Lightening strikes

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plinker

plinker

Member
May 28, 2015
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Georgia, United States
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Well I've been protecting this tree from the ravages of beastly squirrels, then low and behold God thought it was a 2 Iron and decided to prove someone could actually hit it. The tree was at least 150ft tall, took three guys to get arms around it and it was 30 ft from my well. Fortunately no damage other than the tree loss. I have dropped quite a few squirrels from it. When they took it down, the massive trunk fell in halves, split through by the lightening blast. The bark blasted off 360 degrees and 30 ft up leaving an absolutely slick clean surface. Might have to carve a stock out of that sucker. 
 
Too bad. Makes one really appreciate the trees that get to be hundreds of years old.

I visited Muir Woods, just north of frisco a few years back, I was awe-struck. 

They had one tree that had fallen down in the 30s or something. They cut a cross section of it and put annotations pointing to certain rings when certain historical events occurred over the thousand years or so that it had been standing. Really humbling.

That tree had a shorter history but still deserves respect.

I have a grandmother clock in my living room that my grandpa made out of a Black Walnut tree that he and my dad's generation knew when it was alive. It had to come down for some reason, but grandpa saved the lumber, had it kiln-dried and made the clock. So now, it will live another hundred years.
 
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That looks like an Oak, maybe a red oak or a black oak? The Indians (Native Americans for the PC crowd) believe that a tree struck by lightening was good bow wood. Red oak is a pretty good bow wood if you make a flat bow out of it. It doesn't do well when made into a D section traditional design (English style) long bow. It takes too much set but it really does make a pretty nice flat bow. I made one for my Dad and one for my half-brother out of red oak. Dad's was 55# and my brother's turned out at 45# and was a very nice bow.
 
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Oldspook,good eye! It was a red oak. Common around Georgia and much appreciated. As a woodworker I have a serious love for trees. I have a lot of white oaks, hickorys and river birch also. I think that's why the place is such a squirrel magnet!

Smaug, I have great respect for old trees too. My wife actually said to me when we saw it,
" are you ok". That's funny, but she knows me and trees. My mother had a pecan tree in her yard that was planted by my great grandfather. It died when I was 18, and she commented how heartbroken she was and that she hated to lose it. I carved her a three foot tall bird out of the trunk with the live edge
base. I used a deer antler tine to carve the beak. She has it to this day and the pecan wood is beautiful. 
 
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Bet that was a shock!....... yeah I know that was almost as bad as an aggie joke sorry

Now we know why they tell us not to stand under a tree during a lightning storm. Somewhere I have some pictures of ground strikes where the ground has glass holes from lightning.
To bad we cannot figure out a way to harness and use such power. I have actually witnessed strobing lightning storms where it hits so fast that it looks like your in a disco hall scary as hell and plays havoc on electronics like CB Radios .
We actually had a lightning strike it our house one year when I was young and blow our microwave up, The timing was freaky as hell as I was playing top gun on the Nintendo and had just shot off two missiles when the strike hit the house my mother made me turn the game off, I swear to God its true I shot the missiles and just as they hit the enemy plane the lightning hit our house and the microwave flashed and started smoking with a loud pop along with the boom of the lightning.
 
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