at least 50% ash. There were so many dead ones that they started falling on top of each other, keeping many of them at least partially off the ground.

I was unaware that chestnut held up that well. I've got some dead white oak on my property that look like they were carved from stone. The bark and sapwood probably rotted away decades ago, but the heartwood is solid as a rock. As long as they don't fall into a low, wet area, white oak heartwood seems to last many decades right on the forest floor. Although I don't think it would last as long as your chestnut find!

 

White oak definitely lasts decades, easily. Chestnut did too, because the wood was loaded with tannins. That natural rot resistance was why it was used for fencing and railroad ties. Yeah I don’t know why the ash around here go to punk so fast. Certain parts of the state aren’t hit as bad yet, so it can still be found. If the bark comes off I think it allows the moisture to escape, and the wood gets almost petrified. That’s the theory anyway

 

I've got dead standing white oak that hasn't stood up well at all.
Course the trees withstood about 5 years in a row of gypsy moth carnage which probably didn't help them.
The wood looks like you could easily stick a screwdriver in it but you can't.
Cutting and splitting some to better gauge its value is on my to-do list.

 

Dont cut a lot of it but a recent score had me bucking barkless 22" dbh ash. It was very hard and solid. Had been freshly felled. If bark stays on it rots faster and i agree with you as to its shelf life once fallen.
Made some sweet firewood. Im in Connecticut and the EAB has devastated our ash trees.
Interesting observations. Thanks for sharing.

 

Probably a sign you need to take the rakers down a bit…try that and you won’t need so much pressure.

 

My normal / favorite chainsaw setup for messing around in the woods is an undersized bar and the rakers ground aggressively low. Most would say too low. I like the saw to aggressively feed, and if anything, I'm taking a little weight off to keep it from bogging the engine. I hate having to press down on a saw -- both because it causes undue wear and tear, and because it's extra work and unsafe. Following this formula, I run my Dolmar ps-6100 with 16" bar and 0.325 chain, and my ps-7900 with an 18" or 20" standard 3/8" chain. I've been known to put a 12" bar on sub-50cc saws just for fun.

Today I used a 32" bar and skip chain for bigger wood. I didn't grind the rakers today when I touched up the chain, but I usually. I only gave each tooth 3 or 4 strokes of a file, so I shouldn't have screwed up the depth of cut too much. I really think the wood was just incredibly hard. Or more precisely, it felt cut resistant -- which is different than just being hard. The whole tree dried without really cracking, and it's almost like the shrinkage increased the wood's toughness. It was different than cutting super hard wood like hickory, osage orange, hornbeam, hawthorn etc... Those are hard but a sharp chain feeds fine.

Or maybe I'm overthinking it and I just need to grind the rakers.

 

They want to pay you to simply drop that little thing? I could get that on the ground with a felling axe in about 15 minutes. But maybe they don't enjoy attacking dead trees as much as I do!

I've only called a tree service once, and that was for a 54" dbh white oak dating to around the civil war. The first 20 feet or so of the trunk was straight, and the rest of the tree (about another 80 feet) was leaning at a 10 degree angle directly over my pole barn. I've never seen another white oak grow at such an extreme angle. It had 30" diameter branches directly over the barn roof. Even though white oak aren't known or dropping big limbs in a storm, the tree had to go...

I've cut similar trees myself and dropped them against the lean with some combination of wedges, a 10 ton steel chain hoist (come along), and pulling with my neighbors bulldozer + 1" kernmantle rope (rated at something insane like 90,000 lb break strength). And each time I've cut those big leaners I've swore I'd never do it again. It's nerve racking trying to make a massive tree that might weigh 15 tons fall against the lean. So in the case of the one growing over my barn, I bit the bullet and called in the pros.

 

Funny you mention that since all of the solid white ash laying around my forest are completely barkless. Perhaps the ones that kept their bark are totally rotted into the forest soil by now. It seems like a high percentage of the ones on my property lost their bark early on. I wonder why?

 

That's a sweet score. Looks a little punky at the very bottom, which is the first part to go on the dead standing ones, but otherwise very solid! Ash, hickory, and white oak are about the only trees I will cut for free for my neighbors just to get the wood. I don't charge them to cut crap like dead, nasty, willows, but we usually work out a barter of some sort.

 

I build custom furniture for a living. Originally, I'm from PA and our sawmill is just now running out of Ash from PA that they either custom cut from their property or nearby in the county. The Ash log pictured that is completely white throughout is rare. Most of the White Ash has a dark center to it and only towards the outer edges is it pure white. A few years ago, I stocked up on bleach white Ash that was pure white on all four faces of the board. It's rare to find these days. Now in Wyoming, green Ash is supplied out here but much softer in quality. The density of Green Ash almost feels like foam compared to a pure White Ash.

 

Im almost out of ash on my property near ground zero for EAB and like you Ive been pretty amazed. I have a few more downed ones left Im hoping will still be good. Ill probably hit them with test cuts this weekend actually.

 

I’m in mid Michigan as well and still cutting up dead ash . As others have said if it’s off the forest floor it’s generally still some good wood .
On another note , I have some fence rows full of young ash trees . Heavy seed year as well , maybe a few will be resistant. Time will tell .