Lightning hit this ~60 year old pine.

James, does the damage (a priori the chain saw) look bad enough that it would have killed the tree?

Did the workers leave the cup or just added for perspective?

When I had my glass business in Texas I got a call from a guy that needed some glass replaced in his closed in patio. I was totally blown away when I saw that lightning had struck a tree next to the house and blew bark through 1/4" tempered glass. Almost impossible to do with a large hammer.
Jim

You can see how fast it grew in earlier years Michael. They use those 24-28+ inch trees for 2 X 10 and 2 X 12's. That size brings top dollar.

2 X 4,6,8 come out of trees 1/3 to 1/2 that age. S. Georgia/Florida faster. All about timber down there.

It looks about 45 -50 yrs old from a quick count of rings. Wow, that beats our Douglas Fir which is the big money tree in the PNW. The Fir wood is denser but not as clear. Our little place in Panama is built from pressure treated yellow pine shipped in from Alabama/Georgia plantations. Termites are terrible hungry down there, ha, but so far the stuff is great.

Old virgin growth Southern Yellow Pine heartwood was incredibly dense. Once I was working on a project using SYP heartwood that had been salvaged from an old 19th century mill where it was used for the post and beam structure. I was cutting out a mortise pocket that I had first pre-drilled out and was just going to use my chisels to square up and clean out. It felt like I was trying to cut concrete. Cutting adjacent to the grain pattern (cross-grained), the point of contact where every single red growth ring meet my chisel's edge left chips in the edge of the chisel. It turned my Rc-63 hardness high carbon steel chisel into a serrated edged chisel. I imagine part of this was due to the pine resin in the wood having hardened in a dry environment for 125 tears but in twenty four years of doing furniture repair and antique restoration this was the only wood that ever damaged my chisels.
Larry C.

They cut Live Oak off the coast of Georgia to make the 21 inch thick gunnels for the 174 foot long(at water line) USS Constitution.(cannon ball resistant ?)
The masts are 172, 190 and 220 footers. Probably from long leaf pine, and could be laminated, not sure.
The British did harvest long leaf pines for their masts. 100 and 120 footers, single pole masts not laminated. Specific base and tip diameters pursued, I think 1-2 feet in diameter at tip.

Lore has it that long leafs cut around the shores of L. George Fl in 1943 for P-51 fuselages. A good many still tower around the lake. Lightning #1 killer.
Had two on my camp at L. George, both killed by lightning. Both over 170 feet tall, over 3 feet through at base.
To saw them up an old timer told me to dip my chain saw in a bucket of motor oil to keep the sap from freezing up the chain. Thank you.
Had the cut up trees pushed up in a pile with a loader and set it on fire. The flames from the sap laden wood made quite the fire.
Had to buy a very powerful chain saw just for those two trees. Live oak in the area about as hard to saw.

Uss Constitution

I think the original masts on the Constitution were laminates made from live oak (cut on St. Simon's Island, GA) and white pine cut in Maine. The same live oak also used for ribs and skeleton strength. The 21" hull was a sandwich of live oak and white oak.  TOUGH!!  A lot of white oak was used on the the planking.   I think I remember that they had to cut about 60 acres of oak forest to build this one boat!  

I see that in restoration of the ship, they now use Doug Fir because nice white pine is not available. Some interesting reading of the original materials at www.ussconstitutionmuseum.org/constitution-resources/the-captain-speaks/building-constitution/

Fine oaks in the Appalachian mountains. Steep slopes hold a lot of trees because of increased mast exposure than those on flat ground.
Reaching high for sunlight in the valleys and gorges, free of limbs till way up the trunks. No knot wood. Always been oak furniture making territory.
Even the creek behind the house has whopper white oaks, no limbs 50-70 feet up the trunk.
Oaks low close to the creek best. Go 50 feet up the hill and the limbs are much lower, making knots and difficult to split.
Red oaks too, but they are harder to split and do not burn as hot. And puts splinters in your fingers.
Many varieties of red oaks. Only one white oak that I know of here.

It does smell offensive, especially if it has been laying for a year or two.

Our Red Cedar must have sand in it. Makes your chain saw throw sparks, dulls blade fast.